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Apple Is Still Ignoring One of the Biggest iPhone Engineering Flaws of All Time: 'Touch Disease' (slashdot.org)
Jason Koebler, writing for Motherboard: As Apple is preparing to ship its brand new iPhone, the company continues to ignore one of the biggest hardware defects to ever plague its smartphone line. Just two years after it was released, the touchscreens of thousands upon thousands of iPhone 6 Pluses are completely losing their functionality under normal use, which experts say is the long-term effect of the engineering flaw that gave us "bendgate." By most accounts, dead touchscreens have become an iPhone 6 Plus epidemic, and yet the company has not commented on it, leaving consumers uninformed and harming independent repair businesses. In many cases, Apple has charged hundreds of dollars to replace a broken phone with a refurbished one that is subject to the same engineering defect that caused the phone to break in the first place. A lawsuit has been filed against Apple, claiming the company "has long been aware of the defective iPhones," but continues to do nothing about it. "Notwithstanding its longstanding knowledge of this design defect, Apple routinely has refused to repair the iPhones without charge when the defect manifests," the lawsuit reads. "Many other iPhone owners have communicated with Apple's employees and agents to request that Apple remedy and/or address the Touchscreen Defect and/or resultant damage at no expense. Apple has failed and/or refused to do so." As for how many iPhones are affected by this? It's hard to tell for sure. But according to an Apple Insider report that cites anonymous Genius Bar employees at four large Apple stores, 11 percent of all iPhone-related service issues at those stores were related to Touch IC problems, and Touch IC issues made up about a third of all iPhone 6 Plus-related problems at those stores.
Just... barely works. Sometimes you have to breathe on the screen a little to get it to recognize your finger.
Disappointing, given how expensive it was.
Who did what now?
In my opinion, touch screens are a disease by definition, no matter whether they work as intended or not.
We've come to expect engineering disaster from supposed "premium" phone companies. They have a lot less to lose than small manufacturers that would be wiped out by something on the scale of touch plague or battery fires.
Why would they fix this? More broken phones == more new phones sold in their mind. If it happens after 2 years, in many places that is just outside of the warranty period on your product so they are not legally obligated to _fix_ your phone anymore. (You can get more warranty, depends on the country and where you buy the phone I guess).
It isn't good news for us, but technology has a shorter lifespan these days than in the past. (I'm quite sure my first mobile phones would still work), but then again these products were less technologically complex.
Fixing this issue in production would arguably be the 'moral' thing to do, not necessarily the 'smartest' idea in terms of business. [Unless people turn against apple for this bullshit, but a lot of apple followers will just buy anything they release]
I think not! Its the headphone jack!
And the digitizer is mad expensive
Fuck LG just as much as fuck Apple.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Seriously why call it a disease? That implies that an iPhone could get it from another iPhone, you not washing your hands, etc.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Touch screen stops working, after normal use, and a newer model is available for purchase?
That is the Apple philosophy.
The iPhone 4 and 4S had a temperature sensor that would fail easily (usually in a couple of years, so outside your standard warranty) and would lead to the "wifi grayed out" issue (google it, the thousands of posts from that time should still be there, along with many iphone 4/4s listed on ebay etc with a non working wifi) - since the wireless module was disabled (taking bluetooth and gps with it). The official response from Apple was "reset your network settings", while users found that temperature shock (phone in freezer, then blow-drier etc) would "fix" it for a while. I keep a phone from each generation for testing purposes, my original 4 had failed that way, it was out of warranty and I replaced it with a 4S (fortunately company bought), which failed the same way and was replaced with a refurb unit, which, quite naturally also failed just outside warranty (all three phones were permanently on a desk and got a few hours of debugging/testing usage per month). What is infuriating, apart from the fact that Apple didn't care probably because their average customer was happy to just move on to iPhone 5 etc, is that it seems that it would be very easy to fix by software, ignoring the temperature sensor. I am not just saying it is easy, IIRC the iPhone 4 included the sensor without software support when it first came out, so whoever stayed on the original iOS version (was it 5?) did not have any issues regardless whether their sensor was working or not!
Let's see how my iPhone 6 plus does... It also gets very little use for some testing (I prefer Android as a personal phone), so the screen is fine so far.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Seriously? Who cares about the iPhone 6? The iPhone 7 is out! It is the most advanced iPhone yet. Throw your iPhone 6 in the trash. You wouldn't want to be seen walking around with THAT!
for doing a full recall for millions of phones after 30-40 batteries started burning? Samsung are straight up honest. Apple, not so much.
