'iPhone 6s' Materials Analysis Confirms Stronger, Less Bendable Aluminum Alloy

[neutrino23]

It's amazing that this level of testing is being done, from elemental composition to electron microscopy. These tests are not cheap, easy, or done using widely available equipment. All so you can analyze something that will be revealed in a couple weeks. It's great for Apple, generating buzz ahead of time; I don't think this is one of those leaks where it steals the thunder from the reveal. Materials science meets tech meets journalism, who knew.

Dave

Actually SEM/EDS machines are everywhere, they are just not well known by consumers. Many people who use these bring in odds and ends for analysis in their spare time.

The sample prep on this was ghastly and the magnification is very low. It is possible that the bright spots are steel introduced in the milling process. The trace of nickel might indicate that it was a stainless steel. With better technique the surface would be perfectly smooth and would not contain artifacts like this.

This technology is fantastic for learning the composition of the tiny point being analyzed but you have to be careful about extrapolating from that to the bulk composition. If the composition varies from point to point such extrapolations are meaningless.

 

[TallManNY]

For all you guys who think this is stupid (but for some reason still watch the videos) I have had two gently used iPhone 6 handsets (NOT the plus version) which have bent! No abuse, never in back pocket.
I challenge you: take your phone out of it's case if you have one, put it flat on a table, and press down on all corners. You may have bending and not even realize it.
Last time I went to an Apple store, the first thing the tech support guys were doing with phones was check for bending. It's obviously been a bigger issue than Apple pretends it is...thus the new materials.

Challenge accepted. The protruding camera makes one corner untestable. But hanging the camera off the edge of the table on that corner, I can push down on the other three corners. I have only the slights flex and movement. The curve is not visible to the naked eye. But, on that one corner I can slide a piece of paper under the corner. In the other two corners I can't.

So would you say my phone has bent?

I do carry it in a slim plastic case. Pretty minimal additional protection, but it is generally on the phone.

 

[ronno]

Challenge accepted. The protruding camera makes one corner untestable. But hanging the camera off the edge of the table on that corner, I can push down on the other three corners. I have only the slights flex and movement. The curve is not visible to the naked eye. But, on that one corner I can slide a piece of paper under the corner. In the other two corners I can't.

So would you say my phone has bent?

I do carry it in a slim plastic case. Pretty minimal additional protection, but it is generally on the phone.

Yes Tallman, it's bent. Now imagine it bends a little more (as mine did) and the screen starts to pop off a bit and becomes unresponsive.
I have literally never had this happen in all the phones I have ever owned. And I have owned TONS of phone...just saying - it's an issue.

 

[ronno]

Challenge accepted. The protruding camera makes one corner untestable. But hanging the camera off the edge of the table on that corner, I can push down on the other three corners. I have only the slights flex and movement. The curve is not visible to the naked eye. But, on that one corner I can slide a piece of paper under the corner. In the other two corners I can't.

So would you say my phone has bent?

I do carry it in a slim plastic case. Pretty minimal additional protection, but it is generally on the phone.

Also tallman, you could try the bent test with the phone face down so the camera doesn't get in the way ;-)
Anyone else try this?!?

 

[TallManNY]

Also tallman, you could try the bent test with the phone face down so the camera doesn't get in the way ;-)
Anyone else try this?!?

I did try it on the glass side. As you can imagine the effect was the opposite. The piece of paper slides more easily and deeper under two corners and in the third plus the camera corner opposite it that I can test on the glass side, the paper doesn't slide under.

In my case we really are talking about a really small bend. It was confirmed that the Iphone 6 was not as robust as prior iPhones and as many other phones. But still I don't think it raised to the level of being a serious new issue. iPhones are fragile. Frankly I think their fragility has always been just as much of an issue. I was for years a blackberry user and still am. I've never considered putting a blackberry in a case and I've owned the Q10 and Z10, so we aren't just talking about their old school phones. But I've cased my iPhone 4, 5 and 6 (though I went "naked" for a good chunk of year two of my iPhone 5 ownership). I wish I could get iOS in a more robust form factor that didn't seem to require a case, but that isn't how Apple wants to design their products. The 6s obviously won't bend because of this new aluminum. But it still won't have any plastic on its shell to cushion it from falls. So mine will still end up in a case.