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

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: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.