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Users Report Warping of Apple's iPhone 6 Plus

MojoKid writes: Apple's iPhone 6 Plus weighs six ounces, and it's a scant 7.1mm thick. As an added bonus, according to a number of users, it has a hidden feature — it bends! And no, we don't mean it bends in a "Hey, what an awesome feature!" sort of way. More like a "Hey, the entire phone is near to snapping" kind of way. What's even more troubling is that many of the users who are reporting bent devices also claim that they were carrying it in front pockets or in a normal fashion as opposed to sitting on it directly. Either some of the iPhone 6 Plus hardware is defective (the vastly preferable option) or it's because the tests run by other venues are putting different kinds of stress on the chassis. It's not clear what the story is. Hopefully Apple will clarify it soon.

5 of 421 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Not just iPhone by rezme · · Score: 5, Informative

    Other phones bend, but the issue here is that with the iphone's metal case, it doesn't bend back. Plastic, unless subjected to extreme amounts of stress, tends to return to its original shape. Aluminum not so much. The problem isn't the glass, as the phones I've seen bent have glass that is still intact (strangely enough), but rather the metal chassis that Apple has always been so proud of.

  2. Re:Not just iPhone by Dan+East · · Score: 5, Informative

    Did you even look at the URL in the OP? It shows several phones that are permanently bent - some plastic, some metal. It shows plastic phones, like the Galaxy, with a cracked display from where it was bent, plastic phones that are permanently bent (BlackBerry Q10, Oppo) as well as other phones with metal frames like the Sony Xperia Z1 and HTC EVO. It also shows various other older models of iPhones that are bent.

    No phone is immune to this, and just because it's plastic and kind of "bends back" does not mean the screen or plastic won't crack, etc.

    I'll tell you exactly what this is about. Millions of existing iPhone users now have a larger phone in their pocket, and because the previous models were smaller, they were just under the bending threshold (due to the weight of the person, size of pockets, whatever) and they didn't have a problem. Now with the larger phones there is more leverage to exert more force (plus being thinner might make them weaker as well), and suddenly the bigger phones can't handle the stresses that the smaller phones could handle. If these people were to stick a Samsung S5 in their back pocket bad things would happen too (and it just so happens that the older, smaller iPhones were tough enough to handle that).

    Is the iPhone 6 as tough as the smaller previous generations of iPhone? Almost certainly not. Is it as tough as other phones the same size like the Samsung Galaxy? Probably so.

    --
    Better known as 318230.
  3. Re:Not just iPhone by OzPeter · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sorry, but your spelling is just stupid and arbitrary unless you apply the "ium" suffix to ALL elements.

    Do you mean things like: potassium, sodium, magnesium, calcium, and strontium?

    Also the spelling of "aluminum" predates the spelling of "aluminium", so the former is proper.

    The official chemical name IS Aluminium with Aluminum being an alternate spelling. But if you are being pedantic, then alumium predates both.

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  4. Re:Third option by mrchaotica · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's (mostly) not the material, it's the geometry. The bending modulus of any material depends on the cube of its thickness. Making something both thin and rigid is disproportionately hard, no matter what material you make it out of.

    --

    "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  5. Re:Not just iPhone by Chrisq · · Score: 4, Informative

    The official chemical name IS Aluminium with Aluminum being an alternate spelling

    Except it's not. You are right about "alumium", however.

    It is the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) standard international name, though they recognise Aluminum as an alternative.