If your behind is that big , for crying out loud, please don’t sit on your damn phone.
I've stated it many times here about my personal experience with my wifes 6+. She carries it in her purse, rarely in her pocket due to the size of the phone plus the lifeproof on it.
Once the screen stopped working and they said it wasn't bent but had been flexed. The second time the cellular antenna stopped working and they claimed it was bent despite it being perfectly table-top tested flat and charged me $350 for an out of warranty replacement.
Now I paid it because it's a large phone and frame and prone to bending due to physics. But i will never in my life by a phone that size again for this reason. not from Apple or anyone. If Apple can't make it last more than a year between replacements then no one can.
Did not and do not have any sympathy for morons that put their phone, any phone, in their back pocket and sit on it. It bends. It breaks. Duh. They deserve a dope-slap and be told to 'don't do that'. I have an SE and I don't put it in my back pocket. It's just common sense.
That's fair. I don't have any sympathy for mouth-breathers that make assumptions about how items get damaged. They deserve a butt-whooping for assuming about others and then advocating violence towards them.
If your behind is that big , for crying out loud, please don’t sit on your damn phone.
I've stated it many times here about my personal experience with my wifes 6+. She carries it in her purse, rarely in her pocket due to the size of the phone plus the lifeproof on it.
Once the screen stopped working and they said it wasn't bent but had been flexed. The second time the cellular antenna stopped working and they claimed it was bent despite it being perfectly table-top tested flat and charged me $350 for an out of warranty replacement.
Now I paid it because it's a large phone and frame and prone to bending due to physics. But i will never in my life by a phone that size again for this reason. not from Apple or anyone. If Apple can't make it last more than a year between replacements then no one can.
I wouldn't agree with your last statement. Nokia (that old Nokia) made phones which lasted years. I still have a 5.5 years old Nokia Symbian phone which is still in working condition!!! My wife had a Samsung Wave phone (with Bada OS) which worked for 6 years non-stop, without changing the battery even once!!! Apple made a minor design mistake with iPhone 6 & 6+. I say the issue is minor, because the solution to the problem was fairly simple - put it in a case or handle it carefully (which many people did hence did not face the bending issue at all). It was a one-off for Apple which they corrected in their subsequent models. The same issue was observed in few Android phones as well, but NOT in many phones. There are still many OEMs (including Apple) who make phones that last 3+ years easily without any issues as long they are handled carefully.
If Apple knew the phone could be more susceptible to bending but didn’t attempt to fix and shipped anyway that doesn’t look good. I’d like to see some of the actual documentation.
That’s not the determining factor of negligence. If the 5S and the 6 and the 6+ all were sufficiently strong to withstand ‘normal’ use, then it doesn’t matter that one is less resistant to bending than the others. Because they all are at least as good as they need to be in that regard.
The question then becomes, do certain use cases represent normal use? I’d say sitting on a smartphone, or any glass-covered electronic slab would fall well outside of acceptable normal handling of the device. That any of these actually sustains such handling is impressive but should not impose a requirement on manufacturers to guarantee such.
Fit for purpose... Would you be surprised to discover someone putting their phone in their front or back pocket? Neither would any of the OEM's. When they brag about these supposedly strong casings for their smartphones the inference would be they don't need to be coddled to prevent warping.
The purpose of a smartphone is to connect to the world, not to be sat upon. The purpose of a wine glass is to aerate the wine and define its bouquet, not to be set upon the dashboard of a moving vehicle. Any reasonable person would likely agree that transporting either product in such a manner would not be considered proper care and handling.
As I said in my original post, the fact that many smartphones survive such abuse should not impose a requirement to do so. Just as the fact your kid’s bike might survive his use of it in parkour activities does not impose upon its manufacturer a requirement to be fit for that use case.
If Apple knew the phone could be more susceptible to bending but didn’t attempt to fix and shipped anyway that doesn’t look good. I’d like to see some of the actual documentation.
That’s not the determining factor of negligence. If the 5S and the 6 and the 6+ all were sufficiently strong to withstand ‘normal’ use, then it doesn’t matter that one is less resistant to bending than the others. Because they all are at least as good as they need to be in that regard.
The question then becomes, do certain use cases represent normal use? I’d say sitting on a smartphone, or any glass-covered electronic slab would fall well outside of acceptable normal handling of the device. That any of these actually sustains such handling is impressive but should not impose a requirement on manufacturers to guarantee such.
Fit for purpose... Would you be surprised to discover someone putting their phone in their front or back pocket? Neither would any of the OEM's. When they brag about these supposedly strong casings for their smartphones the inference would be they don't need to be coddled to prevent warping.
