Balsu Thandu feels comfortable that the iPhone is ready for launch, which has been field-testing the iPhone over the past two months.

There are as many as 200 field technicians secretly testing the iPhone over the past 10 weeks, logging over 10,000 hours on the phone, including over 5,000 hours of voice calls and 5 gigabytes of data usage. This is supposedly twice as much testing as other phones on the market.

So what kind of beating did the iPhone get? It was doused in water, dropped onto concrete and even bounced off sidewalks. Poor thing, it’s almost as bad as pharmaceuticals testing new medicines on animals! It’s a sick and cruel world. So rest assure that your new shiny iPhone has undergone major real life usage testing.

“Many people don’t realize it, but walking gives you the worst channel conditions,” Thandu says. Cell signals tend to bounce off buildings, causing interference, and background noise is a constant problem in cities.

One feedback that was reported was the audio quality “not loud or clear enough” which apple was reportedly making ongoing adjustments.

Stress Testing the iPhone [Via MacRumors.com]