Who cares if it works? It's pretty!
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Touch disease, referred to in their internal documents as cha-ching-itis. Just two years you say... the standard length of time people will pay on an iPhone before they get a new one historically.
In order to make sure Apple doesn't get all the laurels for their successful launch, because the other guy's contender is off duty for some freaking explosions, let's make sure we remind on how previous models of iPhone are plagued with issues and might need phone changes. Oh and of course, this is for the 6, not even the 6s, so it's 2 years old phone.
Come on, Samsung, you can do better astroturfing!
Seriously, the iPhone 7 is far from perfect, iOS 10 has major defects in day-to-day use, you can find out worse things than reminesce in time and trying to spit venom. That's freaking sour grapes and slowness day material.
That makes it sound like there is no other choice but to own a iphone. Wouldn't an easy solution would be to buy a different brand of phone? Apple see sales go down and fix it.
...and am on my 3rd 6 Plus. I'm hoping against hope that I don't flex it and cause the problem again as it will be out of warranty I'm sure. I'd much rather see a class action go through and get something reliable.
If you've been following the news, pre-order demand for the iPhone 7 has been exceeding all expectations. Originally most analysts believed demand for the iPhone 7 would be tepid because by all measures it's a marginal update over the 6s/6+. Then the day after the iPhone 7 was announced T-Mobile launched a free upgrade program that allowed iPhone 6 users to upgrade their phones to a 7 simply by turning their 6 in...along with committing to service for 2-years. This is the first time such a huge subsidy has been offered on a single phone purchase ever since subsidies were discontinued in the USA market (ironically by T-Mobile with their "uncarrier" promotion). On the same day T-Mobile announced the free upgrade, Verizon and AT&T followed as well.
It might just be that the carriers are using this promotion as way to compete and steal customers from each other, how they used to do before phone subsidies were stopped, and will eat the upgrade cost themselves. On the other hand, it might just be a sneaky way for Apple to get a bunch of these future-diseased iPhone 6's out of circulation, to allow them to avoid a massive recall. Apple kills two birds with one stone with this strategy - they take back the 6, which they can fix and resell into overseas markets that can't afford brand-new iPhones anyway and where Apple has been killed by lower-priced Android offerings - and they goose domestic demand for an otherwise-tepid release of the iPhone 7. The strategy may be working - Apple's stock price is up over 15% since T-Mobile and others announced the upgrade program.
This is your cue that it's about time to get rid of that old brick and get the new model. I mean, look at you, with that outdated, old fashion piece of junk from yesteryear. Trying to be ironic or what's wrong with you, the new model is out and you gotta get it before it gets cool!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It takes 'courage' to sell phones to customers knowing well that they are defective
Apple is not responsible for damage caused by individuals that bent their phone. This isn't a flaw in engineering, it is user caused damage.
Sorry Apple fans I like my iPhone but I don't drink the Apple juice. Apple uses the same lame child labor to build their phones as anyone. They buy hardware in bulk as cheap as they can. Tim Cook is a bean counter not a technology obsession geek. He may like technology and Apple products especially. But he originally was Apple's man for making Apple money. Pure and simply Apple cares only about selling you a iPhone every year. If you can't throw down $700 a year then they don't care. If your iPhone is over a year old it's junk to Apple, unless of course you bought Apple Care then they will probably give you a refurbished one which many times will also break. Finally you will just buy the new iPhone for which Apple wanted you to do in the first place.
Why are people still paying the Apple Premium (tm) price? I don't get it - sure other manufacturers have problems too, but others don't charge an extra $200+ for a device that is just shoddy. Whether it's the iPhone or the Mac Book Pro, it seems like more and more that Apple devices are quickly outclassed (if not outclassed from launch) and the next iterations is just a smidge above the previous version. Even worse is that, these days, Apple just seems like they're copying ideas from other phones. Where's the so-called premium?
Go buy a Note 7.
which experts say is the long-term effect of the engineering flaw that gave us "bendgate."
And that's where you lost me. By using -gate, you are telling me that you feel that the problem is not capable of standing on its own merits, and thus, you personally are not worth listening to. I will gladly listen to anyone else telling your side of the problem if they don't use -gate, which is why I am bothering to post at all. I want you to know why you are being ignored, so that you can actually reach more people.
