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

[Maritz]

Painfully obvious troll, still got biters.

Re:My iPod Touch 6 Has This Flaw

[Trailer Trash]

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.

This is why I miss Steve Jobs.

The obvious problem is that your finger is defective, and Jobs wouldn't have been afraid to tell you that.

Re:My iPod Touch 6 Has This Flaw

[Penguinisto]

The early LG G-series phones (G1, G2) had this problem as well... after about a year or two of use, it would start becoming unresponsive on one side of the screen, and eventually the whole thing soon became unusable.

Of course, the LG phones are far less expensive (especially when you buy them a generation or two back from bleeding-edge), so it was no big deal to toss the thing and get a new one.

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.

Re:My iPod Touch 6 Has This Flaw

[I4ko]

Also the original iPhone from 2007 if used with a screen protector film. Ultimately it was the protector being porous and trapping salt and other contaminants from the fingers that placed electrical stress over the digitizer circuitry over time blowing the opamps. It would be interesting to know how many of those that complain about a broken digitizer on the 6 have a screen protector film.

I managed to remove mine from the old 4S just before it was going to break for good. With the film gone and frequent microfiber wipes, the original digitizer works fine to this day.

Re:My iPod Touch 6 Has This Flaw

[Tablizer]

This is why I miss Steve Jobs. The obvious problem is that your finger is defective, and Jobs wouldn't have been afraid to tell you that.

Jobs: "You are sticking your finger in the wrong place."

Re: My iPod Touch 6 Has This Flaw

[djnforce9]

There's a difference between a "defect" and "breaking something". The former case involves a flaw in the design of the hardware itself and is the manufacturer's responsibility to fix. Apple is selling these phones knowing that there are issues with the touchscreen and that is where the problem lies.

Overly Entitled would be true if someone had dropped and cracked the screen but still blamed Apple for it.

Re:My iPod Touch 6 Has This Flaw

[cfalcon]

> It would be interesting to know how many of those that complain about a broken digitizer on the 6 have a screen protector film

I mean, the word on the net is that this is ultimately based on the same issue that the 6+ was infamous for at lauch- bending. With less structural integrity than any iPhone before or after, the solder on certain chips can get messed up.

Also, there's several types of screens- the glass ones, for instance, seem unlikely to be porous. The current "best practice" seems to be to have your iPhone 6 Plus in a case of some sort.

Re:My iPod Touch 6 Has This Flaw

[Agripa]

This is why I miss Steve Jobs.

The obvious problem is that your finger is defective, and Jobs wouldn't have been afraid to tell you that.

You're fingering it wrong.

Re: My iPod Touch 6 Has This Flaw

[peawormsworth]

In the article, the "expert" is seeing out of warranty products coming in with broken touch screens. Seems like Apple is responding to customers under warranty. I guess Apple customers should look closely at their warranty before buying a new phone and not buy their products if they expect the lifetime of their product to last much longer than that.

Re: My iPod Touch 6 Has This Flaw

[peawormsworth]

Buy an android next time

Don't worry. Apple iPhone isn't 'cool' any more. I don't know any younger kids who have them, that don't also want to upgrade to Android. The only people I see buying Apple these days is the old and the ignorant.

Re: My iPod Touch 6 Has This Flaw

[Coren22]

But you will notice, that while Apple ignores this problem and acts like it doesn't exist, Samsung recalled all the Note 7 without any government intervention.

Re:My iPod Touch 6 Has This Flaw

[Coren22]

It is caused by a chip that uses a BGA mounting method; the same method of mounting that caused all the nVidia display issues in the Macbooks a while ago.

http://ifixit.org/blog/8309/ip...

This time, rather than thermal stress causing the problem to appear, it seems to be related to Bendgate. Because the phone has very poor structural strength, it isn't able to properly keep the board from bending under the chip, causing the BGA pads to eventually separate, and lose connectivity.

