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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.
As is the case a lot (not all) of the time with Apple. They're worth a lot in click-bait, so what you do is try to find something outrageous to say about a popular product, put adverts on the page to generate you cash, and try and profit from the massive public interest in yet another Apple product...
Or maybe I'm getting too cynical in my old age.
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
I agree with you it should be free of charge if there is a defect, and it would have to be counted as one if they claimed it could survive > 90lbs of force, but that wasn't a claim. Realistically, if it was a free replacement, how do you get away from the "I nicked my iPhone dropping it out of my car, let me bend it and get a new one" crowd?
Who thinks it's okay to sit on their phone? Why do people think they ought to be able to? It literally makes no sense. It's an electronic device with a glass screen. If I handed someone a sheet of glass and said, "put this in your back pocket and sit on it!" they'd refuse.
But a phone? Oh, absolutely! Shit, wait, no! It broke?!?!
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
When there are plenty of competing devices on the market that are more bendy (as they discovered), it seems entirely reasonable to place your product in the middle of the accepted, reasonable range.
I mean, HTC are advertising their phone as not bending when you sit down, and explicitly comparing it to the iPhone, while these tests demonstrate that it's in fact more bendable.
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.
That seems to be true, but it is also not the question anyone cares about. Given two phones, one is likely to bend under circumstances that the other won't.
The question that needs to be answered is, what circumstances exactly? If I hold it in my hand while pressing on the screen, is that enough to bend it? If I sit on it, will that be enough to bend it? If I drive a car over it, will that be enough to bend it?
Details matter.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
but the 6 bends at nearly HALF the pressure of the 5
Neither figure matters if the pressure actually put on the phone in your pocket is 1/10th of 55 lbs.
To phrase it differently since you seem to have a personality tailor-made for being "misled by statistics", if the only force a device undergoes is 10-20lbs, why does it matter if a device can sustain a million pounds of force, or 30,
Remember that in realty Apple's has reports of just six actual phones being bent.
I have a 6plus and have been using it in my pocket. After sitting or leaning over or whatever, there is zero bend or even flex to the thing. To actually bend it would take enough force I'd be concerned about my own structural integrity.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No, but customers who have bought previous versions will have an expectation that the new one will survive being used (and abused) in the same manner as their old phone.
If I'm used to putting my phone into the same pocket as my wallet (which is rounded with change)*, then it's *somewhat* reasonable to expect to be able to do as before.
* I've never that done because I've never wanted to risk damaging my phone. However I did damage an old resistive touchscreen WinMobile phone in my [non-skinny] jeans pocket because of too much pressure from my leg, so I learnt early on to be careful.
So, if the phones are bending in real world situations, they are by definition defective
Except they aren't.
Apple sold 10 *million* phones over the weekend. Of those, Apple says they have six complaints. And we haven't seen that many pictures from real owners.
So the reality is that the iPhone 6 is not defective, a few have undergone more extreme forces than is reasonable. In the end a large flat object can be broken, that's just physics and no amount of design will change that.
If you plan to put ANY phone through more extreme forces than normal, get an Otterbox and call it a day.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So if you're use to sitting on the hood of a 70s (or older) truck and then buy a new one and sit on the hood and you find your butt caused a dent in the new truck's hood then all trucks should be recalled?
Have gnu, will travel.
No, it isn't. To properly calculate 'bendability' you have to calculate force moments around the points where it actually bends. If you take a look at the bendgate photos, you'll see that it bends and breaks at the lower end of the volume buttons. This point is about one third down, and the phone is 157mm long, so you have the bending force acting on a lever about 105mm long. Since the torque is proportional to the square of the lever, a much smaller force would be necessary to bend it there than in the middle. Since both consumer reports and Apple apply the force in the middle of the phone, they'll show you a larger force necessary to bend it.
Unfortunately, in your pocket the phone will eventually hit a place where the smaller force will be applied in the "right" spot and it will bend.
LG and Samsung have solved it...
Also, when someone breaks their Galaxy Note, it doesn't make CNN and BBC.
I have a Galaxy Note 2 and, from the feel of it, I would fully expect it to break if I put it in my back pocket and sat on it. So I don't. If I'd wanted to do that I'd have bought a smaller phone.
What I don't get is why Apple decided to produce two phablets rather than update the 5 for people who want a phone and just have the 6+ for people who wanted a phablet. I'd consider the 6+ if it weren't quite so eye-wateringly expensive (esp. if you want decent storage), but I really don't see the point of the 6.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
the amount of force required to do so results in phones from other manufacturers simply breaking under the stresses involved
Where did you see that, the HTC broke with the same amount of force that was needed for iphone6. Everyone else required upwards of twice the force.
this is more a sign that they may have reached the point that using a highly malleable metal like Aluminum simply isn't a great choice
In other words, iphone6 chose looks over function, a common design problem. Like it was said, looks like Jobs is sorely missed in Cupertino.
What the test shows is that most phones will resist a reasonable amount of bending when the load is applied uniformly at the centre. They all do pretty well. That's great.
The issue with the iPhone 6 Plus is that it has a weak corner, if you watch the 'bendgate' video you can clearly see that the bend line is not straight across the phone, but at an angle near to the weak spot.
A properly designed test would have clamped each phone flat with a corner sticking out unsupported and force applied until it suffered plastic deformation (stays bent). Each phone could have all four corners tested and the weakest result is the 'winner'. In such a test the iPhone 6 Plus would clearly fail at its weak point much more readily than any of the others.
Bad science.
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "we have a protractor"
Right because.....
1. Jobs wa never known for engineering products for form over function with disastrous results -- i.e. the Apple ///, the Lisa, the Cube, etc.
2. That must be why Apple's profits, stock price, and volume have been down since Cook took over....
Solved what problem? The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are sturdy enough.
The Bendgate video was also a fraud. For example, just note the jump cut at 2:40, where the lunk goes from holding one bent phone to a differently bent phone. He doesn't even demonstrate bending the phone starting from a pristine state--the phone was already bent before he started with his fungus-fingered hands. He suggests the phone was bent in his pocket, but no real evidence of that is shown. While he's talking about his phone looking like it might have been bent in his pocket, a jump cut is made to a clearly bent phone--no might be bent about it and obviously fraudulent in the representation. Clearly multiple units were used in the video production, so we could have been shown what it actually takes to bend a new iphone. Thank you, CR, for doing that.
2. That must be why Apple's profits, stock price, and volume have been down since Cook took over....
That's not true and easily proven false with a quick search. You're not even good at being a fanboy.
Android phones bend too.
As anyone could have found with Google before they tried to make this a thing about Apple.
Just be aware and it'll be fine, with any phone.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley