The iPhone 6 Plus bends because it’s thin and aluminium, right? Wrong, according to a poster on Imgur, who has analysed photos of the contorting iPhone phablet and places the blame instead on a badly-designed metal reinforcement.
With only 9 reported cases of bendy iPhone 6 Plus devices in the wild, user alleras4 based his theory on the video from Unbox Therapy, which has racked up 30 million views since being posted online.
What he notices is that, even though forces aren’t being applied evenly to the phone but rather at one side, only one point of the profile gives in to bending — with evident stretching of the upper portion of the iPhone 6 Plus profile, but nothing in the way of compression in the bottom portion.
alleras4 even adds an image, using red and yellow arrow to represent the forces being applied and how they affect the profile of the phone, while a blue graph represents the moment caused by the forces. The picture can be seen below:
By comparing that damage to the iFixit teardown, it is possible to look at the inner design of the case and conclude that the weak point is a metal insert screw located just behind the volume buttons.
As alleras4 writes:
“It’s not about how much force must be applied and if a pocket will do the trick or not. It’s just that under a particular type of flexing, the phone is prone to bend mainly because a metal insert meant to reinforce instead spins in an axis too close to the critical point. If they were further apart allowing better support to counter the flexing and not [spinning], it would make it more resistant.”
The idea explains why Apple’s stress-testing techniques failed to discover the alleged fault, since unlike Unbox Therapy’s manual approach to bending, Apple applied equal force across the phone’s entire profile, rather than one side which was what was necessary to start the bending process.
While it’s all just a theory, it’s definitely a compelling one — and one that’s good news for fans of slimline smartphones, since it means that Apple won’t have to beef up its future iPhones to avoid a Bendgate part II.
We’ve reached out to Apple and will update the story if and when we hear something.
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
75 responses to “Weakspot theory shows Bendgate’s not quite dead yet”
I subscribe to the “crackpot theory” which posits that iPhones have to be 100% impervious to blockheads who sit on thin devices made of aluminum and glass.
Try harder, guys. You’re looking pretty dumb right now. Go for the gold and look stupid.
A common check in engineering design is to make things “idiot proof”; I myself learned that in 1st year training at the EITB – Engineering Industry Training Board – Centre, in Blackburn, Lancs, many moons ago. Telling people not to put phones in their pockets, or to not sit down is far more crazy a reaction to an obvious design fault. Worse than telling you you’re holding your phone the wrong way (Antennagate).
Except the bends have happened with people carrying their phone in their front pocket. Stop being such an fanboy. Being critical of a company allows that company to strive to always bring you the best product rather than being complacent because youll make excuses for their screw ups.
u had an iPhone 6 that bends in your front pocket?
If not, i suggest u keep silent.
Thats your retort? Are you a fuking idiot? Or are you just ignoring the pictures and stories regarding this problem?
Yes, that’s certainly worked for Government.
I blame the problem on idiots intentionally bending a phone. You can’t sure stupid.
I agree on the Curing stupid. I just wish you had spell check.
can’t “sure” stupid huh? LOL look who’s stupid now :)
The one pointing out an obvious typo as if it tells us anything about the commenter’s intelligence?
The one signing his comment as “spellcheckiscool”, not realizing that “sure” is spelled correctly, so a spell-checker would have done nothing to prevent the typo?
Yeh, and if he is so critical and pedantic, surely he should start his own sentences with a capital letter?
It looks be a design flaw, although not an overly major one.
http://np.reddit.com/r/gadgets/comments/2hd7cu/galaxy_note_3_bend_test_iphone_6_plus_followup/ckrzrsi?context=3
This story is becoming so silly. I wish people would grow up.
If you have $800 to burn go ahead and buy any very expensive phone and scratch, hammer, burn and throw it in the water. They will all fail at some point in time. If you don’t like the iPhone, buy another. But please stop the whining about something very few iPhone users will encounter.
Would you do this to your laptop computer? No!!
Ok, let me tell you. My company supplies us with ThinkPads. The early ones, by IBM had a problem when you used them. They get hot and if you carry them from one side by one hand, they tended to warp a bit. Only a very tiny bit. Nothing observable. But with the heat the video card connection got very hot and warped. Result: the screen started behaving funny and the video got distorted. IBM had to replace a couple of boards in there to get it going again. One year of use.