Re: My iPod Touch 6 Has This Flaw

[Karl Cocknozzle]

My god, you people have a massive sense of entitlement. When you buy something and break it, why should the manufacturer have to provide you with a new product? When you crash your car into a telephone pole, is the manufacturer or dealer required to give you a new car free of charge? That would be absurd, but that's how your acting about iPhones. There's no reason that Apple should have to give you a new iPhone when you broke your old one, but you and so many others here have a massive sense of entitlement.

Don't mean to interrupt your ranting and raving with anything approaching reasonable discourse but...

Would you mind citing where I said I "broke" my iPod touch and that this was the cause of its woes? The only thing "broken" about my Touch is that the touch screen isn't really as-much a "touch screen" anymore.

Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Well...

[93 Escort Wagon]

We've come to expect engineering disaster from supposed "premium" phone companies.

I don't know... when one manufacturer's phones are exploding into a fiery inferno, hearing about how another manufacturer's phones develop "unresponsive touchscreens" is rather lame.

Get on the ball, Apple! Think BIG! You've got some ground to make up!

Re:Well...

[mt2mb4me]

Well there is a difference between a short sighted cost saving manufacturing process, and a flawed design. Samsung already fixed their problem though changing the supplier of batteries. And, more notably or nobly, they issued a recall for all their note line, although, so far 45 phones have the flaw. Apple says there is no problem, it's user error, and did nothing to fix a problem that was easily documented at the time. So much so, that you could watch multiple youtube videos that showed a lack of structural integrity when compared to other contemporary flagship phones (HTC one M7, Samsung Galaxy, and Motorola G5?) . Anecdotally, my buddy (who treats his electronics very respectfully, and in a case) had this exact issue. He got the banana phone, and it died from being a banana phone. He has the 6S because that was his only option, to roll his next plan because the damage isn't covered under warranty.

Re:Well...

[AmiMoJo]

They are pushing the limits of manufacturing and the components. Better to buy a phone costing 1/3rd add much, using last year's technology and not a disaster if you do have to replace it.

Another way to get people to buy new phones

[Anonymous Coward]

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]

Re:Another way to get people to buy new phones

[OzPeter]

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.

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.

Re:Another way to get people to buy new phones

[frank_adrian314159]

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.

Apples a big company - one relatively small well-behaved division does not the whole company make. The Apple is rotting.

Re:Another way to get people to buy new phones

[NatasRevol]

LOL at the Apple is rotting. This is SOP for all businesses. Minimize costs as much as you can.

Re:Another way to get people to buy new phones

[Cloud K]

Turning away from Apple is exactly what I've done. Between things like this, a lack of innovation (they like to spread things thin so they have at least have *something* to talk about next year) and things like the headphone jack, eventually I said "no more". Apple like to push and push and push and see how much they can possibly get away with, and sooner or later they're going to cross that line for a lot more people.

The thing is, once they do cross that line, it snaps back, like elastic, putting them well into "I'd need a very good reason to buy Apple products again" territory. All these "just a headphone jack" kind of things add up. Each year you think "oh they've only ruined X or removed Y, that's okay, I didn't *really* need that anyway" and put up with it because new shiny thing with some amazing new feature. Except they haven't done the "amazing new feature" part for white a while now. Then you look back on all the times you've made a compromise like that or risked antennagate (had, was real) / bendgate / touch disease and basically see a mountain.

Re:Another way to get people to buy new phones

[jellomizer]

Broken phones means angry customers means going to the competitor's product.

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.

Re:Another way to get people to buy new phones

[AmiMoJo]

Apple only started fixing the logic board problems for free after a massive amount of press coverage, 12,000 post forum thread and class-action lawsuit.

That's what upsets people; they do the right thing eventually, but have to be forced to do by massive amounts of pressure and years of uncertainty and broken hardware. If you had bought that computer new and it had died of this, you would have either had to pay Apple for the repair and many years later claim a refund, or sit on it for years and presumably buy another machine in the mean time.

It's the same for iPhone 6 users. Maybe eventually Apple will fix it for free, but until then they either pay or have no phone.