The purpose of a smartphone is to connect to the world, not to be sat upon. The purpose of a wine glass is to aerate the wine and define its bouquet, not to be set upon the dashboard of a moving vehicle. Any reasonable person would likely agree that transporting either product in such a manner would not be considered proper care and handling.
As I said in my original post, the fact that many smartphones survive such abuse should not impose a requirement to do so. Just as the fact your kid’s bike might survive his use of it in parkour activities does not impose upon its manufacturer a requirement to be fit for that use case.
As evidence that you might be wrong in your viewpoint didn't Apple themselves determine the aluminum structure used for the 6 wasn't as rigid as it needed to be and thus engineered changes to it for the 6S to help prevent the issue? Yes sir I do believe so.
If Apple knew the phone could be more susceptible to bending but didn’t attempt to fix and shipped anyway that doesn’t look good. I’d like to see some of the actual documentation.
That’s not the determining factor of negligence. If the 5S and the 6 and the 6+ all were sufficiently strong to withstand ‘normal’ use, then it doesn’t matter that one is less resistant to bending than the others. Because they all are at least as good as they need to be in that regard.
The question then becomes, do certain use cases represent normal use? I’d say sitting on a smartphone, or any glass-covered electronic slab would fall well outside of acceptable normal handling of the device. That any of these actually sustains such handling is impressive but should not impose a requirement on manufacturers to guarantee such.
Fit for purpose... Would you be surprised to discover someone putting their phone in their front or back pocket? Neither would any of the OEM's. When they brag about these supposedly strong casings for their smartphones the inference would be they don't need to be coddled to prevent warping.
The purpose of a smartphone is to connect to the world, not to be sat upon. The purpose of a wine glass is to aerate the wine and define its bouquet, not to be set upon the dashboard of a moving vehicle. Any reasonable person would likely agree that transporting either product in such a manner would not be considered proper care and handling.
As I said in my original post, the fact that many smartphones survive such abuse should not impose a requirement to do so. Just as the fact your kid’s bike might survive his use of it in parkour activities does not impose upon its manufacturer a requirement to be fit for that use case.
As evidence that you might be wrong in your viewpoint didn't Apple themselves determine the aluminum structure used for the 6 wasn't as rigid as it needed to be and thus engineered changes to it for the 6S to help prevent the issue? Yes sir I do believe so.
Yes, you are right. Not only that, people need to go through the comments in this very thread, few of them (@StrangeDays is one of them) clearly stated that they did not abuse their iPhone 6/6+ but it still bent.
If your behind is that big , for crying out loud, please don’t sit on your damn phone.
I've stated it many times here about my personal experience with my wifes 6+. She carries it in her purse, rarely in her pocket due to the size of the phone plus the lifeproof on it.
Once the screen stopped working and they said it wasn't bent but had been flexed. The second time the cellular antenna stopped working and they claimed it was bent despite it being perfectly table-top tested flat and charged me $350 for an out of warranty replacement.
Now I paid it because it's a large phone and frame and prone to bending due to physics. But i will never in my life by a phone that size again for this reason. not from Apple or anyone. If Apple can't make it last more than a year between replacements then no one can.
Okay.
So the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were released on September 19, 2014
The first link that I can find about "Touch Disease" was Ifixit's post on August 23, 2016.
Pretty darn close to two years, and the numbers of these failed iPhones appear very low anecdotally at that time. Note that the iPhone 6 series touched off a super cycle of sales, so there were a great number out in the wild, maybe a hundred to a hundred fifty million all told.
Anecdotally, I had never read or heard of an iPhone 5 or 5s bending, although a quick search today shows that there were some, so for purpose of comparison, the unit numbers must have been very, very, low for bent iPhone 5s's.
I had an iPhone 6 Plus that I purchased in early spring about 5 months after release. I kept it in my back pocket whenever it wasn't on my desk. After about a year, I had symptoms that would become known later as "touch disease". I took it to the Apple store and it was replaced due to a battery bulge, likely caused by a minor bend.
For all of this, I'm just not seeing a widespread issue, which is likely why Apple was slow to act on these failures; a small number of failures, increasing with the life of the device, in a huge pool of devices in the wild.
That doesn't mean that I'm against the Class Action Suit, just that I don't believe that it was all that widespread based on the number of iPhones that were shipped.
My engineering background suggests fatigue of the aluminum at stress points on the edge is the likely cause, and also the likely reason that the failures occurred late in the productions cycle. Aluminum is a great material, but is noted for poor fatigue life, and is the reason, as an example, that aircraft of primarily aluminum construction are life limited by fatigue, or that aluminum bicycle cranks fail, something that is not the case for composite aircraft like the Boeing Dreamliner, or composite bicycle cranks.
At any rate, I later bought an iPhone 7 Plus, have had it for 18 months or so, and still keep it in my back pocket, and believe that Apple fixed the bending problem with the 6S Plus, and likely some minor engineering changes for the 6 Plus production that was ongoing.
