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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."
bending it wrong.
So that you buy the iPhone 7.
The owners are holding it wrong
Skip to 13:00:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
There are multiple ways to solve the problem. Making the phone thicker also results in more material use. Additionally depending on the materials you're still might not get the bending moment of inertia you need.
Plus you miss the marketing opportunity of "Now with a titanium backbone" marketing.
"you're soldering it wrong"
isn't that what nvidia said?
these bga's really scare me. so fragile and so unworkable from a tech POV. I can rework square flat packs but I can't do bga's. I hate them since they are just not really repair-friendly, not to mention its not inspection-friendly.
flat packs with leads flex and bend. bga's are a fucking abortion, especially if they are at all big, in chip size.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
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?
The Nvidia issue was a bit different. Due to repeated heating/cooling cycles eventually the solder joints would fail as the PCB and chip expanded and contracted. In the iPhone's case the movement is not due to heat but rather flexing of the entire phone (TFA typos "bendgate" as "endgate", repeated in the summary).
The iPhone 6/6+ are kinda bendy phones. Tests showed that they were significantly weaker than other phones in the market, requiring much less force to deform. Repeated flexing and poor mechanical design that stresses the PCB (due to the whole thing being stupidly thin) causes this inevitable failure.
If this is the case, this will be like the Nvidia plague. All affected devices die prematurely, guaranteed.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I've personally had 3 iPhone 4 & 4S's get the dreaded "wifi grayed out" issue where your wifi, bluetooth and gps stop working. It was so common that dozens of forum threads involved long discussions about it (you can still find them easily - and also on ebay devices with the problem) and even Apple had a page about it where they offered as a solution to "reset your network settings". Obviously this did nothing, as it was discovered the problem was the temperature sensor was malfunctioning and disabling the wireless module (which took down BT, GPS as well) and once your one year warranty was over you were out of luck with Apple. What's crazy is that the temperature sensor was not enabled with the shipping iOS of the iPhone 4 (possibly the iPhone 4S as well), but Apple enabled it from either iOS 5 or iOS 6 (I forget - but people not upgrading never had the problem), so they could disable it again if they wanted to. But they did not want to, my company purchased 3 iPhones for me because they were all failing the same way (after being used only in the office, sitting on a desk, occasionally debugging iOS apps), so it was good money for Apple.
Apple won't fix a widespread problem even if it is just a firmware update for them, so don't count on a solution (other than offering you the newest iPhone perhaps with a "generous 10% discount" if you are "lucky").
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The board flexes because it warms and cools during operation. The Apple 3 had the same problem.
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Reminder to EU residents, all electronics must come with a minimum 2 year guarantee under EU rules. Each country implements it a little differently, but you have at least a 2 year warranty.
Reminder to UK residents, in the UK the Sale of Goods Act applies. An expensive, high end phone should last 6 years. If it dies after 3 years then Apple can either repair it or offer you a 50% refund, excluding any damage you did and fair wear and tear.
If they argue, mention the Sale of Goods Act (loudly, in their store) and if that fails Small Claims Court.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
This is the first time I've heard of this problem.
I have an iPhone 6 and many people I know have the 6 or 6s and nobody has reported it that I am aware of. This, to me, suggests that the "many" spoken of in TFS is actually quite a small percentage of iPhone 6/6s owners.
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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.
I had a dead 12" white g4 powerbook. This happened to the cpu. I figured I had nothing to lose, so I took out the mother board, wrapped all of it bu the cpu with aluminum foil. I put a tea light on the chip (it was about the same size) I fired it up figuring it would be a prayer to the computer gods, or part of a wake ceremony. Once everything cooled off the laptop worked, still does. I wonder if a little heated press could be made to heat up and re-seat the chip without letting it slide at all. Sounds like an aftermarket tool business if anyone wants to make it.
When I try a hard reset the screen only gets worse.
I love performing electronic repairs, although I do not have practice (and wonder how good I would be) on devices this small. However I do not see the economic feasibility... someone enlighten me.
Silence is a state of mime.
Consumer Reports did some tests:
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2014/09/consumer-reports-tests-iphone-6-bendgate/index.htm
Apple iPhone 6 70 lbs
Apple iPhone 6 Plus 90 lbs
LG G3 130 lbs
Apple iPhone 5 130 lbs
Samsung Galaxy Note 5 150 lbs
So an iPhone 6 is about twice as easy to deform as an iPhone 5 and other manufacturer's high end phones.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Thermal expansion. Hard reset means that the components stop receiving a current for a brief period, allowing them to cool, and therefore, shrink. You might get the same, or similar results from just putting it down and leaving it alone for a few minutes.