Re:Another way to get people to buy new phones

[bigman2003]

Drive the workers at your contractors to suicide! It's good business!

Re:Another way to get people to buy new phones

[NatasRevol]

So, all the tech companies who use those same contractors?

Re:Another way to get people to buy new phones

[macs4all]

And my counter example is that the entire point of this article is that they're not doing any of that for this problem.

If you bring in a phone that looks like a boomerang from you sitting on it for two years, then perhaps you shouldn't expect warranty service.

BTW, my 2 year old iPhone 6 Plus is absolutely fine, touch-wise, even though I dropped it face down about 1 1/2 years ago onto a hard floor from about 2 meters up and completely shattered the glass front. Looks absolutely hideous and scary; but I'm too cheap to have a new "digitizer" put on it when it is still working fine.

Re:Another way to get people to buy new phones

[macs4all]

Broken phones means angry customers means going to the competitor's product.

And then getting burned!

(See what I did there?)

Re:Another way to get people to buy new phones

[sexconker]

Yup. Only Apple calls it a logic board. To the rest of the world it's "motherboard" or "main board".

Re:Another way to get people to buy new phones

[sexconker]

The motherboard in your phone has plenty of peripherals, including the touch screen and controller, the connections to radios and antennas, the battery, etc.
Fuck off. It's a motherboard.

Re:Another way to get people to buy new phones

[mt2mb4me]

What do you think connects to your "logic" (CPU) to your HDD/SSD Ram, video controller, keyboard, mouse etc. It is the motherboard because all the daughters plug back into the main board/motherboard/back-plane. Logic board would hold true if the only thing on the board was the CPU and it plugged into a back-plane or motherboard. SOC sit on a motherboard, not a logic board, there is way more than logic on it. So you are less correct when you say that.

Re:Another way to get people to buy new phones

[evilbessie]

I live in the UK and we have consumer protection laws. If this is indeed a manufacturing defect then they would be expected to fix it for free. If you live somewhere which does not have this type of protection then you might be screwed by yet another corporation. So your statement about nor being legally obligated to fix their product is not true everywhere. If you live somewhere where you are punished for corporations own mistakes then you should probably get your government to fix that. I don't know enough about this particular issue to say if it would be covered but if a third of all issues with this device are this issue, that does very much sound like a manufacturing defect or design issue which would definitely be covered, as the product is not fit for purpose. Products sold as new by corporations should never be sold under caveat emptor, that's just far too trusting of everyone.

Note: I have had various SATA cables on 2011 era MBPs (not retina) replaced as this is a known issue with this machine. They've even done free collect and return repairs on machines out of warranty. It did often involve some long phone conversations so it's not as simple as it could be.

Re:Another way to get people to buy new phones

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to be an Apple fanboy, back when they were still "beleaguered".

I'm also a software developer. My turning point was when they made it annoying to develop software for their system. It was bad enough in MacOS 8 and 9 when you had to spend multiple hundreds of dollars for a compiler. They released OS X and finally made Xcode available (and free) in the 10.3 era. Yay! Except not. Because Carbon is deprecated and Cocoa requires Objective-C, which sucks balls. And they killed off the only alternative, Java-to-Cocoa, in 10.2. Good job, idiots.

So, I can do web development anywhere, and Eclipse is free and everywhere. So screw Apple's overpriced hardware, I'll just use Linux instead. And I'll build a gaming box that runs Windows. And, what's this? .Net? Wow, that's so easy. Maybe these Microsoft goons aren't so bad after all. Hey! Their database is pretty good too! Hey! It all just works together! Hey! Windows 7 is nice! Hey! Look at the morons playing with their Apple toys while the rest of us get real work done for half the cost!

That pretty much sums up the 2000's and early 2010's for me.

I do wish I had bought up a bunch of AAPL back when it was $15 a share, though. It peaked at, what, $800? Ahh, hindsight.

Re:Another way to get people to buy new phones

[hcs_$reboot]

Added to this, unlike Macbooks owners, people tend to renew their iPhones sooner (carriers plans...). So Apple has better to wait, the number of iPhone 6+? decreasing by the day.