If Apple knew the phone could be more susceptible to bending but didn’t attempt to fix and shipped anyway that doesn’t look good. I’d like to see some of the actual documentation.
That’s not the determining factor of negligence. If the 5S and the 6 and the 6+ all were sufficiently strong to withstand ‘normal’ use, then it doesn’t matter that one is less resistant to bending than the others. Because they all are at least as good as they need to be in that regard.
The question then becomes, do certain use cases represent normal use? I’d say sitting on a smartphone, or any glass-covered electronic slab would fall well outside of acceptable normal handling of the device. That any of these actually sustains such handling is impressive but should not impose a requirement on manufacturers to guarantee such.
Fit for purpose... Would you be surprised to discover someone putting their phone in their front or back pocket? Neither would any of the OEM's. When they brag about these supposedly strong casings for their smartphones the inference would be they don't need to be coddled to prevent warping.
The purpose of a smartphone is to connect to the world, not to be sat upon. The purpose of a wine glass is to aerate the wine and define its bouquet, not to be set upon the dashboard of a moving vehicle. Any reasonable person would likely agree that transporting either product in such a manner would not be considered proper care and handling.
As I said in my original post, the fact that many smartphones survive such abuse should not impose a requirement to do so. Just as the fact your kid’s bike might survive his use of it in parkour activities does not impose upon its manufacturer a requirement to be fit for that use case.
As evidence that you might be wrong in your viewpoint didn't Apple themselves determine the aluminum structure used for the 6 wasn't as rigid as it needed to be and thus engineered changes to it for the 6S to help prevent the issue? Yes sir I do believe so.
More accurately, Apple redesigned the mechanical assembly to reduce stress concentrations under bending and especially, cyclical loads, and then for the iPhone 7, moved to a higher strength material.
If Apple knew the phone could be more susceptible to bending but didn’t attempt to fix and shipped anyway that doesn’t look good. I’d like to see some of the actual documentation.
That’s not the determining factor of negligence. If the 5S and the 6 and the 6+ all were sufficiently strong to withstand ‘normal’ use, then it doesn’t matter that one is less resistant to bending than the others. Because they all are at least as good as they need to be in that regard.
The question then becomes, do certain use cases represent normal use? I’d say sitting on a smartphone, or any glass-covered electronic slab would fall well outside of acceptable normal handling of the device. That any of these actually sustains such handling is impressive but should not impose a requirement on manufacturers to guarantee such.
Fit for purpose... Would you be surprised to discover someone putting their phone in their front or back pocket? Neither would any of the OEM's. When they brag about these supposedly strong casings for their smartphones the inference would be they don't need to be coddled to prevent warping.
The purpose of a smartphone is to connect to the world, not to be sat upon. The purpose of a wine glass is to aerate the wine and define its bouquet, not to be set upon the dashboard of a moving vehicle. Any reasonable person would likely agree that transporting either product in such a manner would not be considered proper care and handling.
As I said in my original post, the fact that many smartphones survive such abuse should not impose a requirement to do so. Just as the fact your kid’s bike might survive his use of it in parkour activities does not impose upon its manufacturer a requirement to be fit for that use case.
As evidence that you might be wrong in your viewpoint didn't Apple themselves determine the aluminum structure used for the 6 wasn't as rigid as it needed to be and thus engineered changes to it for the 6S to help prevent the issue? Yes sir I do believe so.
More accurately, Apple redesigned the mechanical assembly to reduce stress concentrations under bending and especially, cyclical loads, and then for the iPhone 7, moved to a higher strength material.
They moved to a higher strength material for 6s generation itself.
If Apple knew the phone could be more susceptible to bending but didn’t attempt to fix and shipped anyway that doesn’t look good. I’d like to see some of the actual documentation.
That’s not the determining factor of negligence. If the 5S and the 6 and the 6+ all were sufficiently strong to withstand ‘normal’ use, then it doesn’t matter that one is less resistant to bending than the others. Because they all are at least as good as they need to be in that regard.
The question then becomes, do certain use cases represent normal use? I’d say sitting on a smartphone, or any glass-covered electronic slab would fall well outside of acceptable normal handling of the device. That any of these actually sustains such handling is impressive but should not impose a requirement on manufacturers to guarantee such.
Fit for purpose... Would you be surprised to discover someone putting their phone in their front or back pocket? Neither would any of the OEM's. When they brag about these supposedly strong casings for their smartphones the inference would be they don't need to be coddled to prevent warping.
The purpose of a smartphone is to connect to the world, not to be sat upon. The purpose of a wine glass is to aerate the wine and define its bouquet, not to be set upon the dashboard of a moving vehicle. Any reasonable person would likely agree that transporting either product in such a manner would not be considered proper care and handling.
