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

[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

[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.

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.

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

[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

[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.

Nexus 4 had it

[drinkypoo]

And the digitizer is mad expensive

Fuck LG just as much as fuck Apple.

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.

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?

[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.

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.

Who cares?

[stealth_finger]

Who cares if it works? It's pretty!

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

[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: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.

Re:Disease

[Maritz]

touch screens and there stupid interfaces.

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

You don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re: Disease

[negRo_slim]

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

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:Disease

[Penguinisto]

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