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Consumer Reports: New iPhones Not As Bendy As Believed
An anonymous reader writes: Over the past several days, we've been hearing reports about some amount of users noticing that their brand new iPhone 6 Plus is bending in their pockets. The pictures and videos shown so far have kicked off an investigation, and Consumer Reports has done one of the more scientific tests so far. They found that the iPhone 6 Plus takes 90 pounds of pressure before it permanently deforms. The normal iPhone 6 took even less: 70 lbs. They tested other phones as well: HTC One (M8): 70 lbs, LG G3: 130 lbs, iPhone 5: 130 lbs, Samsung Galaxy Note 3: 150 lbs. The Verge also did a report on how Apple torture-tests its devices before shipping them. Apple's standard is about 55 lbs of pressure, though it does so thousands of times before looking for bends. One analysis suggests that Apple's testing procedure only puts pressure on the middle of the phone, which doesn't sufficiently evaluate the weakened area where holes have been created for volume buttons. Consumer Reports' test presses on the middle of the device as well.
Wait, wait, wait...
iPhone 5: 130lbs. force to deform
iPhone 6+: 90 lbs. force to deform -> 30% less force
iPhone 6: 70 lbs. force to deform -> 46% less force
A reduction in resistance to deformation of nearly one third to one half over previous models and they are supposedly "not as bendy as believed"? WTF? That's a recall class problem in my book.
Read it again. People are accustomed to treating their iPhones in a certain way (storage-wise), but the 6 bends at nearly HALF the pressure of the 5. That's the crux of the problem. The 6 is a step backwards in strength. The larger size in part of it, since there's more leverage potential, but LG and Samsung seem to have solved that problem. No, it's not made of cheese, as some users seem to have reported, but it will bend under circumstances that the 5 would not.
One analysis? Every documented case of the issue shows that the bending occurs at a specific weakpoint that is not in the middle of the device. What fucking idiot would test for this weakness by only bending the device in the middle?
Consumer Reports' test presses on the middle of the device as well. Oh joy, a whole team of professional fucking idiots.
It doesn't take much pressure at all to bend/break an iPhone 6 Plus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
In other words, without calculating the torque at the pivot points, we still don't know shit. What you can see clearly from the tests is that the new iphones break with a much smaller force than most other models and at exactly at the points described in the bendgate.
Which strongly suggests that there is a real possibility the bendgate is a somewhat unpleasant design problem.
And that, sadly, Jobs' magic dust is slowly losing its power at Apple.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
The guy from Unbox Therapy, angry at the accusations that his original video was somehow staged, just posted a new video yesterday. In the new video, he unwraps a brand new iPhone 6+ on the street in Toronto with a handful of random witnesses watching, and again - by placing his thumbs on the back of the phone and applying moderate pressure- IMMEDIATELY produces a 25-30 degree bend in the unit, with the crease forming again at the bottom of the volume control cutouts.
In the new video, the iPhone deformed so badly the screen separated from the body.
He then attempted to bend a Moto X (2014 model) with visibly considerable force applied to it, and couldn't.
Is this really important? You decide. A lot of people - men, particularly - have carried their smartphones in the pockets of their jeans. If you're a big guy, and you have a tiny iPhone 5S in your back pocket and sit down in your car on a 3 hour road trip, the iPhone 5S won't deform because it's thicker, and much shorter in length, therefore providing a much shorter lever for your rump to apply force to. The iPhone 6+ however, being both thinner and significantly taller, provides a much longer lever for your 200+ pounds of man ass to press against the back of the car seat, making it quite conceivable that the iPhone 6+ WOULD have a bending problem in actual consumer use.
This issue has gotten enough viral traction and major media attention that it isn't going to go away. Worse yet for Apple is that unlike Antennagate, this problem won't be solved with a rubber bumper case costing Apple 20 cents manufacturing cost - NO, bent iPhone 6+ units still within their return period or covered by AppleCare are going to cost the company $200+ per unit, according to recent teardown parts costing estimates.
When, as educated tech consumers, are people going to stop confusing "smaller and thinner" as being "more advanced" ? All we are doing here, people, is sacrificing durability and battery life.
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
The retail replacement cost is why it's insane to put it in your pants pockets.
"I just dropped a grand on this. I know, I'll subject it to huge forces and see what happens!"
Why would you do that?
Steve Jobs thought that enough people would put iPhones in their pockets that he made the original iPhone design team scramble to completely redesign the screen to use a new material starting less than six weeks before launch.
So "why would you do that?" -- because Steve Jobs told you that putting an iPhone in your pocket is a reasonable action.
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While the iPhone 5, the LG G3, and the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 are much better in this regard (all >= 130 pounds), with the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 at the top of the tests with 150 pounds.
Jobs wa never known for engineering products for form over function with disastrous results -- i.e. the Apple ///
Interestingly, the widely-propogated assertion that the Apple III's vent-less, fan-less case (pushed by Jobs) was to blame for its exceptionally-high failure rate has been disputed.
From the Wikipedia "Apple III" article:-
Case designer Jerry Manock denied the design flaw charges, stating that tests proved that the unit adequately dissipated the internal heat. The primary cause, he claimed, was a major logic board design problem. The logic board used "fineline" technology that was not fully mature at the time, with narrow, closely spaced traces. When chips were "stuffed" into the board and wave-soldered, solder bridges would form between traces that were not supposed to be connected. This caused numerous short circuits, which required hours of costly diagnosis and hand rework to fix.
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