from Hacker News

A Design Defect Is Breaking iPhone 6 Pluses

by sorenso on 9/6/16, 8:11 AM with 200 comments

  • by pjc50 on 9/6/16, 11:20 AM

    It's (speculated to be) flexing PCBs under BGA chips again.

    This is a serious problem when making devices thinner: they become more flexible, but the joints are not flexible, so after a while you get a crack all the way across a joint and it either becomes intermittent or capacitively coupled.

    A decade ago I had a white plastic-bodied Macbook which developed a similar fault in the graphics. But it's not just Apple, the famous "red ring of death" was a similar problem induced by thermal cycling rather than physical bending.

  • by EA on 9/6/16, 3:28 PM

    Happened to my launch-week iPhone 6 Plus. Apple employees at the store were aware that phones had this issue but acted like it wasn't a problem they could treat. They treated it as a "bad screen" problem by replacing screens. After a couple of screen replacements the issue didn't go away.

    Ultimately, I had to pay $329.00 for a refurbished phone after they swapped out a few screens which didn't make the problem go away.

    There is a class action lawsuit forming: http://mccunewright.com/iphone-6-touchscreen-defect/

  • by pawadu on 9/6/16, 11:42 AM

    Remember "bendgate"? It turns out that while the bending may not be big enough to be permanent or visible it may still be enough to cause a chip to loosen from the PCB. Louis Rossmann has a great video on the subject

    edit: Rossmann's video is already in the article, so enjoy this other great Rossman rant https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45rRLkjdgrU

  • by gerbilly on 9/6/16, 12:03 PM

    >“But the fact remains—compared to earlier iPhone models, the iPhone 6/6+ is kind of a ‘bendy’ phone. Its slim form factor and larger surface area subject the logic board within the phone to mechanical flexion pressure that no other iPhone has had to deal with[...]”

    Thank god they are rumoured to be making phones even slimmer then, _and_ getting rid of the headphone jack as well!

    Apple seems to be putting form ahead of function these days.

  • by tyfon on 9/6/16, 12:42 PM

    "but said Apple doesn’t recognize it as an issue"

    Oh, I am so glad we have laws in my country to prevent asshole companies from doing things like this. Goods that is "expected to last long" has a five year mandatory warranty here and mobiles are included. The rest has two years. It doesn't matter if they recognize it as an issue, the phone is broken period.

  • by y04nn on 9/6/16, 12:53 PM

    Note that in Europe, whatever Apple says, you have a 2 years warranty for this kind of problem. Also, do the chip really need a replacement, or a simple reflow would work?

  • by grej on 9/6/16, 12:04 PM

    I actually had this issue show up on an iPhone6 right after the warranty period expired. I had phone support multiple times and took it in two different Apple Stores and they acted like they'd never seen the issue before. They eventually gave up (after a myriad of other fixes they had us try that didn't work) and said we'd have to get a new phone.

    Luckily, we had insurance on it, but it was still a $99 deductible. It's very frustrating to learn that this problem is quite a lot more common than they let on.

  • by lukeholder on 9/6/16, 12:38 PM

    I had this same issue with my iPhone 6 Plus screen not responding to touch as this article explains. Took it into Apple in Perth City (Western Australia) and they replaced the iPhone on the spot with a brand new refurbished. This article leads with a story about apple denying it to a customer, but I had my issue resolved within 25 minutes including running a last minute icloud backup. Apples legendary support is real.

  • by thecosas on 9/6/16, 4:23 PM

  • by givinguflac on 9/6/16, 3:56 PM

    I agree it sucks they aren't just covering it for people. However, I have a launch 6+ that I've beat the crap out of and sat on tons of times. It has not bent even a little and I'm a big person. I've also had no touch screen issues. Obviously YMMV but I've literally stepped on the thing by accident, dropped it down a pile of rocks at the beach, and other unintended abuse with no issues at all.

  • by chris_wot on 9/6/16, 12:29 PM

    This is going to cost Apple a lot of money in Australia. The average length of a phone contract here is about two years, and guess what? Courts have ruled that under the Australian Consumer Competition Law that's pretty much what is considered a reasonable timeframe for a phone to last. And Apple are scare shitless of defying them lest they but hit with another record fine by the ACCC.

  • by Animats on 9/6/16, 6:25 PM

    This is inept design. If Apple wants to make devices so thin that they flex, they have to make them more rigid where necessary and allow for more flexing. There are true flexible PCBs, ones with parts on them, not just wiring harnesses.[1]

    This isn't the first product where Apple has had this problem. It's embarrassing, or ought to be.

