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.

Comments

My iPod Touch 6 Has This Flaw

[Karl Cocknozzle]

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.

Re:My iPod Touch 6 Has This Flaw

[elrous0]

If your Apple product broke, it's because your faith in Father Steve obviously wasn't strong enough. The fact that you don't have the latest Apple gadgets is proof of that.

Nexus 4 had it

[drinkypoo]

And the digitizer is mad expensive

Fuck LG just as much as fuck Apple.

YouTube video showing BGA damage under microscope

[JoeyRox]

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?...

Re:Another way to get people to buy new phones

[XxtraLarGe]

My counter example is that 2 months ago Apple replaced the logic board in my early 2011 MacBook Pro totally for free, under the replacement plan for the design flaws in that system. And I didn't even buy this computer new, I bought it as a refurb from Apple, and the Apple Care that I bought when I purchased the computer had run out a long ago as well.

Apple is really good about repairing computers, especially under AppleCare. I've had issues with two Macs. The first was my 2007 TI PowerBook. The escape key stopped working on the keyboard. I had about 2 weeks left on AppleCare. They Fed-Exed me a box overnight, I sent it in, and had it back the same week. They not only replaced the keyboard, but the front bezel & the trackpad.

My 2008 24" iMac had a faulty logic board, and I live about 70 miles away from the closest Apple store. They sent out a repair guy to come to my workplace. The fix didn't work. It was near Christmas, so the next time they could send someone, my workplace was closed until after New Year's day. So they sent someone to my house. He couldn't get it working either. I brought it up to the Apple Store, and they replaced it with a new 2010 27" iMac. Although it was a frustrating process, I was pretty pleased with the outcome.