It's pretty easy to bend an iPhone 6 with your hands

Apple gave nonworking mockups to accessory manufacturers well in advance of the launch, evidenced by the large number of cases and screen protectors available on launch day, as well as leaked images in advance of the launch.

1 Like

Yup. The last man to wear skinny jeans without looking like a douchebag was Jim Morrison.

iPhone 4: AntennaGate
iPhone 5: ScratchGate
iPhone 5S: FingerprintGate
iPhone 6: BendGate

This is the nature of such things. This too shall pass.

#BendGhazi

9 Likes

I don’t get why they make phones too thin. If a phone needs a protective case, I’d rather have a slightly thicker and sturdier phone that doesn’t. Moor room to make it strong enough, more room for a bigger battery, and more room for a better camera. This obsession with skinniness has moved way beyond what’s healthy.

3 Likes

What, you mean just like this guy? (“If only Apple decided to make the back of the phone steel. Or rubber. Or leather. Or not fucking glass, the most shatterable material known to man.”) This just in: sticking your phone, which was marketed in part as being significantly thinner, in the front pocket of your tight jeans and then flexing one of the most powerful muscles in your body against it may not be too good for the gizmo! Also, it makes a lousy hammer!

We get these articles every time Apple comes out with something new and tech writers and their minions look for ways to break it so that they can put a figurative thumbprint on it. (And sometimes not too figurative; I’m pretty sure that one iComplaint was that whatever gadget it was got smudged too easily when you handled it.) I guess that the cycle of “Apple puts out something, everyone else scrambles to imitate it” would get tiresome after a while, but so does this reflexive iconoclasm.

1 Like

Really, one should not take these thin phones anywhere, especially held in clothing.

Just keep them on a table or desk.

I’m a clumsy guy with an ipad. the Ipad’s great. To preserve it from my clumsiness, and alas my sneezing, it’s encased in one of those heavy duty cases, which means that it’s twice as thick, twice as heavy, and the screen is obscured by plastics.

Inside is something that taunts me. So thin. So light, So clear. So elegant, and, yet, so vulnerable. How I wish that I was coordinated enough to use it as Jobs intended it to be used.

2 Likes

There are days when I wish to live in Jobsoverse, where things are elegant and functional. Then I realize I live in harsh reality that’s more suitable for a Toughbook than for an iFlimsy.

1 Like

Now you have me trying to figure out what kind of phone Jim Morrison would carry if he was alive today. I’m thinking probably a simple flip-phone that’s available only in Japan, on which he would have scribbled obscure quotes from Rimbaud and Nietzsche with a sharpie.

Or put it in a shirt pocket. Or wear looser pants. Or go with a belt-clip case, even though they’re supposedly terminally nerdy (I’ve been using one for a phone or PDA since the mid-nineties, and no one has ever said squat to me). One of the great revelations of #bendghazi is that there are apparently a substantial number of people who treat their auxiliary brain with the same care as they do with loose change.

I have absolutely no problem with using a case that butches the iPad up a bit. You’re rocking something that looks as if you’re using it to monitor the approach of the xenomorph horde? Works for me!

Currently I’m using a survivor.
I need something that can survive hay fever season–violent sneezing, as well as the drops and slams that can result from said sneezes.

Didn’t they use a pre-Malaise Caddy 500 block though? There isn’t much that can break one of them. As I recall, they more or less gave up after they put pennies in the cylinders and it carried on running fine.

1 Like

Eeeh, you’re probably better-off inventing plasticene that displays HD video than trying to get humans to wear sensible pants.

1 Like

I had an identical issue with a Samsung Titanium skinny thing back in about 2007.

I realised the folly of my way, and adapted my lifestyle to suit.

1 Like

True. The ones I wear have thigh pockets big enough for a 9-inch ebook reader, and that is how all others should be.

1 Like

I once had a pair of combat pants that could hold an entire bag of shopping on each leg. Man, I miss those pants.

1 Like

Maybe the solution is whipping out a sewing machine and just mod what is available off the shelf… More often than not it is faster than trying to find what you want on the Richly Stocked Capitalist Market.

Some complaints about new iPhones are silly. I especially liked the complaint with one version release that fingerprints left smudges. On the other hand, some complaints are real. With a previous version, Apple released a phone that could not be held by left-handed people (without a case) because Apply hadn’t considered human beings when placing the antenna. That time, as with your response this time, Apple’s supercilious initial response to criticism was to instruct users that they had to learn a whole new way to hold the phone - in their other hand, for many.

If the reports about the flimsiness of the iPhone 6 haven’t been exaggerated, this is one of the times that the complaints are justified. It’s all well and good for you to say that users should learn to carry their phone in their breast or jacket pocket, or in their handbag, or in their hands, or in their mouth, or best of all to leave it securely at home, preferably still in its original packaging - but the fact is that most men and no few women carry their phones in their front pants pockets.

If Apple is selling a phone that can’t be carried the way most phones are carried, this is the fault of Apple far more than it’s a failure of consumers to adapt to Apple’s vision. That doesn’t mean the product won’t sell - Apple still sells the phone with that badly placed antenna, presumably they figure that left-handed people who don’t want to use a case do not count, and apparently they’re right when they so figure. But it’s bad design, and it reflects a contempt for the user.

1 Like

Members of my household laugh at my use of a thick protective case and screen protector on my smartphone. Guess which person in the household has a smartphone with an intact screen after three years?

EDIT: I carry it in my front pocket frequently. At first I thought the complaints about the iPhone 6 were from people putting it in their back pockets, which I always thought was a silly thing to do. Seriously, wtf Apple?

1 Like