Now that the buzz of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus launch and purchase is over, the net if getting filled with users uploading pictures of their latest smartphones by Apple getting bent when placed in pockets. The pictures are popping up on Twitter, forums and a couple of other websites where users claim that their iPhones bent when the user bent or sat after placing the phone in their pocket.
These complaints are coming in right after an insurance company, SquareTrade, said the following about latest iPhone; ‘Both new iPhones are bigger and more durable than any before them. The iPhone 6 passed all of our tests with flying colours. The iPhone 6 Plus also did extremely well but it’s so big that it lost points for gripability and size, and didn’t do quiet as well in our drop test.’ The tests didn’t, surprisingly, cover the bending aspect.
The chassis for these latest iPhones has been made from a solid piece of aluminium alloy while keeping the composition a secret. It has turned out, based upon the pictures, that the area weak and more susceptible to bending is around the volume buttons where the frame is thinnest and this allowed for the creation of a fulcrum point. The screen doesn’t break upon the phone being bent, however it does break when users tried to bend the phone back into original shape.
There has been no comment by Apple as of now, however, there is a group of users who claim that this bending doesn’t take place if you’re taking ‘normal’ care of the phone. This issue of bending is not new among large screen sized smartphones, however, the metal’s deformation becomes permanent as opposed to plastic that rebounds to its original shape even after bending.
Design engineer, Jeremy Irons, at Creative Engineering explains; ‘In material bending, larger cross-sectional areas [thickness x width] and shorter lengths make things stronger – you can’t easily bend a cube – while the opposite makes things very easy to bend – paper is easily folded. The increased length and decreased thickness contribute to the weakness of the new iPhone. Strength is proportionally related to length, but strength is affected much more by changes in thickness.’
The reduced thickness and larger size result in making the phone more susceptible to bending and users need to be wary of the stress and strain to which they are subjecting the phone to when they put them in the pockets.