As I said in my original post, the fact that many smartphones survive such abuse should not impose a requirement to do so. Just as the fact your kid’s bike might survive his use of it in parkour activities does not impose upon its manufacturer a requirement to be fit for that use case.
As evidence that you might be wrong in your viewpoint didn't Apple themselves determine the aluminum structure used for the 6 wasn't as rigid as it needed to be and thus engineered changes to it for the 6S to help prevent the issue? Yes sir I do believe so.
More accurately, Apple redesigned the mechanical assembly to reduce stress concentrations under bending and especially, cyclical loads, and then for the iPhone 7, moved to a higher strength material.
They moved to a higher strength material for 6s generation itself.
You are correct (it was a 7000 series aluminum vs a 6000 series previously).
If Apple knew the phone could be more susceptible to bending but didn’t attempt to fix and shipped anyway that doesn’t look good. I’d like to see some of the actual documentation.
That’s not the determining factor of negligence. If the 5S and the 6 and the 6+ all were sufficiently strong to withstand ‘normal’ use, then it doesn’t matter that one is less resistant to bending than the others. Because they all are at least as good as they need to be in that regard.
The question then becomes, do certain use cases represent normal use? I’d say sitting on a smartphone, or any glass-covered electronic slab would fall well outside of acceptable normal handling of the device. That any of these actually sustains such handling is impressive but should not impose a requirement on manufacturers to guarantee such.
Fit for purpose... Would you be surprised to discover someone putting their phone in their front or back pocket? Neither would any of the OEM's. When they brag about these supposedly strong casings for their smartphones the inference would be they don't need to be coddled to prevent warping.
The purpose of a smartphone is to connect to the world, not to be sat upon. The purpose of a wine glass is to aerate the wine and define its bouquet, not to be set upon the dashboard of a moving vehicle. Any reasonable person would likely agree that transporting either product in such a manner would not be considered proper care and handling.
As I said in my original post, the fact that many smartphones survive such abuse should not impose a requirement to do so. Just as the fact your kid’s bike might survive his use of it in parkour activities does not impose upon its manufacturer a requirement to be fit for that use case.
As evidence that you might be wrong in your viewpoint didn't Apple themselves determine the aluminum structure used for the 6 wasn't as rigid as it needed to be and thus engineered changes to it for the 6S to help prevent the issue? Yes sir I do believe so.
The fact they strengthened it in no way implies they Would have been legally required to. They simply chose that route. They could have reiterated that the circumstances around which the phones were being bent were not acceptable handling. They took the high road and you and others still castigate them for doing so. Incredible! SMH
If Apple knew the phone could be more susceptible to bending but didn’t attempt to fix and shipped anyway that doesn’t look good. I’d like to see some of the actual documentation.
That’s not the determining factor of negligence. If the 5S and the 6 and the 6+ all were sufficiently strong to withstand ‘normal’ use, then it doesn’t matter that one is less resistant to bending than the others. Because they all are at least as good as they need to be in that regard.
The question then becomes, do certain use cases represent normal use? I’d say sitting on a smartphone, or any glass-covered electronic slab would fall well outside of acceptable normal handling of the device. That any of these actually sustains such handling is impressive but should not impose a requirement on manufacturers to guarantee such.
Fit for purpose... Would you be surprised to discover someone putting their phone in their front or back pocket? Neither would any of the OEM's. When they brag about these supposedly strong casings for their smartphones the inference would be they don't need to be coddled to prevent warping.
The purpose of a smartphone is to connect to the world, not to be sat upon. The purpose of a wine glass is to aerate the wine and define its bouquet, not to be set upon the dashboard of a moving vehicle. Any reasonable person would likely agree that transporting either product in such a manner would not be considered proper care and handling.
As I said in my original post, the fact that many smartphones survive such abuse should not impose a requirement to do so. Just as the fact your kid’s bike might survive his use of it in parkour activities does not impose upon its manufacturer a requirement to be fit for that use case.
As evidence that you might be wrong in your viewpoint didn't Apple themselves determine the aluminum structure used for the 6 wasn't as rigid as it needed to be and thus engineered changes to it for the 6S to help prevent the issue? Yes sir I do believe so.
Yes, you are right. Not only that, people need to go through the comments in this very thread, few of them (@StrangeDays is one of them) clearly stated that they did not abuse their iPhone 6/6+ but it still bent.
Did you watch any of the BendGate YouTube videos at the time? You’d have seen the strain on the guy’s face as he applied force to get the phone to bend. There’s just no way that holding the phone in one hand while touching and swiping the screen with the other would cause it to bend. Nor would picking it up or setting it down. If you put a candy cane in the front or rear pocket of your tight jeans and then go play basketball or sit down or otherwise flex, would you expect it to not break? Any reasonable person would think doing so might likely cause damage. But you think a large flat inflexible slab covered with glass should withstand this treatment? That’s unreasonable. The law gives a lot of weight to the reasonableness of any argument.
