Internal Documents Show Apple Knew the iPhone 6 Would Bend (vice.com)

In 2014, multiple users reported that their iPhone 6 and 6 Plus handsets were bending under pressure, such as when they were kept in a pocket. As a byproduct of this issue, the touchscreen's internal hardware was also susceptible to losing its connection to the phone's logic board. It turns out, Apple was aware that this could happen. Motherboard: Apple's internal tests found that the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are significantly more likely to bend than the iPhone 5S, according to information made public in a recent court filing obtained by Motherboard. Publicly, Apple has never said that the phones have a bending problem, and maintains that position, despite these models commonly being plagued with "touch disease," a flaw that causes the touchscreen to work intermittently that the repair community say is a result of bending associated with normal use. The information is contained in internal Apple documents filed under seal in a class-action lawsuit that alleges Apple misled customers about touch disease. The documents remain under seal, but US District Court judge Lucy Koh made some of the information from them public in a recent opinion in the case. The company found that the iPhone 6 is 3.3 times more likely to bend than the iPhone 5s, and the iPhone 6 Plus is 7.2 times more likely to bend than the iPhone 5s, according to the documents. Koh wrote that "one of the major concerns Apple identified prior to launching the iPhones was that they were 'likely to bend more easily when compared to previous generations.'"

Comments

Am I supposed to be outraged?

[Spy Handler]

It's just a phone, I don't feel much outrage.

I mean, if we're talking about cars and people dying from a design defect, and the car company making a cold calculation that settling lawsuits from dead customers' relatives would be cheaper than recalling and fixing the entire fleet of cars (see the movie "Fight Club" for example), then yes I can see myself feeling some level of outrage.

But like I said, it's just a damn phone. So Apple calculated that .03 % of iphone 6's will bend, cost of settling would be X, and cost of recalling the entire year's worth of iphone 6 will be Y, and Y turned out to be much greater than X, so they went with option X. Sounds pretty logical to me.

"significantly more" means nada

[goombah99]

You are significantly more likely to be hit by lightning than win the lottery. But that doesn't mean lightning is a significant worry. It just means the effect is measurable.