These devices are working perfectly well according to the function they were designed for: generate a constant cash flow for Apple.
In case you're wondering (you aren't) about whether it's healthy to get this upset over up-voting/down-voting on a message board: it isn't.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Apple needs to ask customers what THEY want instead of doing stuff like arbitrarily removing ports which are useful to many people ( headphone jack ).
Hmmmm... This one hasn't progressed to the "it's for our own good/look what they did with floopy drives/it will give us new bluetooth audio standards" stage. Weird.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Like with Dr. Dre Beats headphones, they'll re-badge them as M. C. Hammer "Can't touch this!" smartphones.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I posted this in the original article thread from a few weeks ago. Reposting it here again in case anyone missed it.
Skip to 13:00:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I think you may be the first person to ever make that prediction.
thousands upon thousands of iPhone 6 Pluses are completely losing their functionality under normal use...
I wonder what exactly they consider normal use? I have an iPhone 6 plus, and use it quite extensively. I like to play a few games (Marvel Puzzle Quest for example) that require quite a bit of tapping on the screen. I've played that for almost 2 years, and not noticed any degradation in touchscreen responsiveness. I wonder how many of these users are putting their phone in their back pocket & sitting on it?
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
So...what's your point?
Within the last month, my iPhone 6 Plus started losing its ability to respond to touches. Putting it in front of an A/C vent was the only way to get it to work for more than a few minutes at a time.
But when I went into the local Apple Store, they swapped it out for free even though it was well out of normal warranty. I just showed up for a Genius appointment with my phone in "dead touch" mode, showed it to the guy (who peered at it from the side for a few minutes) and then he went and got a new (or refurbished) one. He told me the phone was ever so slightly bent (maybe by the thickness of a sheet of paper) but obviously not abused and that the policy was to just replace them.
I don't know if it's just my Apple Store that's doing this but it sounds like it has quietly become corporate policy for phones that are not obviously bashed up.
What exactly do you expect Apple to do? They don't do component level board repair, they just swap out your phone for a working one.
Don't expect them to make production changes to last generation's phone. The best you could hope for is for Apple to release a software patch to solve the problem, which would do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING since the problem is mechanical.
I'm worried that if I use NFC with my lovely new OP3 that it might catch this disease from a stupid iphone user. Please someone help!
Jokes on Apple - The iPhone 7 is the same form factor as iPhone 6 - minus the antenna lines and totally ubiquitous, errrrr unnecessary, 3.5mm plug.
Sorry, but this argument doesn't hold any water, unlike the iPhone 7, after only a few minutes, apparently.
Who would get an iPhone 7, when you know they are going to totally redesign the iPhone next year - 10th anniversary, skip the iPhone 7s naming, and reports of edge to edge screen, virtual home button, wireless charging, etc...
Apple is putting all of it's eggs in 10th anniversary edition.
11% yeah that sounds terrible right? Except it's 11% of all defects at those 4 stores. If the defect rate of all iPhone 6 are 5%, why that's a whopping 0.55% that have that one problem. Holy crisis Batman!
But sure let's file another fucking lawsuit so the lawyers win, and everyone else loses.
He's on to us.
Abort! Abort!
(And turn up the pink mind control lasers.)
I wish this would stop being reported as an "Engineering Flaw". It is a MANUFACTURING Flaw. Period.
Just like multiple laptops and other devices have had issues with coplanarity between the PCB and various BGA chips, causing these same intermittent issues, it looks like Apple is not immune.
But the blame lies on the Contract Manufacturer, who is either not rejecting PCBs that are warped, and/or is not CLEANING them properly, and/or has problems with their solder paste or reflow soldering processes.
As I said, "Manufacturing", not "Engineering", is at fault here.
I've never cared for iPhones, but my daughter has had both iPhone and Android phones.
Her iPhone 4s had plenty of issues (speakers, docking port, other stuff) so she went to a Samsung. Then she got an iPhone 6... which is now experiencing "issues" including the touch problem.
She says she is done with iPhones...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Anecdotes abound. I know tons of people with iPhone 6/s phones and work with many, many more. I don't know of a single person that has this issue.
Without actual failure numbers, it's impossible to know if this is a widespread issue or not.
