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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.
There should be a minimum charge (like another $199) and a replacement phone be provided. I once had an iPhone that cracked near the camera lens and apple replaced it for free because it was a known defect. Has anyone had an experience where apple didn't replace the phone? I didn't have AppleCare either.
They have a video. That's exactly what they do: they place the phone on two blocks of wood, and then have a machine apply a set amount of pounds of force to a bar placed across the middle of the phone.
About all their test tells you is that you shouldn't take Consumer Reports tests seriously if this is the kind of testing they're going to do. Especially because the people bending the phones weren't bending them straight in the middle, they were bending them right below the volume buttons. Which is also where their test phone's case actually breaks, even though the bend is down where they placed the bar.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Also true for if a 250lb man puts it in his back pocket... unless he also happens to put a ball bearing in his back pocket and then applies all his weight to that one precise spot.
Really... a person's weight != the force placed on a specific spot on an object a person has in their pocket. The entire reason we sit down is to distribute the force along our hips and thighs.
You might have a point if people were standing on their iPhones while they were suspended between two bricks.
Of course, what worried me (and this is where you can get a legit comparison) is that a six year old kid or a medium size dog CAN generate 150lb of force pretty easily.
Here's one data point for you: I've carried an un-protected iPod Touch 4g in my back pocket since around 2010 -- no scratches, no bends. The thing is about the same thickness as the iPhone 6 (0.26 in thick vs iPhone 0.27 in), and only a slightly smaller form factor. I've only come close to putting 50lbs of force on a single point a few times (landing on a pointy rock) -- result was that it got some stuck pixels for a few days that eventually returned to normal.
Torque is what matters.
If you test bending in the middle, you put 70 pounds force (approximately 300 newtons) in the middle, and support the ends firmly. That means that if the weakest point is in the middle, the torque on that point is (2 x 150 newtons x 80 mm), as the length of the lever arm to the support at the edge is about 80 mm. We'll ignore the fact that the test support is really a little bit inside that, and assume that the subject is supported right at the edge. Note also that the force is 150 newtons, which is half of the 70 pounds force used to break the phone, because the force is opposed evenly by two supports. Their equal force is then summed, which is why our total torque has that "2" scalar, giving us a total of 24 newton-meters of torque.
If we bend off-center, such as half-way towards one of the ends, the forces on the test supports are no longer equal. Our lever arms are now 120 and 40 mm, and the force would be unevenly distributed as well. The force is distributed inversely to the length of the lever arms, so the short arm, being 25% of the length, now supports 75% of the load, which is 225 newtons. The long arm supports 25%, which is 75 newtons. This gives us a total torque of (225 newtons * 40mm + 75 newtons * 120mm), for a total of only 18 newton-meters of torque.
Since testing off-center actually applies less torque to the test subject, the question then becomes one of whether the weak point is really 25% weaker than the rest of the beam.
However, we can also compute the torque on the supposed weak point during the center test. In that case, the lever arms can be computed as though they behave as a typical lever, scaling the force. they apply. The longer lever would be a class 3 lever, which would reduce the effective force of the test to 100 newtons. On the other hand, the shorter arm would behave as a class 2 lever, increasing the force to 300 newtons. The total torque on the weak point during a center test, then, is (100 newtons * 120mm + 300 newtons * 40mm), which is again 24 newton-meters.
If the weak point were really weaker than anywhere else in the phone, it would break during the center-loaded test. Looking at the pictures from Consumer Reports, though, that's exactly what happened. On both the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, the most significant damage is at the edge of the volume buttons closest to the center.
However, it's worth noting that the Consumer Reports test was conducted until the screen detached, even if that happened after the phone itself was permanently deformed. Looking at other pictures of bent phones, their screens have not separated from the cases, so they likely used less force to deform. Bending to separation, though, provides a consistent point of comparison to other phones, which may have internal damage even if their cases return to normal.
Disclaimer: I am not a physicist, and not a test engineer. If my math or methodology is incorrect, please feel free to tell me why.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Apple needs to get their ruggedness act together. Meanwhile, here's a real phone, the Caterpillar B15.