Nexus 4 had it

[drinkypoo]

And the digitizer is mad expensive

Fuck LG just as much as fuck Apple.

Re:Nexus 4 had it

[LTIfox]

Bullshit. Nexus 4s are very good phones. One is sitting on my desk right now, updating apps again (google needs to consolidate their patches - updating seemingly never stops!).
The primary failure mode for N4 is/was the $2 power button (admittedly, replacing it was a hassle.) In fact, this the first time I even hear about the "digitizer problem".

Re:Nexus 4 had it

[Stewie241]

My digitizer did stop working... a while after the screen cracked a little bit I got a new phone and wasn't as careful with guarding the old phone from the little one. The LCD display still works great but the digitizer stopped working.

Not sure I would consider that LG's fault though.

Re:Nexus 4 had it

[supremebob]

My wife's LG G2 had this issue. The touch screen was basically worthless by the time she finally got rid of it.

Re:Nexus 4 had it

[Penguinisto]

Same here with my old LG G2. The right-hand side became unresponsive, soon followed by the whole thing becoming useless.

Re:Nexus 4 had it

[Doogie5526]

As the article mentions, in Apple's case it has nothing to do with the digitizer. You'll still have the problem after replacing it. The problem is two IC chips on the motherboard--likely the solder holding it to the board. Interesting. the article says they need to replace the chips instead of just reflowing or resoldering the old ones back. Maybe it's shorting out the chip? This isn't the first time, by far, that soldering has been an issue on a portable device. I think it was my 4s that developed a solder issue with the wifi chip. I had an issue on an earlier phone where the top half of the touchscreen stopped working (wasn't sure if it was the digitizer or a similar issue to this). Everyone keeps blaming the thinness and bending, but before this everyone was pointing at lead-free solder being more brittle and prone to developing bad solder joints. My guess is that it's a combination (but bending is easier to explain).

Re:Nexus 4 had it

[AmiMoJo]

It could be that the chips are only good for one reflow pass. To make them that thin and low power they compromise on their ability to handle high temperature. At work our manufacturers have had trouble soldering them, and if they screw it up the first time they have to write the whole PCB off.

Sounds more like design philosophy, not flaw

[Anonymous Coward]

Touch screen stops working, after normal use, and a newer model is available for purchase?

That is the Apple philosophy.

This is not something new for Apple

[Ecuador]

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.

Re:This is not something new for Apple

[Falconhell]

Im no Apple fan, but apart from occasionally shuffling my contact photos in an amusingly random manner, my 4s still works perfectly.

Re:This is not something new for Apple

[AmiMoJo]

It's the lack of acknowledgement that pisses people off. It's always the same with Apple, deny deny deny and then after most people have given up quietly issue an extended warranty coverage for it. Applies to computers too, like the MacBook overheating CPU issue (thermal paste applied with a butter knife), logic board failure, screen ghosting issues, cheap-o 6 bit LCD panels etc.

Laugh at Samsung's exploding phones all you want, but at least they admitted it and offered to replace every single one without there needing to be a massive amount of negative press and a lawsuit first.

Re:This is not something new for Apple

[I4ko]

I don't know about the temp sensor, but I have yet to see an iPhone with the magnetic compass working correctly after the first 2 months. On all units I've put my hands on, the north seems to be off by around 40 degrees, consistently, on different places on the planet, regardless of the iPhone model if the phone is more than 2 months old. Yet nobody complains.

Re:This is not something new for Apple

[I4ko]

Magnetic north can be that far off only I am in the polar circle. And since I am not in it, the deviation should limited to 13 degrees. Also if you have noticed, iPhone uses the GPS to obtain your position so it can apply compass correction. So either the magnetic dipole of the earth has shifted so much without us noticing or I am holding it wrong, even when I'm not holding it at all.