Could it be that this issue only affects a tiny percentage of the millions of phones in use?
Or I should say crapple. My iPad air totally flaked out 6 months(Battery doesn't charge) after I bought it and they denied warranty coverage due to "External damage"(A small corner dent, the screen was unscathed) to which I told them normal wear and tear totally unrelated to a battery charging issue. When I informed their warranty team that they were violating the Magnuson-Moss Act of 1975 and a NJ consumer protection statute concerning written warranties they forwarded me to consumer relations who assured me they would look into it with their legal department. Suffice it to say they didn't do anything and sent my device back. So this doesn't surprise me Apple is an arrogant company at this point who doesn't treat consumers well, who knowingly sells faulty devices that the users QA test an their expense. Given that Android has caught up and they are not the only game in town, making beautiful hardware and nice software isn't enough there is some expectation that the devices should last a year or two.
You lose all credibility. Explain, please how you bent the class screen by 15 - 30 degrees? I saw the pictures posted online and read people's complaints, then I realized, Holy Crap! They had to have figured out how to bend glass at large angles! This must be photoshop.
End of argument.
Not interested in your rebuttal.
Fixing things doesn't make money. Besides, Apple users are so wrapped up in their narcissist bubble they wouldn't care if the phone caught fire every time they charged it.
Wow, what kind of fanboy are you? They were FORCED on this particular issue after a class-action lawsuit was started. Otherwise they will try to screw you, like when they voided my boss's warranty on his 6-month old mac mini "due to dust" (no smoking / no cats environment)! I told him "WTF are you talking about, they can't do that, dust is not even a reason in their own rules" when I heard this and his response "there's nothing I can do, the Apple Genius said so".
Every Genius Bar I take it to says they don't see many people with this problem which is ether a lie or we're the vocal minority. Mine is virtually useless.. had some mates over and all with 18month old or so 6 pluses had the problem to a greater or lesser extent. Problem is people don't realize and think it's their own fault or even worse just suck it up and pay for an upgrade.
Seriously, it boggles my mind how we have so many tech-oriented people on /. and after so many articles detailing exactly what the problem is that the lot of you still cling to this as some sort of oversight. This touch IC issue was a calculated design failure point. Previous phone models had underfill, and underfill is ALWAYS used on custom high-power Apple IC's on all other of their products. (Trust me, I've worked with just about every Apple device since the G4) There is negligible cost to include underfill, but excluding it means your phone dies very quickly and has to be taken to Apple for an out-of-warranty logic board replacement or a phone upgrade (which are equivalently priced, mind you). So given the perverse incentive to kill your phone and say "lol sorrhy buy new one", does anyone seriously think this was some sort of whoopsie?
The Maine Implied Warranty is the little known law that protects Maine consumers from being sold seriously defective items. It can be an Unfair Trade Practice to refuse to honor the Maine Implied Warranty Law within four years of sale. The basic test for possible implied warranty violations is as follows: The item is seriously defective, The consumer did not damage the item, The item is still within its useful life and is not simply worn out.
All brands have flaws; Apple's flaws just get more press because of their marketing dominance (a two-edged sword). Consumers kind of expect most other brands to suck and break after 2 years, but not Apple.
Apple does want to be known for quality, and usually do focus on that. But sometimes it seems they internally agree to just ignore certain issues.
They could at least make it easier for 3rd-party repair shops to fix such issues, but perhaps doing so would be "legal" evidence of their knowledge of a mass flaw, inviting class-action law-suits.
Thus, there's pressure to pretend like it's not a wide-spread issue, and it puts them in a bind. But they have very deep pockets and don't have the excuse that "we are barely scraping by" that perhaps Sony could use.
They should just byte the bullet and volunteer to repair it for anyone who asks, if they have proof of purchase.
Table-ized A.I.
The solution is to buy more Apple product.
I have never had touch disease, or a bending problem, or a dropping problem.
"replace a broken phone with a refurbished one that is subject to the same engineering defect that caused the phone to break in the first place." A lawsuit had to be filed against Apple for all the 2011, 2012, and 2013 MacBook Pros that suffered problems with failing GPU chips, before they finally implemented an extended warranty program. But all the warranty program does is allow you to get a refurbished motherboard with the exact same problem. My replacement motherboard died with the same issue just 1 week after it was replaced.