If your behind is that big , for crying out loud, please don’t sit on your damn phone.
I've stated it many times here about my personal experience with my wifes 6+. She carries it in her purse, rarely in her pocket due to the size of the phone plus the lifeproof on it.
Once the screen stopped working and they said it wasn't bent but had been flexed. The second time the cellular antenna stopped working and they claimed it was bent despite it being perfectly table-top tested flat and charged me $350 for an out of warranty replacement.
Now I paid it because it's a large phone and frame and prone to bending due to physics. But i will never in my life by a phone that size again for this reason. not from Apple or anyone. If Apple can't make it last more than a year between replacements then no one can.
Okay.
So the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were released on September 19, 2014
The first link that I can find about "Touch Disease" was Ifixit's post on August 23, 2016.
Pretty darn close to two years, and the numbers of these failed iPhones appear very low anecdotally at that time. Note that the iPhone 6 series touched off a super cycle of sales, so there were a great number out in the wild, maybe a hundred to a hundred fifty million all told.
Anecdotally, I had never read or heard of an iPhone 5 or 5s bending, although a quick search today shows that there were some, so for purpose of comparison, the unit numbers must have been very, very, low for bent iPhone 5s's.
I had an iPhone 6 Plus that I purchased in early spring about 5 months after release. I kept it in my back pocket whenever it wasn't on my desk. After about a year, I had symptoms that would become known later as "touch disease". I took it to the Apple store and it was replaced due to a battery bulge, likely caused by a minor bend.
For all of this, I'm just not seeing a widespread issue, which is likely why Apple was slow to act on these failures; a small number of failures, increasing with the life of the device, in a huge pool of devices in the wild.
That doesn't mean that I'm against the Class Action Suit, just that I don't believe that it was all that widespread based on the number of iPhones that were shipped.
My engineering background suggests fatigue of the aluminum at stress points on the edge is the likely cause, and also the likely reason that the failures occurred late in the productions cycle. Aluminum is a great material, but is noted for poor fatigue life, and is the reason, as an example, that aircraft of primarily aluminum construction are life limited by fatigue, or that aluminum bicycle cranks fail, something that is not the case for composite aircraft like the Boeing Dreamliner, or composite bicycle cranks.
At any rate, I later bought an iPhone 7 Plus, have had it for 18 months or so, and still keep it in my back pocket, and believe that Apple fixed the bending problem with the 6S Plus, and likely some minor engineering changes for the 6 Plus production that was ongoing.
All this talk about the aluminum frame as if that’s the only concern. Does anyone realize that the screen is a series of layers of microscopic elements (pixels). That it’s probably not a good idea to apply excessive pressure to them, such is applied when sitting on a phone? Even if the frame were made of titanium that’s not going to help with the forces applied to the layers of the display. In other words, the 6/6+ frames were probably engineered to take as much reasonable force as the displays could, on their own, bear. Any additional engineering would have been over engineered, with respect to reasonable handling of the device. Point is, sitting down with a phone in your back pocket likely exceeds any definition of reasonable handling of such a device. The test isn’t whether people do it, it’s whether it’s reasonable to expect such a device to sustain those forces.
If Apple knew the phone could be more susceptible to bending but didn’t attempt to fix and shipped anyway that doesn’t look good. I’d like to see some of the actual documentation.
That’s not the determining factor of negligence. If the 5S and the 6 and the 6+ all were sufficiently strong to withstand ‘normal’ use, then it doesn’t matter that one is less resistant to bending than the others. Because they all are at least as good as they need to be in that regard.
The question then becomes, do certain use cases represent normal use? I’d say sitting on a smartphone, or any glass-covered electronic slab would fall well outside of acceptable normal handling of the device. That any of these actually sustains such handling is impressive but should not impose a requirement on manufacturers to guarantee such.
Fit for purpose... Would you be surprised to discover someone putting their phone in their front or back pocket? Neither would any of the OEM's. When they brag about these supposedly strong casings for their smartphones the inference would be they don't need to be coddled to prevent warping.
The purpose of a smartphone is to connect to the world, not to be sat upon. The purpose of a wine glass is to aerate the wine and define its bouquet, not to be set upon the dashboard of a moving vehicle. Any reasonable person would likely agree that transporting either product in such a manner would not be considered proper care and handling.
As I said in my original post, the fact that many smartphones survive such abuse should not impose a requirement to do so. Just as the fact your kid’s bike might survive his use of it in parkour activities does not impose upon its manufacturer a requirement to be fit for that use case.