Re:This is not something new for Apple

[Doogie5526]

Are you sure it was a temperature sensor? Like this scenario, I understood the problem to be a solder issue. Reflowing the solder would fix it permanently. Temperature changes would swell/compress the components enough to create a solid connection on a temporary basis. I've seen various solder issues since they started using solder without lead.

Re:This is not something new for Apple

[Doogie5526]

There's a preference to compensate for magnetic north inside the compass app. So I don't think that's the issue. I've also seen the compass not work or be completely wrong on multiple generations of iPhones.

Re:This is not something new for Apple

[Doogie5526]

Can't we judge both on their merits? By all accounts the Samsung recall has been hamfisted. Yes, they announced a "replacement program" quickly, but waited a week (and after airlines in multiple countries called out that model phone for a ban) before telling users to stop using the phone and didn't call it a recall. They failed to coordinate with U.S. safety authorities. Only yesterday did they officially recall the phone.

Re:This is not something new for Apple

[Doogie5526]

whoops. replied to the wrong thread =)

iPhone 6?

[110010001000]

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!

Re:iPhone 6?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obligatory

Re:iPhone 6?

[LTIfox]

Joke as much as you want, but iPhone7 is as thin as iPhone6, so it might be subject to the same flexing that cracks solder joints in 6.

Re:iPhone 6?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is almost exactly the kind of response I received from Apple's corporate black-shirts a while back. The CIO, a few other techs, and I were meeting in one of Apple's meeting spaces so they could pitch their spiel. I showed up with an iPad 1 I used for note-taking and testing, barely a week after the iPad 2 was released. They actually scoffed and said something to the effect of "you're still using that dinosaur?" I was blown away by how casually insulting those assholes were throughout the whole meeting, just amazing. Apple: rotten to the core.

Re:iPhone 6?

[cdrudge]

So? By the time it's an issue, the iPhone 8 will be out.

Re:iPhone 6?

[LTIfox]

Excellent point!
I concur.

Re:iPhone 6?

[yoshi_mon]

That is just normal Cxx level who can be the biggest asshole as to establish dominance within a meeting bullshit.

And given that Jobs was a known asshole it is pretty unremarkable that such a culture would form at Apple.

Re:iPhone 6?

[antdude]

Bah. I don't mind carrying and using a 4S. :P

And you guys thought Samsung were bad

[Anonymous Coward]

for doing a full recall for millions of phones after 30-40 batteries started burning? Samsung are straight up honest. Apple, not so much.

Re:And you guys thought Samsung were bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, 2+ weeks of burning phones before recalling them isn't quite 'honest'.

Also, they did more than just burn up phones.

http://www.autoblog.com/2016/0...
https://www.yahoo.com/news/6-o...

And more batteries than what you state.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news...
"Incidents/Injuries: Samsung has received 92 reports of the batteries overheating in the U.S., including 26 reports of burns and 55 reports of property damage, including fires in cars and a garage."

Re:And you guys thought Samsung were bad

[naughtynaughty]

Where do you think the CPSC gets its reports of problems from? People.

False/incorrect claims of issues are not uncommon and the agencies log them all.

"NHTSA Finds No Safety Issue In Tesla Model S Investigation, Says Most Claims Were Fake"
http://insideevs.com/nhtsa-clo...

Re:And you guys thought Samsung were bad

[sexconker]

The 6-year old kid wasn't burned by a Note 7. It was an older phone. Further, there are videos of the kid and mom. Feel free to watch and judge for yourself. I think it's pretty clearly a cash grab scam. The bandage on the kid's hand, the kid falling down on that hand, etc. Pretty transparent.

The Jeep case is also likely a money grab. The guy seems very concerned about his "point of pride" Jeep and all his aftermarket accessories and modifications. Pictures show a stock Jeep, burned to a crisp (which Jeeps tend to do all by themselves).

Who cares?

[stealth_finger]

Who cares if it works? It's pretty!

Re:Disease

[Anonymous Coward]

Spotted the two Windows Mobile users.

Ignore it? They put it in as a feature.

[Scragglykat]

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.

