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Did you park it poorly on purpose?
Yes, I did.

I keep it on the porch of my house during the riding months, usually under a cover. Winter it’s in the shed.

I park it as parallel to the roof line of the porch as possible to keep the rain off it and leave half the porch open for foot traffic.
 
I use my iPhone 11 on my Honda Gold Wing, which has Apple CarPlay. Honda does provide a foam cushion thing for holding the phone inside the "cubby" (small glove box). I've not had a problem in 3 years, but the Gold Wing is one smooth motorcycle. CarPlay on the bike is just awesome.
 
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I keep an iPhone X around just for mounting on a motorcycle. I then hot spot it to my 11pro which is in a chest pocket so it has data for navigation and it uses Bluetooth to WunderLINQ to give me a display of the bikes telemetry as well as control the phone from the BMW handle bar control. my BMW S1000XR killed the camera, my buddies sport bikes have also killed cameras in a bunch of different Android phones.

Vibrations from high revving motorcycles are known phone camera killers. Have yet to have one kill a goPro or insta360.
 
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How many people are actually out there using their expensive iPhone as a music player? That’s what a walkman is for.

How many people are actually out there using their expensive iPhone as an camcorder? That’s what a dedicated device is for.

How many people are actually out there using their expensive iPhone as a GPS? That’s what a Garmin is for.

How many people are actually out there using their expensive iPhone as a camera? That’s what a Nikon DLSR is for.

How many people are actually out there using their expensive iPhone as a gaming device? That’s what a Playstation is for.

I think you get the point....
I totally agree, the iPhone is a great multi-purpose device for all of those things, but using it as a camera or gps doesn’t put it in the same amount of danger as using it as an action camera on a bike. Because it can do all of things, I wouldn’t want to risk destroying it if something went wrong with the mount. If I lost a GoPro, I wouldn’t be as upset, because it was just a camera.

As others have pointed out, some people are using their iPhone for maps or music while riding their bike, which makes sense. It would still scare me to have it mounted on the handle bars instead of safely tucked away in a pocket.
 
Hmm I feel like the vibrator in the phone itself would vause issues after a while aswell if this is true
 
I’ve been riding bikes since the 70’s so when smart phones became a thing, I was thinking what a great accessory for the handlebar. But if your in a crash, the phone will be the first thing you need, and if it’s attached to the bike the chances are that it will be damaged or lost. So keep your phone in a durable pocket, and fit a GoPro on the handlebars, and or a motorcycle GPS. The phone can save your life, keep it safe.
 
Hmm I feel like the vibrator in the phone itself would vause issues after a while aswell if this is true
No. Phone vibration rarely vibrate for long or unremittingly. A bike can be ridden for hours, sometimes half a day even.
 
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Yes, I did.

I keep it on the porch of my house during the riding months, usually under a cover. Winter it’s in the shed.

I park it as parallel to the roof line of the porch as possible to keep the rain off it and leave half the porch open for foot traffic.
Do you blame others for your house being poorly built or do you not care about others?
 
This system is specifically designed to deal with situation like this, when the phone is being moved and shaken (hence unstable). The question is the degree of it. For example I had not idea of it being a problem so now I have broken camera. Do you think it's obvious? If so, why certain bikes/scooters are alright while others are not? What amount of shaking is normal and what is excessive?
IPhones are NOT specifically made to be attached to motorbikes, it’s a cell phone, made to be carried in purses and pockets and operated by hand. (Note that GoPro action cams, that ARE made to be jostled around, even on their latest model with Hypersmooth image stabilisation still use an electronic system, avoiding moving parts for ruggedness (and price) but not working nearly as well, particularly for stills. And they still have problems with misalignment creeping in and internal connections breaking, even when designed explicitly for ruggedness.)

Apple didn’t introduce OIS in iPhones until the 6s and sensor stabilisation only late last year. These are little marvels of optomechanical engineering, and instrumental not only to the quality of photos directly, but facilitating various computational modes that utilize image stacking. For 99.999% of users who don’t insist on strapping their phones to their food processors, this is great. You can increase camera ruggedness by removing mechanical image stabilisation and focussing, but you end up with a far less capable system (and still not completely fail safe).

Cameras on iPhones are precision aligned optomechanical systems that are not fixed but using various mobile parts that need to maintain very fine tolerances. They are subject to misalignment and eventual malfunction. Mistreat it and you will get problems. They are remarkably rugged for what they are, and stand up fine to typical use, but strapping them to vibrating, shaking, bouncing devices is bound to create problems.
 
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Hmm I feel like the vibrator in the phone itself would vause issues after a while aswell if this is true
The vibrations from a 1000cc sports bike are orders of magnitude greater than the phone vibrator. The phone cant make your fingers numb after long exposures!
i suspect it has to do a bit with engine configurations, large twins like Harley’s don’t rev high and have a more lumpy slower vibration, in comparison to my Ninja 1000sx which is an inline 4 and it can be buzzy at high revs.
 
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I use this vibration damper for my iPhone 11. Works well but I suspect this is predominantly an iPhone 12 problem


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Nope! I've wrecked the cameras in two iPhone 11 Pro Max's and in one iPhone 12 Pro Max because of this. Thinking about it now, the 8 plus was probably done in this way too.
 
...and the unnecessary noise from “high powered motorcycles” that’ve been “enhanced” for extra noise damages hearing, disrupts the public peace, makes people angry, frightens people (it doesn’t take PTSD, but living in a perpetual state of hyper-vigilance certainly makes it worse), and generally makes the owners of these things look like self-entitled *******s.

No, “loud pipes” don’t save lives. It’s a myth thrown around that sounds more reasonable than “I like the noise and the attention”.

No one should be forced to deal with vehicle noise from more than a block away (the same goes for boom-boom sound systems & hyped exhausts on cars).

My town has become a worse hellhole of self-entitled noise machines ever since a Harley dealership opened up a mile away. Cops don’t do **** about illegal pipes & noise disturbances because they’re the same dude-bros with the bikes, and/or are buddies with them (yet, I got a noise citation for playing music to drown out someone’s house work!!).

If you want to ride, fine: ride responsibly and respectfully. That includes not forcing others to be subjected to offensive and literally destructive noise.

 
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I always thought this was obvious.. You only have to have vague idea about how these cameras work to realise vibration will kill them fairly quickly.
 
Hmm I feel like the vibrator in the phone itself would vause issues after a while aswell if this is true
Taptic Engine and similar phone LRAs work in the low 100s of Hz, 100-200Hz at tens of milliwatts.

Your motorcycle engine revs usually over 10 000 RPM with power of tens or even hundreds of kilowatts. This will send extremely strong vibrations in high KHz ranges (and their harmonics) through the frame.

Your phone camera does 2 things. It stabilizes itself electromagnetically up-down and left-right with fractions of millimeter precision and focuses, moves back and forth with micrometer precision.

You can test this, take your phone (any phone with AF and OIS), put it near your ear and tap on it a couple of times. You'll hear clicking and rattling coming from the camera modules.

The extremely fine and precise camera mechanics cannot hold a candle against the vibrations from a motorcycle which will overpower them, so you'll have the two working against each other, putting immense stress onto the phone camera hardware and eventually breaking it.

This is not an iPhone-only issue, I have a Pixel 3 and the camera hardware is very sensitive. Whenever I bump the phone, I immediately hear rattling and clicking of the camera module. If I play music through the loud stereo speakers at max volume and open the camera app, stabilization and focus are broken, plus all dark spots in the viewfinder turn bright green, likely magnetic interferece from the speakers messing with the image sensor.
 
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