As evidence that you might be wrong in your viewpoint didn't Apple themselves determine the aluminum structure used for the 6 wasn't as rigid as it needed to be and thus engineered changes to it for the 6S to help prevent the issue? Yes sir I do believe so.
The fact they strengthened it in no way implies they Would have been legally required to. They simply chose that route. They could have reiterated that the circumstances around which the phones were being bent were not acceptable handling. They took the high road and you and others still castigate them for doing so. Incredible! SMH
I did not know you were only considering whether they were LEGALLY required to. Nevermind then.
If your behind is that big , for crying out loud, please don’t sit on your damn phone.
I've stated it many times here about my personal experience with my wifes 6+. She carries it in her purse, rarely in her pocket due to the size of the phone plus the lifeproof on it.
Once the screen stopped working and they said it wasn't bent but had been flexed. The second time the cellular antenna stopped working and they claimed it was bent despite it being perfectly table-top tested flat and charged me $350 for an out of warranty replacement.
Now I paid it because it's a large phone and frame and prone to bending due to physics. But i will never in my life by a phone that size again for this reason. not from Apple or anyone. If Apple can't make it last more than a year between replacements then no one can.
Okay.
So the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were released on September 19, 2014
The first link that I can find about "Touch Disease" was Ifixit's post on August 23, 2016.
Pretty darn close to two years, and the numbers of these failed iPhones appear very low anecdotally at that time. Note that the iPhone 6 series touched off a super cycle of sales, so there were a great number out in the wild, maybe a hundred to a hundred fifty million all told.
Anecdotally, I had never read or heard of an iPhone 5 or 5s bending, although a quick search today shows that there were some, so for purpose of comparison, the unit numbers must have been very, very, low for bent iPhone 5s's.
I had an iPhone 6 Plus that I purchased in early spring about 5 months after release. I kept it in my back pocket whenever it wasn't on my desk. After about a year, I had symptoms that would become known later as "touch disease". I took it to the Apple store and it was replaced due to a battery bulge, likely caused by a minor bend.
For all of this, I'm just not seeing a widespread issue, which is likely why Apple was slow to act on these failures; a small number of failures, increasing with the life of the device, in a huge pool of devices in the wild.
That doesn't mean that I'm against the Class Action Suit, just that I don't believe that it was all that widespread based on the number of iPhones that were shipped.
My engineering background suggests fatigue of the aluminum at stress points on the edge is the likely cause, and also the likely reason that the failures occurred late in the productions cycle. Aluminum is a great material, but is noted for poor fatigue life, and is the reason, as an example, that aircraft of primarily aluminum construction are life limited by fatigue, or that aluminum bicycle cranks fail, something that is not the case for composite aircraft like the Boeing Dreamliner, or composite bicycle cranks.
At any rate, I later bought an iPhone 7 Plus, have had it for 18 months or so, and still keep it in my back pocket, and believe that Apple fixed the bending problem with the 6S Plus, and likely some minor engineering changes for the 6 Plus production that was ongoing.
All this talk about the aluminum frame as if that’s the only concern. Does anyone realize that the screen is a series of layers of microscopic elements (pixels). That it’s probably not a good idea to apply excessive pressure to them, such is applied when sitting on a phone? Even if the frame were made of titanium that’s not going to help with the forces applied to the layers of the display. In other words, the 6/6+ frames were probably engineered to take as much reasonable force as the displays could, on their own, bear. Any additional engineering would have been over engineered, with respect to reasonable handling of the device. Point is, sitting down with a phone in your back pocket likely exceeds any definition of reasonable handling of such a device. The test isn’t whether people do it, it’s whether it’s reasonable to expect such a device to sustain those forces.
In fact, it would be inefficient not to consider the internals of the iPhone and the screen as part of the structure, so as I feel confident jamming my iPhone 7 Plus in my back pocket, it is precisely because I believe that Apple spent a significant amount of engineering effort, simulation, and test, such that I can with minimal risk. I would note that I haven't confidence, yet anyway, that I could jam the iPhone 8's or X into my back pocket without issue. I'll have to do some research on that.
The only question left that I have is whether Apple was already in the process of moving to a 7000 series aluminum prior to shipment of the iPhone 6, or whether it occurred after the first reports of bending, even before "Touch disease" became a thing. That might come out in the Class Action Suit.
If Apple knew the phone could be more susceptible to bending but didn’t attempt to fix and shipped anyway that doesn’t look good. I’d like to see some of the actual documentation.
That’s not the determining factor of negligence. If the 5S and the 6 and the 6+ all were sufficiently strong to withstand ‘normal’ use, then it doesn’t matter that one is less resistant to bending than the others. Because they all are at least as good as they need to be in that regard.