Re:Disease

[Kokuyo]

I don't get the joke. It's not like Windows Mobile works without touch screen.

Re:Disease

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get the joke. It's not like Windows Mobile works without touch screen.

The joke was spotting TWO Windows Mobile users.

Maybe disease behind iPhone 6 - 7 free upgrade

[JoeyRox]

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.

Re:Maybe disease behind iPhone 6 - 7 free upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

Every single model has had a free upgrade with 2-year contract. Higher end models with a $50 fee. I went from 3GS to 4S for free, and from 4S to a higher-end model of 6 for $50.

Re:Maybe disease behind iPhone 6 - 7 free upgrade

[AMDinator]

That "free" upgrade would cost me $1k+ over two years. I'll keep my prepaid plan and iPhone 6, thanks.

Re:Maybe disease behind iPhone 6 - 7 free upgrade

[JoeyRox]

This was when the industry still used phone subsidies to attract customers. They stopped that a few years ago. It was replaced with paid-for upgrade plans like AT&T's Next and Apple's "Upgrade Program", where the user pays a perpetual monthly equipment fee for the right to upgrade.

Re:Maybe disease behind iPhone 6 - 7 free upgrade

[jittles]

That "free" upgrade would cost me $1k+ over two years. I'll keep my prepaid plan and iPhone 6, thanks.

Only cost me $50 in tax. But I didn't wait for them to switch it to T-Mo One plan only. Anyway, T-mo is claiming that Apple is actually the one paying the subsidy on the phone and not them.

Re:Maybe disease behind iPhone 6 - 7 free upgrade

[AMDinator]

For me it's as follows- ~$300 lost by giving away my device instead of selling it >$700 over two years to give up prepaid for the cheapest contract I can find ~$40 tax

Re:Maybe disease behind iPhone 6 - 7 free upgrade

[Solandri]

It is not a free upgrade. It is a zero-money down trade-in upgrade that increases your bill by $27/mo for 24 months (for the 32GB model). That is, if you do the upgrade it will cost you a total of $648 + residual value of your iPhone 6, compared to just keeping your (fully paid) iPhone 6.

As Apple's retail price for the iPhone 7 is $649, you're essentially selling the carrier your iPhone 6 for $1 and locking yourself in for 2 years in exchange for no down payment, no interest to buy a new iPhone 7. If you figure the residual value of your iPhone 6 is $324 (50% the purchase price a year ago), that's equivalent to paying 1.689% in interest every month, or 22.3% annually (minus $1). A pretty tidy profit for the carrier considering most loan interest rates are down around 3%-5% right now..

Re:Maybe disease behind iPhone 6 - 7 free upgrade

[jittles]

For me it's as follows- ~$300 lost by giving away my device instead of selling it >$700 over two years to give up prepaid for the cheapest contract I can find ~$40 tax

Well okay that is true, I did give up my device. But I was planning on keeping my iPhone 6 for 2 more years where it would have had a sale value of ~$80. And yeah they jacked up the cost even more when they changed it to require the T-Mo One service plan to qualify now (as of any order placed yesterday). A lot of people are unhappy with the change and there have been a lot of cancellations.

Re:Maybe disease behind iPhone 6 - 7 free upgrade

[JoeyRox]

The cost of the upgrade is returned back to the buyer in monthly installments over the term of the 2-year contact, so the net cost is $0 plus taxes.

Re:A defect is a defect

[tsqr]

Seriously why call it a disease? That implies that an iPhone could get it from another iPhone, you not washing your hands, etc.

So, you don't consider cancer or diabetes to be diseases? Non-communicable diseases cause far more deaths worldwide than communicable ones.

It's not a bug, it's a feature!

[Opportunist]

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!

Re:Disease

[NatasRevol]

Absolutely.

Ease of use is the worst plague on humanity since, well, the plague!

We should also be required to all build our own PCs just so we understand the hardware.

And then make our own PCI boards. And print our own CPUs. And solder the power supplies together. And then make our own solder. And heating iron. And then smelt our own iron to make the heater. Then build our own furnaces to smelt with.