I learned to carry the computer using both hands or on its side to avoid that stress.
Please let us have some meaningful discussions here and stop this baby talk.
So your solution is NOT that Apple should engineer a phone that works and can be carried like all other phones, but that we must learn to adapt to these fragile phones by learning to carry and treat them differently.
The point of bendgate is not that some guy tortured his phone, so he shouldnt do that, problem solved. Some phones did bend in the first week during everyday use, the kind of use that didn’t effect previous phones. The guy who torture tested his phone did so because it had already slightly bent before without him trying…
You may be the idiot if you think that the problem here is people intentionally bending their phones….
I don’t understand the sticking up for Apple on this, they obviously missed something on at least some of the phones with their engineering?! It may or may not be a huge problem that affects all iPhone 6s or 6+s, but if it does, then wouldn’t it be better to not give Apple a free pass to ignore it, so it is addressed…
For $800 I kind of expect Apple to not be selling me a fragile device I have to be coddling when I carry it around every day for the next couple years…
Thank you for your comment.
I am not saying that Apple should not always design things better….they do. More than any other company I have seen, they always learn from their issues and fix them. I was not an Apple fan 5 years ago. Always was not a supporter, until they made the case for me with the iPhone. It took me a couple of revisions of it before I got it. And I was very critical of it in the beginning, dissuading friends from buying it.
But Apple did rise to the challenge and fixed things in the next iteration of iOS and the phone. I still own all the phones I got from them and use them (without the calling of course)
The point I was trying to make is that if the phone had a problem with the bending we would see others complaining about it and many many other videos. All we really see is the one guy contorting his phone under a lot of pressure with his hands.
I would challenge him to do this with other phones on the market other than Apple’s. Let HIM buy with his own money, other phones on the market and bend them that way.
Just watching one video over and over does not make it a widespread problem.
It may turn out that the 6+ is structurally weaker than other phones of the same size. But it does not mean that every iPhone 6+ in a front or a back pocket will bend like that video or even bend noticeably at all.
He did make another video right after that…..of bending other popular phones on the market.
“Some phones did bend in the first week during everyday use”
How do you know it was everyday use? I’m guessing these 9 reported bends apple received out of millions sold were abused in some fashion. First evidence needed: Weight and body-fat index of those who complained.
By the same token a person who buys an expensive car $50K to $100K or more should not expect it to get scratched while parking it in shopping malls and garage structures. Right?
A friend of mine has a Sony Xperia, the big model. He keeps it in his pocket. After two weeks he noticed it had started to buckle, and he thought, “WTF”! He called them, they asked he send them the phone, two weeks later he had a new one. He went on to a web forum where a number of Xperia users had the same issue, yet we never heard or read about it in such over dramatic fashion. Why? Because it wasn’t Apple. These things do happen, yet we never hear about it, unless it’s a big fish. These kind of headlines are click bait, and blogs like this make money from ad clicks, so it’s better to make hay while the Apple sun shines. Haters come to blow a horn, fanboys come to defend, and all the while someone is making money from it all. It’s become the latest internet model. Write an Apple click bait story, and reap the rewards. Google must be loving this, as every hit on a YouTube video like this, earns them a buck. If you can see it for what it really is, you’d shake your head and wonder what all the fuss is about. News sells, bad news sells more, and Apple news is a goldmine.
good point. We hear about Apple over and over because it generates page hits for the blogs and websites. Other phones etc don’t so there is no talk.
Then again, that this 9 phones and their issue which might be as much user error as ‘production issues’, is the big issue is actually a good sign. Not the battery, not the camera, the display, reception but that a handful of possible fat asses sat on their phones.
It’s very obvious you’re a troll. This phone isn’t any more “fragile” than any other on the market. I don’t know who would put such a large device in their back pocket and sit on it in tight pants anyway. I agree one should be able to use it how one wants, but similarly one should be intelligent and sensible about what one does with a PHONE…it is glass and aluminum! And to try and compare this phone with any other on the market is ridiculous, I have one and it’s thinner than anything else out there! i carry it in my front pocket every day, granted i have a case on it, because i don’t intend on having a broken screen (which is gorgeous by the way and better than any Samesung out there) :)
Actually, 0.0000009% of the iPhones sold had a bending problem, so its hardly an engineering issue and Apple should ignore it.
