Recently, a commentator demonstrated that an iPhone 6 Plus is bendable in the following video.
[yframe url=’https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znK652H6yQM#t=65′]
Video Credit: Unbox Therapy via YouTube.
A good amount of effort is required to bend it with your hands. However, a much bigger issue is at play:
Your pocket is likely to put a great deal of pressure on your iPhone 6 (as it would on any phone, and especially if you have tight pockets), and this is enough to bend the iPhone 6 Plus.
Customers have complained that their iPhone 6 Plus devices have been a little warped mere days after they purchased them.
According to BBC, Chris Green, the principal technology analyst at Davies Murphy Group said:
‘This is not an issue that Apple – or other phone companies – need to be compelled to respond to or fix. If anything this is a reflection of how people have started to use devices beyond what they were designed for,’ he said.
‘Even the most recent smartphones are not designed to be put in pockets where they are going to be under the most chassis strain. And this just illustrates the fact that the public’s desire for manufacturers to strive for ever thinner and lighter devices means that we are getting ever more fragile devices.
‘Just casually sticking a £700 smartphone in your pocket is an increasingly reckless thing to do.’
I agree with one of his points: The public loves thin devices a little too much, and making smartphones thinner comes with the unavoidable consequence of reduced durability unless the manufacturer uses higher quality materials or a greater internal support system to compensate for this issue.
Unfortunately, even the use of higher quality materials such as the aluminium that the iPhone 6 Plus is made of can only go so far.
Smartphone technology was thin enough to fit in everyone’s pockets years ago, so they didn’t need to get any thinner.
I don’t agree with his point about ‘casually sticking’ a £700 smartphone in your pocket being reckless. How are people supposed to carry these devices safely?
I doubt that Apple can ‘fix’ this, however, they need to update the iPhone 6 Plus design to prevent this from happening again. The ability to carry a phone in your pocket is necessary.
I think this problem can be solved with the purchase of a hard case for the iPhone 6 Plus. Hard cases can provide additional structural support. For example, a polycarbonate hard shell. An even better solution is a belt clip case.
Even if these devices didn’t bend, I would still put them in cases because they will last longer. I keep all my phones in cases, and they all lasted many years.
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