Re:Disease

[Maritz]

touch screens and there stupid interfaces.

I should be pleased about this irony, but I'm not.

Re:Disease

[Maritz]

Thank you for your opinion. Most of the rest of us think they're pretty cool. You can see that there's a big difference about whether they work or not though, I expect?

You don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

It takes 'courage' to sell phones to customers knowing well that they are defective

Re:A defect is a defect

[NatasRevol]

Non-communicable diseases cause far more deaths worldwide than communicable ones.

Only because of modern water filtration.

For most of human history, communicable killed more than non.

Apple "Engineering" Premium?

[mlw4428]

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?

Re:What is REALLY being ignored :

[Anonymous Coward]

Go buy a Note 7.

Re:Disease

[Flavianoep]

You (or some other AC) would have spotted three if Microsoft had released their highest end models in my country when I was looking for a new phone. Hell, how I hate apps!

Re: Disease

[negRo_slim]

Normally yes but here on /. we do things differently.

No flaw

[alantus]

These devices are working perfectly well according to the function they were designed for: generate a constant cash flow for Apple.

Re: Obviously

[Maritz]

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.

Re:What is REALLY being ignored :

[Maritz]

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.

When you can't fix it, feature it!

[BarbaraHudson]

Like with Dr. Dre Beats headphones, they'll re-badge them as M. C. Hammer "Can't touch this!" smartphones.

Re:So let me get that straight

[Maritz]

I vaguely feel as though you're saying this is all Samsung astroturfing, but I can't work it out. Kinda incoherent tbh.

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?...

So, Apple is doomed?

[Brannon]

I think you may be the first person to ever make that prediction.

Re:So, Apple is doomed?

[Carewolf]

I think you may be the first person to ever make that prediction.

No what makes you think that? There are plenty of succesful rotten companies.

Billions and billions

[XxtraLarGe]

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?

Re:Billions and billions

[brianerst]

It happened to me and I baby my phone - always in the front left pocket by itself and it looked brand new (no scratches anywhere). Never dropped, bashed, bumped, sat on - and I'm not a phone masher. I primarily use it for web surfing or social media.

The problem seems to be how they mount the electronics that connect the screen to the circuit board - it's right at the "flex spot" on the 6 Plus and eventually gets loose. In my case, the phone was so obviously in otherwise perfect shape they just gave me a new one on the spot.

Re:A defect is a defect

[BarbaraHudson]

Quite an apt metaphor, because this problem is buried in the phone's DNA (not-so-intelligent design).

iPhone 7 costs the same as a Samsung Galaxy S7

[Brannon]

So...what's your point?

My iPhone 6 Plus was affected

[brianerst]

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 should they do?

[freeze128]

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.

Re:What should they do?

[naughtynaughty]

Refund or replace with an equivalent product that doesn't have the defect.

Re:What should they do?

[phayes]

That is precisely what do.

Re:A defect is a defect

[Wraithlyn]

That's a fair point. Disease doesn't necessarily imply communicability.

But it sure as hell implies malaise in a biological organism. And frankly "touch disease" does sound like something that can be spread via touch.

So yes, it is a stupid name for this engineering defect. There are plenty of (still dramatic sounding) phrases that would be far more accurate. How about "touchscreen death" for example?

Re:Disease

[Penguinisto]

There's a Gentoo joke in here somewhere, I just know it...

Re: Obviously

[lxs]

He's on to us.
Abort! Abort!

(And turn up the pink mind control lasers.)

It's NOT an "Engineering Flaw"

[macs4all]

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.

Re:It's NOT an "Engineering Flaw"

[sexconker]

The design is such that the phone bends easily, the solder used is shitty and brittle (thanks, RoHS lead-free solder), and the thing has no where to efficiently dump heat. Further, they use shitty fucking BGA/LGA instead of PGA save space.

Manufacturing can't fix that. Are you accusing them of not using the correct materials or not putting things together properly? If so, please detail your accusation. What, exactly, did manufacturing fuck up?

