Apple 'Genius': iPhone 6? We've had NO COMPLAINTS about our BENDY iThing Apple has told El Reg that the risk of an iPhone 6 Plus bending in the pocket of a fanboi has been greatly overstated. The fruity firm's British support service told us they had received no calls about the issue and criticised Apple rumour sites for stoking an atmosphere of fear. Fanbois have been tying themselves in knots …
Guess I should cry to blog sites and Apple when I drop my iPhone out of a window onto tarmac and it break because of course it's always preferable to blame someone else. If you sell 10m phones you are going to have a number that receive accidental damage (like this) within the first few days - I'm sure there are people who have dropped them into water etc. and been back to get replaced.
At least Applecare+ covers 2 incidents of accidental damage over the 2 year coverage for a £55 excess - so if you do severely damage your phone getting it fixed / replaced is not so bad.
There'd 'clearly be a problem' if every other iPhone 6 was bending. They're not. It's a handful of fuckwits putting their new bling in their back pockets and sitting on them all afternoon, then complaining loudly on the internet when they find the device has been bent by their skinny jean clad arses. OBVIOUSLY it's not their fault. These are people who clearly shouldn't be left alone with safety scissors.
Oh, and can you show the class the MEEELIONS of iPhones that have bent. Didn't think so...
"It's a handful of fuckwits putting their new bling in their back pockets and sitting on them all afternoon"
Yes, but pales into insignificance compared with 10,000,000 fuckwits in one weekend.
But, hey, great entertainment for un-fuckwits.
Have a pint.
Have 10,000,000.
Because you're worth it.
Sitting in an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus when you have a massive ar*e, or if you are overweight, a wide load etc would put a bend in the body panels of a tank, let alone a phone.
The fact that you can't feel the phone in your pocket when sitting on it means that you are sitting on too much padding.
Of course it must be Apple's fault. My daughter ran over her iPad in her Volkswagen Passat estate loaded with gear and the BLOODY SCREEN CRACKED! It still went on working fine though, but hey, c'mon Apple, people drive over their i devices every day surely.
However, being transported in a user's pocket is a normal use-case for a phone.
So what you're saying is that Apple should have made it explicit in their documentation that having a round ass bending a straight phone is probably not a good idea? OK, I buy that, given that certain people apparently need to be told that a cruise control is not the same as auto-pilot and were indeed successful in court.
To me, it simply says that some people seem to have no idea how to treat equipment and blaming Apple, and that Apple has underestimated the amount of obesity out there.
Where does this stop? Do we need a notice for every laptop that it's not the right thing to put your car jack on? Do we take all personal responsibility off people? Why don't we have a warning on power sockets yet that licking them is a bad idea?
I stick my Nexus 5 in my pocket every day, doesn't have a problem with bending.
Then again, it's a quality product designed to just work in every day workload. If you have to baby the damn phone to the point you can't put it in your front pocket, it's just not suited to be a mobile phone. This is just one of the many reasons I don't buy apple products.
"They are used to treating a class of device in a certain way."
Really? It would never have occurred to me to put a phone in my back pocket. It just strikes me as an idea incredibly lacking in common sense. As for my front pockets, well even my jeans have enough give for my Nexus 5, without exerting any real pressure on it. This is why I'm somewhat incredulous at the bendy phone complaint. It's going to take real pressure to bend one of these phones. The best way I can think of, to do that, is it stick in my back pocket, behind my fat arse, and then proceed to sit down. If I did that, I'd put it down to experience, and keep it quiet, rather than advertising what I'd done, to the world.
"It would never have occurred to me to put a phone in my back pocket. It just strikes me as an idea incredibly lacking in common sense."
Agreed. Unfortunately (for your position), the only mentions of back pocket phone holstering I've read is below articles where commenters question the intelligence of Banana Phone owners. It seems to me that this is fundamental to the point here - everyone agrees the phones should only bend under abusive conditions but the original reports don't really show those are the conditions under which the damage occurs. It seems very much like people are just treating them the way they've always treated their phones.
Remember that these stress test videos and the like aren't how the issue became public. Initially, people (about half of them technology reviewers, as my observations go) incidentally noticed that the phone didn't sit level face downon a flat surface anymore - we're not talking about bum-shaped devices here.
"I stick my Nexus 5 in my pocket every day, doesn't have a problem with bending."
Yes, me too. And it is indeed a quality product. However, I'm just a teensy weensy bit careful as to which pocket I put it in. It goes in my left front jeans or trouser pocket. And if I'm going to lounge on the settee (usually on my left side), I take it out and put it on the coffee table.
Indeed. But it's not clear if it was placed carefully in a pocket, or for instance, stuffed in a back pocket.
It DOES sound like the phone is more delicate than some, but that may or may not be to the extent it should be considered a problem. A handful of people reporting the issue out of 10 million is not a big enough sample.