The question then becomes, do certain use cases represent normal use? I’d say sitting on a smartphone, or any glass-covered electronic slab would fall well outside of acceptable normal handling of the device. That any of these actually sustains such handling is impressive but should not impose a requirement on manufacturers to guarantee such.
Fit for purpose... Would you be surprised to discover someone putting their phone in their front or back pocket? Neither would any of the OEM's. When they brag about these supposedly strong casings for their smartphones the inference would be they don't need to be coddled to prevent warping.
The purpose of a smartphone is to connect to the world, not to be sat upon. The purpose of a wine glass is to aerate the wine and define its bouquet, not to be set upon the dashboard of a moving vehicle. Any reasonable person would likely agree that transporting either product in such a manner would not be considered proper care and handling.
As I said in my original post, the fact that many smartphones survive such abuse should not impose a requirement to do so. Just as the fact your kid’s bike might survive his use of it in parkour activities does not impose upon its manufacturer a requirement to be fit for that use case.
As evidence that you might be wrong in your viewpoint didn't Apple themselves determine the aluminum structure used for the 6 wasn't as rigid as it needed to be and thus engineered changes to it for the 6S to help prevent the issue? Yes sir I do believe so.
The fact they strengthened it in no way implies they Would have been legally required to. They simply chose that route. They could have reiterated that the circumstances around which the phones were being bent were not acceptable handling. They took the high road and you and others still castigate them for doing so. Incredible! SMH
I did not know you were only considering whether they were LEGALLY required to. Nevermind then.
Apple might have been legally required not to cause you excessive physical harm from explosion, shrapnel, and fire, but, bending, nah.
(There actually was an incident in Britain where a bicycle rider with an iPhone in his jersey pocket crashed, breaking the case, exposing the battery, and causing a fire that caused a severe burn on the rider's thigh, but even with that, the rider didn't blame Apple. Lithium batteries are a known fire risk).
I am honestly shocked at how many people here are standing behind Apple on this one...this is a clear case of shoddy craftsmanship. If there was nothing wrong with the materials used in the iPhone 6, why did Apple swap from 6000 series aluminum in the iPhone 6 to 7000 series aluminum in for the iPhone 6s (then again in the 7 and 8), then steel in the iPhone X? Funny coincidence that these issues didn't resurface with those subsequent models. Or not.
If Apple knew the phone could be more susceptible to bending but didn’t attempt to fix and shipped anyway that doesn’t look good. I’d like to see some of the actual documentation.
That’s not the determining factor of negligence. If the 5S and the 6 and the 6+ all were sufficiently strong to withstand ‘normal’ use, then it doesn’t matter that one is less resistant to bending than the others. Because they all are at least as good as they need to be in that regard.
The question then becomes, do certain use cases represent normal use? I’d say sitting on a smartphone, or any glass-covered electronic slab would fall well outside of acceptable normal handling of the device. That any of these actually sustains such handling is impressive but should not impose a requirement on manufacturers to guarantee such.
Fit for purpose... Would you be surprised to discover someone putting their phone in their front or back pocket? Neither would any of the OEM's. When they brag about these supposedly strong casings for their smartphones the inference would be they don't need to be coddled to prevent warping.
The purpose of a smartphone is to connect to the world, not to be sat upon. The purpose of a wine glass is to aerate the wine and define its bouquet, not to be set upon the dashboard of a moving vehicle. Any reasonable person would likely agree that transporting either product in such a manner would not be considered proper care and handling.
As I said in my original post, the fact that many smartphones survive such abuse should not impose a requirement to do so. Just as the fact your kid’s bike might survive his use of it in parkour activities does not impose upon its manufacturer a requirement to be fit for that use case.
As evidence that you might be wrong in your viewpoint didn't Apple themselves determine the aluminum structure used for the 6 wasn't as rigid as it needed to be and thus engineered changes to it for the 6S to help prevent the issue? Yes sir I do believe so.
The fact they strengthened it in no way implies they Would have been legally required to. They simply chose that route. They could have reiterated that the circumstances around which the phones were being bent were not acceptable handling. They took the high road and you and others still castigate them for doing so. Incredible! SMH
I did not know you were only considering whether they were LEGALLY required to. Nevermind then.
I’ll remind you of the title of the article. This has become a legal issue where Apple will need to defend themselves. And whether I am considering only the legal matter is not the point. The point is, Apple likely had no legal responsibility to strengthen the phone, AND YET THEY DID. And for this they still are criticized! Unbelievable.
Apple knew in advance about iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus 'Bendgate' says court filing
If Apple knew the phone could be more susceptible to bending but didn’t attempt to fix and shipped anyway that doesn’t look good. I’d like to see some of the actual documentation.
