The iPhone SE may have the brains of the iPhone 6s, but not the brawn.
It took only 160 pounds of force to bend the iPhone SE’s frame in a new durability test pitting Apple’s tiny new iPhone against the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus. The new 4-inch iPhone stands up well fairly well against the iPhone 6s Plus, but it gets wrecked in SquareTrade’s tests, while the iPhone 6s takes a beating and still looks great.
See the iPhone SE bend test for yourself (and witness some other torture tests that pit the new 4-inch iPhone against iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus models):
“The iPhone 6s proved that thinner and bigger phones aren’t necessarily less durable than more compact phones like the iPhone SE,” said Aileen Abaya, director of communications at SquareTrade.
Apple weathered the Bendgate fiasco in 2014 when it launch the iPhone 6, which bent under less that 100 pounds of force. The issue was rectified by adding 7000 series aluminum to iPhone 6s and 6s Plus casing, which can take about 10 pounds more force than the iPhone SE, but none of the iPhones are bend-proof.
No iPhone can survive a face-down drop test. All three iPhones shattered on their first drops from 6 feet high. The iPhone 6s lasts longer in water, surviving a full 30 minutes while the iPhone SE shut off immediately.
Buster Hein is a freelance writer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Twitter: @bst3r.
2 responses to “iPhone SE is more bendy and breakable than iPhone 6s”
I guess these tests are like crash-testing a car. Most manufacturers already do that, so do consumers actually try to crash their own cars just to find out how much of a beating they can take. Hardly. I don’t quite get the point of people trying to destroy smartphones simply to find out how much punishment they can take. There should be more videos about how consumers can protect their smartphones from being damaged. It would be smart for most people to buy cases to protect their smartphones from damage.
I’ve already seen points to this regard, but my thought when spending a good chuck of change for anything. My first thoughts are not how much damage it can take, unless I happened to be buying a tank!!