Re:Disease

[bigman2003]

I live a country where Microsoft does release their high-end phones (US). I have the 950, after a 1520, after a...shoot, the one with the big camera, can't remember the model.

But the point is- I agree with you on the apps. Assuming you weren't being sarcastic.

To me, apps are a huge waste of time.

Most apps are only used once or twice. Very few apps are used for more than a couple of months. MOST apps are garbage/un-necessary.

I actually like the fact that there is really no point going to the 'Store' for Windows phone. It just means I don't waste time discovering new apps, downloading them, finding out how the work, then being disappointed. That really is the scenario for about 98% of the apps out there.

New non-Apple phone

[NotQuiteReal]

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...

Without any real data, who knows how bad it is?

[zerofoo]

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?

Re:Crybabies = Apple fanboys

[tsqr]

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.

From TFA: “It’s absolutely a problem in the design. End users are not doing anything to cause this besides using the phone normally,” Mark Shaffer of independent repair company iPad Rehab told me.

Re:Disease

[Flavianoep]

Assuming you weren't being sarcastic.

No, I was not being sarcastic. My last phone before the one I have now was a Nokia.

Re:A defect is a defect

[UnknowingFool]

So, you don't consider cancer or diabetes to be diseases? Non-communicable diseases cause far more deaths worldwide than communicable ones.

First of all I NEVER said any of that. Second, a phone is not a biological entity. It can't get a disease. It suffers from a defect.

Re:A defect is a defect

[hey!]

For most of human history human populations weren't dense enough for death by communicable diseases to be the norm. Deaths by things like tetanus, or septic shock due to staphylococcal wound infections would be the norm.

Either way, diabetes is and always has been a disease.

they don't care.

[AndyKron]

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.

Re:This is the new Apple

[sexconker]

That's when you do a charge back via your credit card.
It's my go-to whenever someone tries to dick me around. I've never been denied and no one has ever tried to fight it because they know they're in the wrong.

Re:Disease

[The-Ixian]

--funroll-loops-go-super-fast !!!

Re:A defect is a defect

[tsqr]

So, you don't consider cancer or diabetes to be diseases? Non-communicable diseases cause far more deaths worldwide than communicable ones.

First of all I NEVER said any of that. Second, a phone is not a biological entity. It can't get a disease. It suffers from a defect.

Oh, please. Use of the word "disease" in describing a fairly widespread issue with a non-biological entity is an example of a class of very commonly used metaphorical devices; see, for example, the term "bit rot" for a situation in which ones and zeros clearly do not suffer biological decomposition, and "virus" for a hunk of software that "infects" a computer. Get it?

What you said was, "Seriously why call it a disease? That implies that an iPhone could get it from another iPhone, you not washing your hands, etc." That pretty clearly says "A disease is something communicated from an outside source."

Re:Stop Using -Gate!

[BancBoy]

Bend-ghazi?

Maine Implied Warranty

[pgn674]

Sounds like a violation of the Maine implied warranty law. I don't know what the state can do to Apple, but there is an Apple store in the state's largest mall.

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.

Lawyers Lawyers, Everywhere!

[Tablizer]

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.

Re:Disease

[Applehu Akbar]

"I second this, I cant stand touch screens and there stupid interfaces."

And my phone is carved out of a single piece of granite! And I carved it myself!

Same thing with the 2011-2013 MacBook Pros

[ayesnymous]

"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.

Re:A defect is a defect

[Agripa]

Seriously why call it a disease? That implies that an iPhone could get it from another iPhone, you not washing your hands, etc.

Is cancer not also considered a disease?

We refer to ROM failures over time (fuck you Mostek!) and anti-fuses growing back as bit rot but it has nothing to do with microorganisms. I wish we had a special name for the failure of those edge wipe sockets Texas Instruments made.

Re:Disease

[Coren22]

I rather miss the original build everything from scratch of Gentoo. It seems they took the charm from Gentoo install when they started the stage three installers.