Cat B15 tested by users. Dragged behind car. Used to play basketball. (As the ball, not as a computer game.) Dropped off bridge. Run through cement mixer. Frozen in bucket of ice. Run over by car. No problem.
Cat B15 tested by Caterpillar. Dropped into pool of water. Scooped out with heavy equipment. Run over by front end loader. (One of Cat's smaller front end loaders.) No problem.
It's an Android phone. The B15 runs Android 4.2; the new B15Q runs Android 4.4. Price around $300. Available in the US at Home Depot. Unlocked; pick any GSM carrier. T-Mobile works. No annoying carrier-provided apps. Caterpillar preloads apps for ordering Caterpillar heavy equipment parts and renting heavy equipment.
If you have one of these in a pocket, you will break before it will. I carry one of these horseback riding.
How mush pressure does it take accounting for body heat? How must does it change for a person who is sweating ? Is this a parameter they test for as well?? How about say rubbing? If a person had the phone in there back pocket it surly is rubbing up and down as a person walks. Or a poor mix of whatever the iphone is made of? don't know I don't own a iphone. Plastic? Bad mixture to save money? metal? mixture changed to save money? Shit most of the stainless steel we get from communist country's is magnetic. Stainless steel is not magnetic.
Jack of all trades,master of none
The general consensus that Consumer Reports seems to be getting at here is that the results that they observed shows that while the iPhones do bend, the amount of force required to do so results in phones from other manufacturers simply breaking under the stresses involved. It also appears that Apple may have done some investigation into the engineering behind what is "good enough" behind the stresses that a phone needs to endure, much as traditional building codes have adopted. Looking back into the past, there have been great feats of engineering that have stood the tests of time and survived admirably, and a large part of that has been due to being "over engineered" than what was technically required, or from a simple lack of knowledge at the time of what really *needed* to be done to withstand the rigors of severe, gail force winds, earthquakes, or the like. Apple has fallen into the fallacy of "good enough" in an effort to reduce materials used, lower production costs, ease manufacturing, and all the while use those traits to leverage themselves as a positive for why the casing is thinner than ever before, lighter than ever before, and yet the product is now bigger than ever before. Less material, less weight, less volume, greater screen size... Uh. Something had to give *somewhere*, hence a product that is now less sturdy than it was a year ago. As such, they are likely going to have an increased number of warranty claims this year compared to previous years due to the folding potential at the structural weak point between the opposite inserts for the volume and power buttons.
Frankly, 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 and will ultimately lead to further structural issues like this in the future in the push for ever thinner, lighter devices that was exacerbated a little earlier than I expected due to the moving of the Power button. Long term though, there are ultimately ways around this through shifting to alloys, polycarbonates or carbon fiber and employing more complex geometry into the design, such as a honeycomb configuration as to allow for force to be dissipated through the surface rather than through a sudden catastrophic failure as they are seeing with the iPhone 6 Plus design due to the structural weak points of the recessed volume and power buttons on opposite sides of the casing that will itself only get worse over time. Should the buttons themselves been raised outwards so that they were not flush with the case or staggered so they were not adjacent with each other, while not being as aesthetically pleasing it would have resulted in a stronger, more durable product and I think that's ultimately the point for something that is intended to be with someone 24/7 for the next 2 years of their life.
End result is that life sure is easier for an armchair engineer to sit back and look in on why something failed than it is to see the forest when you're trying to make every branch on each tree "elegant".
Thirty four characters live here.
Hmm, this is for Apple astroturfers downmodding that inconvenient truth. New video posted by the bendgate dude to rebut the swarm of camp followers claiming the test was somehow faked or exaggerated. If anything, worse results for Apple this time.
OK, spin that Apple.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I found a nokia at a tram stop once. It was just the internal structure and battery, but a bit of hunting around in the gutter revealed the case. It had been dropped on the road and repeatedly run over. I snapped the lot together and found the most frequently dialed numbers (parents in Malaysia, not calling there to say I had found their daughters phone smashed on a road in Melbourne). Called her boyfriend and he arranged for me to drop off the phone. Very strong bits of gear, Nokias.
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