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.

Comments

Apple = cash cow for scumbags

[Space cowboy]

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

Re: If people bend their phones

[saloomy]

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?

I still don't get this.

[aussersterne]

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?!?!

Re:This is a defense of iPhone 6?

[phantomfive]

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.

Yes, reality is a defense

[SuperKendall]

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.

Exactly, reality says "not an issue"

[SuperKendall]

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.

Re:Useless

[occasional_dabbler]

I'm an aerospace engineer and I have designed and run plenty of tests for certification of aircraft parts. This test is fine as far as it goes but it is not testing the real issue, the FAA would have thrown me out of the room if I'd shown them this.

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.