It could be a bad batch with a common fault, even.
"Dickheads putting a large phone in their back pocket, sitting down, and wondering where all the consequences are coming from?"
I've been reading this sort of argument in every discussion of this matter that I've seen this week (far too many) and it always brings a question to my mind, so I'll ask it of you now, AC.
Do you think these bent phones are the first phone these people have owned?
They are used to treating a class of device in a certain way. The class of device presents a typical level of structural integrity. A NEW AND IMPROVED example of the class performs worse and it is the users' fault somehow? Why?
@AC - "Dick-heads putting a large phone in their back pocket, sitting down, and wondering where all the consequences are coming from?"
Except one of the first complaints was from a guy who had it in the front pocket of his suit pants at a wedding. Not exactly the same as sitting on it.
So who is the dick-head now? That's right, it's you, coward.
Does the new iSlab (fondle-phone?) have a case that's milled out of an aluminum block like other iThings?
It's the rigidity that comes from of making other iThing cases from milled aluminum blocks that might be the solution for this one. Then again perhaps you can't economically do 10 million in a reasonable period with that process of case manufacturing.
I assume it's 6061 aluminum which at T6 temper is reasonably stiff / strong (40 ksi / 276 MPa yield, 45 ksi / 310 MPa ultimate) but is practically metal butter when annealed (7-8 ksi / 48-55 MPa yield, 18 ksi / 125 MPa ultimate). It's possible that the spec is for T6 but a few made it out at a lower temper or it could be that even T6 isn't enough. In either case given the small difference between yield and ultimate any plastic bending is likely to result in breakage after a short period of time.
For anyone not familiar with tensile material strength, yield is the stress level where deformation changes from elastic to plastic which is to say it will not spring back. Ultimate strength is where the material physically breaks.
>Aluminium isn't really that strong. It's usually fairly soft. Properly made plastic casings can actually be quite a bit stronger.
Aluminium is quite soft and not that stiff for a given cross-section. However, because it is less dense than steel, the actual cross section used to achieve the required strength is larger than that used for steel. As a consequence, aluminium structures tend to be stiffer than steel ones- look at bicycle frames as an example.
(there are other things going on here though - the choice of material defines the process used to shape it - so ribs might be stamped into steel sheet for stiffness, whereas you might choose to cast a mag/alu alloy, or machine it to achieve a stiff structure)
Of course the primary concern on a bicycle frame is light weight (it doesn't matter if the tubes are thicker), whereas on a phone it is the physical dimensions (W x L x T) that people compete on.
Now, you might choose to use one of a number of plastics instead for a phone- and you might arrive at an engineering solution where the device does bend, but can then return to is original flat state. Aluminium, unlike steel and titanium within their elastic limits, exhibits 'fatigue' where eventual catastrophic failure can result from a succession of small bends or vibration over time.
Another solution would be to build strain gauges into the phone, triggering an audible warning if too much strain is observed, or perhaps a message "get off me you fat bastard!". Or a sound like a mouse being crushed (simulated on a synthesiser of course, not recorded from life in a studio)
Anyway, looks my next phone will be the Xperia Z3 Compact, with flexible glass front and rear, and nylon corners to protect against shock. And it will be in a case. And I don't wear hipster skinny jeans.
I am quite butter-fingered though.
Yeah... certainly not after that IOS 8.0.1 update...
Yeah right as if that is reasonable - take any similar phone and put it under that much stress and it's likely to crack - I'm surprised the glass did not break / pop off TBH.
Suspect the reports of this happening are greatly exaggerated - but there again sell 10m phones in a weekend and you are bound to get a few that manage to break them - wonder if they work for a competitor - hmm...
Seriously though - £500+ on a device that is so slim and light - you take reasonable care of it. This will happen when people get the Apple Watch - despite it having a sapphire glass people will scrape it down a wall and say OOH OOH it's scratched and it's all Apple's fault.
"Yeah right as if that is reasonable - take any similar phone and put it under that much stress and it's likely to crack - I'm surprised the glass did not break / pop off TBH."
You might want to watch the full video - and, given your comment about what might happen to a similar phone, the follow-up video as well, for one example of just that.
It's worth noting that the iPhone 6 had a minor bend in it already, before he started his 'test'.
Even if another phone made of different materials survives the test does not mean it's a reasonable test. I mean should I compare a Casio G-Shock to a Rolex and then say the Rolex is inferior because it did not survive being dropped from 10 floors up onto concrete but the Casio did?
The iPhone is made of thin aluminium and glass to make it thin and light - the test shown in the video is just ridiculous - you may as well take a hammer to the screen and complain when it breaks. Suspect what is happening here is a small number of people have carelessly sat 'hard' on their phones and bent them. If it happened in a front pocket you would probably have hurt yourself with that much force.
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