Also, you have no idea what you are talking about, this problem has been around for years on a wide range of phones.
That statistic is incorrect. That being said. Hopefully it is not that widespread of a issue and I guess they will quietly fix it next version.
9 phones, not 9 million but 9. Those numbers actually suggest that Apple has engineered a fine phone.
And the answer of ‘go buy something else’ is valid. If you don’t like the design, the OS, if you are so concerned about bending, battery etc, don’t buy it.
Thing is, if you CAN find a defect, film it and get it up on Youtube, your monetised video will rake in far more than the cost of the damaged item, so a nice little earner.
Can the author and half of the people in this thread look up the meaning of theory… This is a hypothesis not a theory, why are people so scientifically illiterate?
It’s because of the brain rot the stems from the flashing ads and banal logic the infests the typical tech blog.
Can the author of the above comment buy a dictionary and consult it, instead of lamely trying to appear smarter than other people by mis-applying something he learned in other contexts?
Dictionary definitions from the “theory” lemma:
i. a proposed explanation whose status is still conjecturaland subject to experimentation, in contrast to well-established propositions that are regarded as reportingmatters of actual fact.
ii. contemplation or speculation.
iii. guess or conjecture
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/theory
The way the term theory is used formally in science and mathematics is not the way it is (or it*has* to be) used in everyday use. (Not to mention that scientists often use the term ad-hoc in everyday discussions, and even in their texts, and they find no problem in doing that).
If you deleted that last paragraph I’d give you a Vote up.
Why on earth can’t people focus on real issues. This bend stuff just isn’t one!
The video are edited from unbox therapy…. When he is bending it with his bare hands, the phone shows 2:26 p.m.
Then, talking about it that later claiming it has bent as a consequence
of his actions earlier in the video, the phone shows 1:58 p.m. Then
later when he is summarizing, the time on the phone is 1:58 – 2:00 and
has a bend in it. Then it shows 2 p.m. and the phone is straight with
some possible damage near the volume button. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bendgate-truthers-claim-found-real-101714998.html
oops. Such things are not a good thing if you want folks to buy your story.
“…represents the moment caused by the forces.” You mean “movement” don’t you?
Proof-read your copy, people. Typos undermine confidence in the reporting.
They meant “moment”. Perhaps you should try googling before criticizing ;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moment_(physics)
no, the text is right, “Moment” means “Torque” that is a kind of force
No, he means “moment of the force” (which is also called torque). It is a physical quantity and you can learn more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torque . As you see there was no need to attack the reporter
Great reporter, congratulations on his work. I would say that most wouldn’t know this.
No, he means “moment of the force” (which is also called torque). It is a physical quantity, you can learn more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torque
Great reporter, congratulations on his work. I would say that most wouldn’t know this.
Physics, do you know them?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moment_(physics)
This is not a joke. My normal old iPhone 6 bent in the same spot on day one. It is a weak spot – and it is obvious.
I call liar, liar pants on fire.
It takes 30 seconds to post imgur links in 2k14, are you smart enough to do that or did Samsung not provide you with the means to provide such evidence?
WTF are you doing to it to make that happen. Even the attention troll that did this bend video by intentionally placing his thumbs near the volume rocker couldn’t get the iPhone 6 to bend.
“Normal old iPhone 6”? Huh?
OLD?! How can an iPhone 6 be old? Are you high?
Here’s a novel idea: DON’T CARRY IT IN YOUR POCKET. Ahem…excuse me.
Here’s an idea. When you put it in you pocket, then sit down and feel that slab of toast try to conform to your round leg…. don’t. Take it out. I’m surprised the thing isn’t ripping your pants open from all of that force.
It’s not difficult to find a way to carry a smartphone around with you without putting it in a tight pocket. When Otterbox makes the iPhone 6+ cases available, they will have a belt attachment. Women can carry them in their purse. Or…(God forbid)…leave the f#(@kng thing in your CAR for the 15 minutes you are in the grocery store. People who think their phone should be glued to their ass 24/7 just baffle me!
