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A Design Defect Is Plaguing Many iPhone 6 and 6 Plus Units (iphonehacks.com)

Evan Selleck, writing for iPhoneHacks (edited and condensed): For many iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus owners out there in the wild, a design defect is apparently causing some huge issues. Gadget repair firm iFixit has reported about a flaw dubbed "Touch Disease", which it claims is cropping up. With it, owners of the phones are experiencing, to start, a gray bar that appears at the very top of their display. And, for many others, the display itself becomes unresponsive to touch, or less responsive overall. In the blog post, iFixit says the problem stems from issues with the touchscreen controller chip, which is soldered onto the logic board. Interestingly enough, iFixit posits that the same internal design decisions that led to "Endgate" might be causing the issue leading to Touch Disease, too: "In both the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, the Touch IC chips connect to the logic board via an array of itty-bitty solder balls -- "like a plate resting on marbles," Jessa explains. Over time, as the phone flexes or twists slightly during normal use, those solder balls crack and start to lose contact with the board. "At first, there may be no defect at all. Later you might notice that the screen is sometimes unresponsive, but it is quick to come back with a hard reset," Jessa explains. "As the crack deepens into a full separation of the chip-board bond, the periods of no touch function become more frequent."

4 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. Defective by Design by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    So that you buy the iPhone 7.

    1. Re:Defective by Design by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Only reason - Apple Pay, and also, I want a storage upgrade to 64GB. ... FaceTime is the only reason I use an iPhone

      I'm not sure you understand what "only" means.

      --
      It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
  2. Re:Apple to fix it? by aardvarkjoe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Considering the huge price of these things (love my iPhone 6+ anyway) let's hope Apple will offer some solution.

    Presumably they will offer a solution, along the lines of "bend over and buy an iPhone 7, peasant!"

    --

    How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
  3. The common denominator by sjbe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And soon to be a fifth, all in under two years. This last one only lasted about three weeks.

    If indeed that is true I think the problem is most likely you, or more accurately something you are doing. While Apple does have issues with devices from time to time, the probability of a single person have 5 failed iPhones in two years due to (conveniently unspecified) quality problems is remote to say the least. I've known of people to break that many phones in a similarly short time span but that was a user error problem. If there was evidence of Apple having widespread quality issues I'd be the first to pile on but I just don't see the evidence for it here.