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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?
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]
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.'"
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
Spotted the two Windows Mobile users.
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.
I don't get the joke. It's not like Windows Mobile works without touch screen.
The joke was spotting TWO Windows Mobile users.
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.
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.
touch screens and there stupid interfaces.
I should be pleased about this irony, but I'm not.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
It takes 'courage' to sell phones to customers knowing well that they are defective
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?
Normally yes but here on /. we do things differently.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
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.
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.
There's a Gentoo joke in here somewhere, I just know it...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?