Yeah, that’s right, have someone smash open a window on your car, so you’re out a phone and a window…
If you have to carry the phone in your hand, what’s the point of that Apple watch?
you don’t have to, when you are walking etc. But if you are going to sit take it out and set it on the table etc. Especially if you are going to end up sitting on it or pressing against it with a seat beat or such
Is it just me that reads these stories a little differently. Im sure many companies would love to sell 10 million of an item in a weekend and have a problem with only 9 (reported incidents). That is a staggering low number for the first iteration of a product. I wonder when other phone companies release a product do they have this low of a “failure” rate.
Are you assuming that all of the other 10 million will never experience the problem? That’s only just the failure rate after 6 days. It’s a design flaw, every one of them is susceptible to being bent if put under a relatively small amount of force. As time goes on, more and more will be reported, guaranteed.
relatively small amount of force? How much force? and relative to what? You must have the inside scoop?
You’re right its been 6 days and 10 million phones, 9 failures.
1.5 failures per day.
assuming no more iPhones are sold in a year their will be 540 failures out of 10 million. By math that is .0000554 percent.
Pretty darn good and those numbers don’t point to failure
Your math is off as well. They sold 10 phones, but how many are actually in the hands of the purchaser? I have many friends who have purchased their new iPhone, but have yet to get them. I’m sure a high percentage of this 10 million haven’t even left the the facility.
And actually the 10 000 000 is just the opening weekend. It has been 2 weeks now, the numbers could have doubled or tripled so that MORE than makes up for the slight margin or error you mentioned.
Are you friggen kidding me? That’s not the way it works. You can’t just make a projection that it’s only going to be 1.5 per day going forward. A 365 day old device is 60x more likely to be bent than a 6 day old device. One in a million bend in the first week; we have no idea what the bend rate will be for 365 days. Get real.
Relative to what? Go look at the test videos on youtube for the “inside scoop”.
If you believe you there are really only 9 phones affected, you are really drinking the kool aid. How apple gets away with even saying that is the biggest joke to me. I could find 9 reports on twitter within the last hour. Perhaps they ran there stats just a few hours after the release?
It still looks like malleable metal is better than plastic for this use. I have a Nexus 5, which is obviously not made of metal. It was never dropped or intentionally bent or anything like that. Nevertheless it developed a crack. Surprise, surprise – this crack was in the very same kind of weak spot on the side. This time it was the SIM card hole which is essentially of same shape as holes for the side buttons and is located approximately on the same position compared to our “bendyPhone” here
Not very surprisingly I was denied of warranty, which leads to a thought, that these 175 € would still be mine, if this phone had been made of metal…
“…according to a poster on Imgur, who has analysed photos of the contorting iPhone phablet and places the blame instead on a badly-designed metal reinforcement.”
A “poster on Imgur??” Really? You’re •actually• citing some images from the inside of (supposedly) an iPhone 6, uploaded by “a poster”—complete with colored arrows—as proof of an Apple design flaw? Man, this is utterly ridiculous, and a new low for Cult of Mac. This should be from “Cult of Stupid” or “Cult of Apple Haters.”
This whole ordeal is helping to separate the men from the boys in Tech journalism. Scan the headlines on this rag and then check out re/code, Engadget, The Verge and some of the others. There you’ll find a thoughtful blend of professionally written and informative pieces of journalism. This one in particular is absolutely obsessed over this story. Have some integrity and do some good work. The clicks will come.
I like it. As fake Steinbrenner said about Costanza, “Hire this man!”
So to the people that have bent the phones by having it in your pocket.. What kind of huge ass pants are you wearing that the iPhone is horizontal instead of vertical in your pocket? That is the only way this will bend as described. And you have to put a pretty good amount of force to bend it in general from “everyday use” so that is not flying with me.. you are abusing your phone, get over it and stop blaming Apple.
This all got blown up because one guy figured out he could make a lot of money off of YouTube hits by posting a bend video. And he did.
Has anyone considered the fact the Apple has stated that the phone is made out of 6000 series aluminum,, and that it’s widely known that 7000 series aluminum is widely known to be faaaar stronger than 6000 series BUT more expensive???
