Kyle Wiens has seen the insides of just about every gadget under the sun, and he’s not surprised that the iPhone 6 Plus is susceptible to bending.
Wiens is CEO of iFixit, which is famous for its insightful teardowns of Apple products, and he says there’s nothing wrong with the design of the iPhone 6 Plus.
It’s long and thin. Duh — it’ll bend.
“I’m not surprised that it’s happening,” he told Cult of Mac in an email. “It’s thinner than other phones and metal bends.”
In the wake of selling 10 million new iPhones in a weekend, a small number of users complained their giant iPhone 6 Pluses bent in their pants pockets, generating a media firestorm. Apple calls the bending issue “extremely rare,” saying only nine iPhone 6 Plus buyers complained to Cupertino about the problem.
“Bendgate” is the latest Apple controversy to go mainstream, but Wiens says it’s the price Apple pays for going ever thinner with its product designs.
“Our demand for thinner phones has a lot of unintended consequences,” he said. “I think it’s time to stop going thinner and focus on more robust, durable, repairable products.”
Wiens is a tireless campaigner for easily repairable products that have longer life spans. He abhors current tech culture that worships the constant cycle of shiny new gadgets at the expense of perfectly functional, but outdated, old ones.
He said iFixit, which is the second-largest supplier of Apple repair parts after Apple itself, has seen plenty of bent gadgets for years. As devices get thinner, they become less rugged. Wiens said the iPhone 5s and Apple’s iPads suffer from being relatively easy to bend.
“We see bent phones all the time.”
“We see bent phones all the time,” he said. “The 6 is thinner, so it may be more susceptible to bending. I don’t think it’s a flimsier material — it’s just less material overall. It would be very difficult to make it that thin and not have some bending issues.”
One solution for Apple might be to use a harder metal like titanium, which would be stiffer and harder to bend than aluminum. Apple has used titanium before — in the early 2000s for the PowerBook laptop. But Wiens said titanium wouldn’t be realistic for a product like the iPhone. Titanium can’t be milled using the “unibody” process Apple utilizes to make the latest iPhones and iPads. The unibody process uses CNC milling machines to carve cases out of solid blocks of metal. In addition, titanium would be far less environmentally friendly than aluminum because of the high power requirements needed in its manufacture.
The other solution would be to make the iPhone Plus thicker and stronger. “I would personally prefer a slightly thicker, more rugged phone,” Wiens said.
Wiens, who is known for his e-waste activism, said he likes phones made of metal over plastic. “Yes, it deforms, but it’s less brittle over the years,” he said on Twitter.
He personally uses an iPhone 4s, but he’s sorely tempted by the iPhone 6 Plus. “I’m recommending the 6,” he said on Twitter. “I think it’s a great phone, 7/10 repairability, and with a decent case you won’t have bending issues.”
His best advice for iPhone 6 Plus users? Be careful where you put it. “If people decide to buy a phone that’s this thin, then they should try to limit the amount of torsional torque they apply,” he said.
And then he added: “You can always bend it back.”
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
24 responses to “iFixit’s CEO on iPhone 6 and ‘Bendgate’ — bend it back yourself”
Why not make iPhones using carbon fiber/aluminum composite bodies?
carbon fiber also bends
And back..
not always
Carbon Fiber do not dissipate heat, and in verry strong shocks can crack
I’m tired of the “It’s thin metal and it’s going to bend” dismissal of this problem. There are lots of thin phones that don’t bend. It’s not that much thinner than past iphones and they didn’t bend in these kinds of numbers. The only thing worse that this problem, is burring your head in the sand and acting like it’s not a problem. Apple reports only 9 phone’s with a problem. I’ve seen 9 on facebook in the last day. Come on! I love apple, but you have to pick it up. Steve always admitted when he was wrong, you’re letting us down Timmy!
So you knew about 18 iPhone Plus that bent out of 10 million phones sold.
You’ve seen 9 in the last day, but how many of those are from ‘real’ bending vs “Here’s me actively trying to break my phone so you’ll watch the video I’ve made of it?”. I don’t doubt that given proper forces, you can accidentally bend your phone, and that includes any of these larger/thinner phones. Take care of your phone and it will be fine, don’t and it won’t.
Sony Xperia bends. I’ve seen one myself. I think you’re looking at it in a myopic way. God, even the CEO of ifixit stated they’ve had many bent phones, or didn’t you read the story?
Physics. Make a thinner larger phone. Apply stress. It fucking bends. It will not, not bend.
http://newsthump.com/2014/09/25/iphone-6-plus-performing-badly-in-hammer-stress-tests-complain-morons/
How come the only people complaining are the few idiots who sat on them and the CEOs of competitors.
These kinds of numbers? By that you mean 9?
Since when does the market demand thinner phones? I don’t believe this is true. In fact I hear “the market” ie. prospective buyers, demanding better battery life (ie. thicker phones) a lot more than I hear them asking for even thinner phones. Most people find these phones too thin to even hold. So to say we are demanding thinner phones is ridiculous. Apple (with Ive’s product anorexia) is the one who keeps making their devices ever thinner for no good reason except to claim it at each new iteration as if that was the one stat that matters.
How about the market that just set a record for most units sold of that new thin iPhone. I’d call that a demand, wouldn’t you?
No one is buying it because of it’s thickness. People are buying them because they are awesome phones. I’d say more people would buy them if they were thicker (with better battery life etc.)
Actually the thinness is a huge factor in my buying decision due to one handed use and pocketability. It does make a huge difference and Apple went with thinner to make the normal 6 still comparable in one handed usage to the 5s. This is a reason many people I know bought the 6 and there is a demand you might now see but it’s there and Apple knows it.
Really bad logic Greg. Terrible. Would you also say the market is demanding a relatively small battery, just because that’s what’s in the iPhone 6 and because its selling well means they demand that?….. Doh. That’s just remarkably bad thinking. Sorry.
It means that have choices, and they choose what they value with their dollars.
Why should Apple stop making thinner phones with even poorer batteries if the market continues to buy them?
There is not a choice for the feature (thinness). So therefore you cannot say that there is demand for that feature. Nick has it right by saying he bets they’d sell more phones if they were thicker (with better battery). Only if there was an SKU whose only difference was thickness could you say what the demand is.
It must be an OCD thing with these companies. Samsung does the same thing with screens nobody is really asking for a 6′ 4k screen(for YouTube video’s!!??) But Sammy won’t stop till they can claim it even if it eats battery and resources and won’t fit in your hand.
PS. Nice “self up-vote”. You realise it shows who you are when you hover over the uptick?
Yes, I realize this. Thanks for playing along.
>>“I would personally prefer a slightly thicker, more rugged phone,” Wiens said.
I have heard people say this for years, and yet the manufacturers will not stop the meaningless thinness race, shaving off .5 of a millimetre for every new model, thinking it matters to the general public. I for one would happily let any phone I have had for the last 10 years be 3mm thicker if it meant better battery capacity and at the same time reduced the need for a case.
One reason they do this is probably that a lot of reviews would give a device a solid thrashing if it for some reason was thicker than the previous one. No one dares to take that risk unfortunately.
Why not use liquidmetal.com it is harder than titanium