"More susceptible to bending" doesn't necessarily equal "likely to bend" in normal, even slightly prudent use scenarios.
I'm not always with Apple, but sounds like they're likely in defensible territory here.
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Once the screen stopped working and they said it wasn't bent but had been flexed. The second time the cellular antenna stopped working and they claimed it was bent despite it being perfectly table-top tested flat and charged me $350 for an out of warranty replacement.
Now I paid it because it's a large phone and frame and prone to bending due to physics. But i will never in my life by a phone that size again for this reason. not from Apple or anyone. If Apple can't make it last more than a year between replacements then no one can.
It's just common decency.
As I said in my original post, the fact that many smartphones survive such abuse should not impose a requirement to do so. Just as the fact your kid’s bike might survive his use of it in parkour activities does not impose upon its manufacturer a requirement to be fit for that use case.
So the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were released on September 19, 2014
The first link that I can find about "Touch Disease" was Ifixit's post on August 23, 2016.
Pretty darn close to two years, and the numbers of these failed iPhones appear very low anecdotally at that time. Note that the iPhone 6 series touched off a super cycle of sales, so there were a great number out in the wild, maybe a hundred to a hundred fifty million all told.
Anecdotally, I had never read or heard of an iPhone 5 or 5s bending, although a quick search today shows that there were some, so for purpose of comparison, the unit numbers must have been very, very, low for bent iPhone 5s's.
I had an iPhone 6 Plus that I purchased in early spring about 5 months after release. I kept it in my back pocket whenever it wasn't on my desk. After about a year, I had symptoms that would become known later as "touch disease". I took it to the Apple store and it was replaced due to a battery bulge, likely caused by a minor bend.
For all of this, I'm just not seeing a widespread issue, which is likely why Apple was slow to act on these failures; a small number of failures, increasing with the life of the device, in a huge pool of devices in the wild.
That doesn't mean that I'm against the Class Action Suit, just that I don't believe that it was all that widespread based on the number of iPhones that were shipped.
My engineering background suggests fatigue of the aluminum at stress points on the edge is the likely cause, and also the likely reason that the failures occurred late in the productions cycle. Aluminum is a great material, but is noted for poor fatigue life, and is the reason, as an example, that aircraft of primarily aluminum construction are life limited by fatigue, or that aluminum bicycle cranks fail, something that is not the case for composite aircraft like the Boeing Dreamliner, or composite bicycle cranks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatigue_(material)
At any rate, I later bought an iPhone 7 Plus, have had it for 18 months or so, and still keep it in my back pocket, and believe that Apple fixed the bending problem with the 6S Plus, and likely some minor engineering changes for the 6 Plus production that was ongoing.
Did you watch any of the BendGate YouTube videos at the time? You’d have seen the strain on the guy’s face as he applied force to get the phone to bend. There’s just no way that holding the phone in one hand while touching and swiping the screen with the other would cause it to bend. Nor would picking it up or setting it down. If you put a candy cane in the front or rear pocket of your tight jeans and then go play basketball or sit down or otherwise flex, would you expect it to not break? Any reasonable person would think doing so might likely cause damage. But you think a large flat inflexible slab covered with glass should withstand this treatment? That’s unreasonable. The law gives a lot of weight to the reasonableness of any argument.
All this talk about the aluminum frame as if that’s the only concern. Does anyone realize that the screen is a series of layers of microscopic elements (pixels). That it’s probably not a good idea to apply excessive pressure to them, such is applied when sitting on a phone? Even if the frame were made of titanium that’s not going to help with the forces applied to the layers of the display. In other words, the 6/6+ frames were probably engineered to take as much reasonable force as the displays could, on their own, bear. Any additional engineering would have been over engineered, with respect to reasonable handling of the device. Point is, sitting down with a phone in your back pocket likely exceeds any definition of reasonable handling of such a device. The test isn’t whether people do it, it’s whether it’s reasonable to expect such a device to sustain those forces.
The only question left that I have is whether Apple was already in the process of moving to a 7000 series aluminum prior to shipment of the iPhone 6, or whether it occurred after the first reports of bending, even before "Touch disease" became a thing. That might come out in the Class Action Suit.
Apple might have been legally required not to cause you excessive physical harm from explosion, shrapnel, and fire, but, bending, nah.
(There actually was an incident in Britain where a bicycle rider with an iPhone in his jersey pocket crashed, breaking the case, exposing the battery, and causing a fire that caused a severe burn on the rider's thigh, but even with that, the rider didn't blame Apple. Lithium batteries are a known fire risk).
If there’s nothing wrong with GDDR5, why are the GPU manufacturers moving to GDDR6 for their H2’18 graphics cards?
Apple knew in advance about iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus 'Bendgate' says court filing
I'm not always with Apple, but sounds like they're likely in defensible territory here.