I’m wondering if they had chose to use 7000 series aluminum instead of 6000 if this would even be an issue?? Just sayin ;-)
“Weakspot theory shows Bendgate’s not quite dead yet”
No, it’s quite dead. Less traction than antenna-gate. Nine bent iPhones—caused by their owners and a goofball on youtube—is not a “gate.”
Sorry Apple haters (and “reporters”), iPhone 6 and Plus are doing great.
So is Bendgate a real issue for Apple?
The way I see it is as follows:- There are 2 issues,
1) How
easy it is to deform a phone and
2) Whether
that deformation results in permanent damage.
How easy it is to deform a phone depends on
1) its
innate strength (which depends on the material used, the design such as the
thickness, cutouts for buttons, internal re-enforcement etc)
2) The
size of the phone which will determine the leverage when a bending force is
applied sucj as in a pocket.
From the Consumer reports tests the iPhone 6 and 6 plus are
easier to deform that the iPhone 5, LG G3 or the Galaxy note 3, but more
resilient than the HTC one M8. When the Note 3 or G3 did deform they returned
to normal as the plastic is not malleable while the metal phones did not. Whilst
the iphone screens did not shatter when even more force was applied unlike the
note 3 once you get to this stage the phone is pretty much wrecked so I don’t
think this is relevant.
So as usual it seems that Apple has (quite reasonably) made a compromise
between form and function and determined that resisting up to 70-90 pounds of
bending pressure is sufficient for everyday use. This may well be ok for the
iPhone 6, but maybe for the 6plus given the extra length, there is the
potential for enough force to be exerted in a pocket in normal use for them to
deform (and of course this deformation is not going to spring back in a metal
phone.)
So comparing the 6plus with the note 3, the iPhone is
definitely weaker, but not disastrously so. Whether this is an issue in real
life is a moot point.
The phones when they do fail all fail at their respective
weak points. In the iPhone6/6plus this is just below the lower volume button
cutout. There are internal strengthening bars, but the way these are arranged
seems to accentuate this as a weak point see the photos on imgur) . One potential to increase strength at this point would be to fit a longer bar covering the area below the buttons up to the next screw hole. This would be a significant but not huge re-design
IMHO, and might even be retro-fittable.
It seems that the lab testing that Apple used might not have
tested this issue fully as they applied pressure across the units evenly while
in the real world, pressure located at the critical point near the button
cutouts might be more dangerous.
Only time will tell as to whether the iPhone 6s will stand
up to regular use without more than a very small number failing?
I wonder whether Apple will quietly re-design the internal
strengthening bars to improve the rigidity of the case and reduce the weak
point by the buttons, while continuing to insist that the phones are perfectly
up to normal daily usage?
Anyway it seems that it is not harming sales in a major way.
My conclusion – iPhone6 isn’t foolproof.
Whilst the Imgur guy is definitely NOT a qualified engineer (eg. uses the word ‘spin’ instead of ‘rotate’), he does have a point. Stress testing should be done on the weakest point in the assembly, in this case at the cut-out for the buttons. As he rightly points out, the internal insert does not provide any necessary reinforcement; if Apple had extended it to the left of the cut-out and fixed it with 2 screws set a distance apart, it would have made local stress resistance more substantial. Will they do that in future, or will the next worry be gram-count? Gram-gate? I dread to think!
Its out of love for Apple that folks want to hold it to the hightest of standards. I predict they will decide to move the insert screw 3/8 of an inch farther from the volume button thus solving this overblown issue.
Yes absolutely they should do this. If doing this added another 30 if 30 lbs of resistance that might make a big difference in real world durability.
So here’s a thought…what if somebody were to remove the reinforcements. Wouldn’t that make it easy as hell to bend the phone…viola!!!
Check out consumers report on bendgate, this is all a waste of time on a non problem.
“Apple applied equal force across the phone’s entire profile” as they should, since my pocket doesn’t decide to bend at a particular point, it just applies stress on the entire phone. duh
okay so he has a theory, time to prove it. Using similar techniques that actually measure the force etc
Hello!
So what about those little kids bendeing an iPhone inside an Apple Store:
Kids Bending an iPhone 6 plus IN APPLE STORE!