    (I don't have this problem; I own a Cat phone (yes, Caterpillar Tractor) which can be run over by a truck [2][3] and still work.)

    [1] http://www.tendtronic.com/Flexible-PCB [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Xaq3pduPv4 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVPku-xItv8

  • by tempodox on 9/6/16, 1:42 PM

    They will say, “don't hold it that way” as long as we let them. A class action suit sounds reasonable.

    Apple clearly have to work on their ability to defeat the laws of Physics before their devices become fully magical.

  • by akerro on 9/6/16, 2:06 PM

    Have there been any iPhone without "design defect"? Does any one think "design defect" is not made by accident since Apple fights everyone who tried to fix their iPhone on their own?

  • by Joky on 9/6/16, 3:37 PM

    "Over time, as the phone flexes or twists slightly during normal use"

    I don't flex or twist my phone, I wonder what is "normal use"...

  • by thespace123 on 9/6/16, 8:12 PM

    Wow, didn't know this was widespread! Thanks for the tip! Anyway I turn mine on and off with the left button until it goes away. Hope that little tip helps and I hope the issue doesn't get worse

  • by SEJeff on 9/6/16, 2:52 PM

    FWIW, this exact same thing happened to my wife's iPhone 6+. She took it in and told the tech the problem. He didn't even look at the phone and took her word for it. She got a new phone that day.

  • by packetized on 9/6/16, 2:38 PM

    Apple definitely recognizes this as an issue, because I've had three 6+s replaced under warranty (not AppleCare) for this issue in the past six months.

  • by intoverflow2 on 9/6/16, 1:22 PM

    This really has been one of the poorest Apple designs in a long time. Can't believe it's likely to stick around for another year.

  • by hourislate on 9/6/16, 2:46 PM

    It seems one of the solutions to this problem is not sticking your iphone into a back pocket of your skinny jeans.

    I constantly see girls sticking an iphone into the back pocket of their pants that are so tight you wonder how they even got it in there. Then they sit down with the damn phone still in there. I am surprised it doesn't snap in half.

    I typically carry my phone or keep it in my front pocket removing it before I sit down in fear of bending it.

    It's not a wallet, it's a delicate piece of electronics that requires care in handling.

  • by mangeletti on 9/6/16, 4:06 PM

    I wonder why this is being flagged (moved like 15 positions down in 3 minutes).

    @dang - is worth looking into whether there is a pattern to the flagging of this post (i.e., IP addresses from a certain company in Cupertino, pattern of other negative Apple PR being flagged by the same users, etc.)?

  • by jokoon on 9/6/16, 5:47 PM

    I recently bought a 80 euros Android, 5.5", quad core, 1gb ram, real GPS, 8gb space, 1280 horizontal resolution. I can break 5 of those and still have more money than if i bought an apple equivalent.

    I'm posting this on a 60 euros android i bought 2 years ago.

  • by pmarreck on 9/6/16, 2:03 PM

    Happened to mine.

    I got a free swap to a 6S+.

  • by curiousgal on 9/6/16, 3:52 PM

    Apple think 5-year-old computers are for suckers so why wouldn't they systematically make their phones last shortly.

  • by ebbv on 9/6/16, 11:59 AM

    This is pretty breathless reporting for iFixit. We can all draw whatever conclusions we want based on anecdotes. For example, I know a lot of people who have iPhone 6 and 6S phones and none of them have had this problem.

    But let's look at some numbers; the article mentions that all of these repairers see "several a week." Let's round up and say that's 4 a week, or 208 per year per repair shop. They only mention a few repair shops in the article, but lets say as part of the research they actually talked to 100 repair shops. That brings us to 20,800 iPhones having this problem per year. But of course, not everyone takes their phone to a repair shop when it has a problem like this. Let's be pessimistic and say that only 20% of people who have this problem get it repaired, and 80% throw it away. That's 104,000 iPhones having this problem per year.

    It's unclear to me from the article if this is affecting only iPhone 6 or also 6S, I'll assume both. Apple sold over 13 million iPhone 6S and 6S Plus in its opening weekend alone. Just from opening weekend numbers 104,000 phones with this problem is less than 1%, let alone whatever the total number of units sold over the last two years has been.

    I have no doubt this is an annoying and frustrating problem for the people that encounter it, but try to have some perspective.