Why aluminum isn't the cause of the bending reports - Interesting read

[Escher2112]

You guys have all seen this, correct?

http://www.businessinsider.com/bend...eal-story-behind-the-flexible-iphone-6-2014-9

The original video was probably doctored with the guy putting excessive force on the phone in between takes, and then edited to make it look like he was just using his hands. The timestamps don't add up.

Very interesting...

I like that Apple showed some of their testing facilities... I'm sure they torture tested hundreds of phones during development.

 

[mojolicious]

What's the point in guessing? It undermines any follow-on argument.

Would you rather that I estimate?

There are over 900,000 members of MacRumors.

Let's say 500,000 of those are active (or at least active enough to check here if their iPhone was gone all floppy).

Let's (very generously) say 5% of those active members now have an iPhone 6 Plus. This gives us 25,000 MacRumors iP6+ owners.

Let's say that each one of those 25,000 owners has had the phone for four days, giving us 100,000 days of ownership.

I'm not going to try and establish how many people have come here and stated that their iP6+ is now kinky, nor how genuine their claims are. But I will absolutely guarantee you that for every troll, there are several owners who will keep quiet either a) because they feel no need to post here about it, or b) not post because they know they'll be accused of 'sitting incorrectly', of being 'an Android fanboy', of being 'a Samsung shill'.

But my estimate is that in excess of ten genuine people have posted about their bent phones.

Let's say 10 failures in 100,000 phonedays.

A failure every 10,000 days.

That's a 3.6% annual failure rate.

 

[Shikaka]

I have had my 6+ since release day. I carry it every day, wearing regular fit jeans, always in the front pocket with screen facing my body. I am 6'1" tall weighing 195lbs. When I walk up stairs or bend down, I can feel pressure on the phone as one end of the phone presses against my lower hip and the other end presses against my thigh. I am conscious of this and make sure to remove the phone from my pocket if I anticipate bending my leg at any angle greater than I would during normal walking and sitting.

There have been 5 or 6 times, while lifting heavy objects, that I have bent down to a full squat and did not have a free hand to remove the phone from my front pocket. I know this puts stress on the phone as I can feel increased pressure of the phone pressing on my thigh and hip. I try my best to shift weight to my other leg to relieve pressure on the phone.

After 1 week of use, when I put a ruler against the face of my 6+, I can see a very slight (less than 1/32") curve. I did the same test with a brand new 6+ to ensure my ruler was true. I don't know if I caused the bend with what I would consider "normal day activities"? Or if it came bent from the factory? Either way I would consider such a minor bend to be well within manufacturers tolerance and everyday use.

I think what divides people is whether we perceive the iPhone 6 as a high-end piece of art? Or an overseas mass produced utilitarian object? I consider it a mass produced product however, I can see where Apple's advertising spiel and product description could highten expectation and make people think this new phone is some representation of technical and physical perfection.

So in the end both sides are correct. The Bendgaters have the right to be angry because Apple didn't provide them with ten million perfect examples of the holy Grail of hardware and software functioning in perfect unison that’s "better by any measure". And the rest of the normal people who don't really care can go on living their lives.

 

[Arran]

Would you rather that I estimate?

There are over 900,000 members of MacRumors.

Let's say 500,000 of those are active (or at least active enough to check here if their iPhone was gone all floppy).

Let's (very generously) say 5% of those active members now have an iPhone 6 Plus. This gives us 25,000 MacRumors iP6+ owners.

Let's say that each one of those 25,000 owners has had the phone for four days, giving us 100,000 days of ownership.

I'm not going to try and establish how many people have come here and stated that their iP6+ is now kinky, nor how genuine their claims are. But I will absolutely guarantee you that for every troll, there are several owners who will keep quiet either a) because they feel no need to post here about it, or b) not post because they know they'll be accused of 'sitting incorrectly', of being 'an Android fanboy', of being 'a Samsung shill'.

But my estimate is that in excess of ten genuine people have posted about their bent phones.

Let's say 10 failures in 100,000 phonedays.

A failure every 10,000 days.

That's a 3.6% annual failure rate.

3.6% sounds credibly precise, but it's false precision: It's based on stuff you're making up.

All this "Lets say..." stuff is pure guesswork on your part. It's an interesting model for sure, but let's not pretend it's accurate.

 

[kalebnate]

This entire "gate" is amusing..

Being a professional CAE/FEA engineer and watching the comments posted is excessively painful at times.

Look - what has been said regarding the geometry of the phone's design is correct. Making a larger/longer lever arm and not increasing its cross-section is a recipe for structural failure - any second year ME can tell you that. (And just FYI - Geometry in a design sense DOES mean the physical shape of the part - the geometrical properties of the CAD data.. Just to mess with your brain - in the Automotive industry we call CAD data MATH DATA.. because its a mathematical representation of the 3D points in space that define the vehicles components).

What isn't being addressed - or at least is not being addressed directly (or often) is the failure rate.

Products are designed to survive a certain failure rate.. typically to a six-sigma specification... what that means is that 99.99966% of the manufactured units will not have a failure.

So - lets look at this example. If apple sold 10M units, and 100 bent... that would be a 99.999% success rate. But we arent talking about 100 bent phones... its much less than that..

So - the next question from the pi$$ed off masses is "But NO phone should fail, they have to fix this right??!!"

Well - in that case, now you have to play the engineering trade-off game. You can have two of three things - but NOT all three. Cost, Quality or Speed. You can have the phone Fast and Cheap, but it will have poor quality. You can have it Perfect and Cheap and wait a long time (i.e. years not months for development).

I think Apple manages very well to balance their time to market, price and quality. The price is a premium due to the rapid development schedule, and high quality materials. If you wanted an unbreakable phone - it would likely be 1) thicker and / or 2 cost a LOT more (i.e. be made from titanium alloy or something).

If you really want to lose sleep tonight - think about the fact that your car was designed - typically based on a 4 sigma tolerance or less (99.38% yeild), by over 100 independent engineers and suppliers who all are beat up daily to cut cost and improve bottom line any way they can.

Man your response reminds me of the manufacturing course I took back in uni haha

 

[mojolicious]

3.6% sounds credibly precise, but it's false precision: It's based on stuff you're making up.

I could go to a few more decimal places if that adds any further credibility, but yeah... it is indeed based on stuff I'm making up.