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Firstly, you're correct. Nvidia was thermal expansion/contraction, while this is due to physical bending.
However, if you look at Louis Rossman's videos, the Nvidia issue was due to internal points WITHIN the chip, not due to the BGA points themselves. This means that simply reflowing the chip (or even resurfacing and resoldering the BGA) won't solve the issue. You NEED a new chip.
Heating the chip might slightly reflow the internal connections which may make the device work for a few days or even weeks, but it's going to fail very rapidly again.
The Apple issue is with the BGA points themselves, not inside the chip, which means that, as long as the points aren't super oxidized (as they were in Jessa's video), a reflow might resolve the issue. Fully resurfacing the BGA as Jessa did should completely resolve the issue, but Jessa replaced the chip anyway--I suspect the chip cost is low enough that putting a new chip on just makes more sense--just to make sure.
Source (Louis Rossman):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
-=Lothsahn=-
FYI: BGA = Ball Grid Array,
"Ball Grid Array rework is one of the most challenging procedures performed at assembly facilities and repair depots around the world. " ---
http://www.circuitrework.com/f...
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I see someone's dealt with Apple's "support". It's never Apple's problem. It's always "you're doing it wrong".
Hogwash. I've had two iPhones replaced by Apple in the last 5 years. One for cracked screen - small crack in upper right corner they indicated was a known design issue, replaced for free. The other was for a camera that wouldn't focus for some reason, also replaced for free under warranty. I'm under no illusions that if I threw my phone on the ground or dropped it in the toilet that they would replace it for free (that would be my fault) but they've been nothing but courteous and helpful when I've needed it. They asked if I had dropped the phone but when I answered no they did not pursue the matter further. I've never once heard an Apple representative tell anyone "you're doing it wrong" *in person* and I'm quite confident you haven't either.
That alone is why I'm done trying to deal with Apple. The high prices and poor quality just further cement that decision.
High prices? Sure. Poor quality? There are a lot of things I could critique about Apple's but as a general proposition hardware quality is not among them. They are well made and widely acknowledged even by their competition to be well made.
I agree, on a direct replacement vs labor cost comp these types of repairs are uneconomical. However when one considers the total systemic cost including dispoal/landfill/recycling/PCB pollution I think repair becomes a more feasible solution. Unfortunately manufacturers are mostly not required to incur/consider these tangential costs and so replacement is the most economically expedient solution.
This happened to my iPhone 6 Plus
Making a phone thicker adds minimal structural material. Only around the edges. More volume internally, but actual structural material increase is negligible. Stiffness of the phone increases with the cube of thickness, so a small increase in thickness = more volume = infinitesimal increase in structural material = massive increase in stiffness. And you can put more battery in that extra volume, too...
Going from an 8mm thick phone to a 10mm thick phone may increase structural materials by 5%, but you gain 73% more stiffness and 25% more internal volume.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
A "failure" here includes an app that crashes. In your case you're saying the touch screen has failed to work, 4 times in a row, and somehow you know it's about to be 5 times.
The chance of a failure involving the touchscreen is statistically (from the report you didn't read) 3%. Raising 0.03 to the fifth power gives a failure rate of 0.0000000243.
Still going with Occam.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Tom Brady was responsible. He breaks every cell phone he can find.
The average iPhone user is not going to evaluate the repair on anything but the replacement cost. Disposal of the old phone is a negative cost - after all, there is a large market for broken iPhones. So sell the year-old broken phone for $100, get the "newest" phone with all the new features for $100 down payment, and the cell company just charges an extra $50 a month for a few more years.
To people who don't understand the costs of buying on credit (which are most of them) it's a new phone for free.
To the people who buy the broken or used phones, it's a bargain.
To the cell carriers who sell the new phones, and to Apple, it's a platinum-plated gold mine.
John
Yep. BGAs are difficult to rework, but perhaps the real blame for this can be aimed at the EU when they forced the electronics industry to transition to lead free solder 15 years ago, while not touching other industries, like car batteries.
Solder used to be 60%tin 40% lead. Lead was a great modifier to give ductility to solder joints. By going to almost 100% tin, solder joints are now more brittle, thus micro BGAs suffer more from thermal expansion fractures and shear fractures from physical drops.
The crazy thing, is the transition, which cost the industry Billions, was based on unproven science that tin/lead solder leached in ground fill rubbish dumps. It doesn't unless you have acid. But here we are today, stuck with a EU mandated change that increases energy to manufacturer and decreases reliability (see tin asker problem as well).
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