My TIGHT PANTS made my HUGE iPHONE go all BENDY! Apple's new embiggened iPhone 6 Plus has been snapped up by buyers for, among other things, its thin case and its 5.5-inch touchscreen. But Apple didn't mention that it also appears to be the company's most flexible handset – whether you like it or not. A handful of early adopters have reported that after carrying the phablet …
Aaaand.... Apple's next ground breaking research papers are released, entitled: anodizing does not noticeably increase the tensile strength and bulk hardness properties of aluminium when used as a structural maternal. And: Long, thin things are more susceptable to getting bent than short, stubby things.
although, TBH, Phablets in a trouser pocket? Really...
"The problem, as many have noted, is likely due to the combination of a larger screen size and thin aluminum casing..."
Actually the problem is most likely to be most directly attributed to a combination of fat arse and tight trousers. Precisely why, post iPhone 4S, I have always had a slight feeling of unease when sitting down with an iPhone in my back pocket. If you weigh as much as me, have trousers as tight, and don't have the same feeling of unease, you simply don't understand physics.
Actually the problem is most likely to be most directly attributed to a combination of fat arse and tight trousers
Au contraire! A larger bottom would present a larger radius and therefore lesser curvature when a flat object such as a phone gets pressed onto it (since - as we scientists well know - all human bottoms, much like cows, are perfect spheres). Considering also that an overweight bottom is actually more likely to be soft and therefore more conforming than a hard, muscular one I'd say Queen-favoured behinds might actually have a better chance of not breaking a phone!
"Au contraire! A larger bottom would present a larger radius and therefore lesser curvature when a flat object such as a phone gets pressed onto it (since - as we scientists well know - all human bottoms, much like cows, are perfect spheres). Considering also that an overweight bottom is actually more likely to be soft and therefore more conforming than a hard, muscular one I'd say Queen-favoured behinds might actually have a better chance of not breaking a phone!"
So in this case Phablet should actually be Phatblet and there should be very strict sales criteria?
"Hello, I want to buy a 6+"
"Sorry mate, you go to the gym, you'll need to quit that if you want one"...
There's something I didn't see coming ;-)
Apple's patented Dynamic-Bend technology is what makes the new iPhone more perfect than ever! Apple noticed that the size and shape of lesser portable-tablets would cause discomfort among wearers of tight pants, which happen to make up a majority of their users, so they held off on releasing one of comparable size until they had its ergonomics perfected. Now, the new iPhone conforms to you, perfectly matching the curves of your body. This requires no complex setup by the owner, but intelligently matches one's shape over the course of a few days. Simply put, "it just bends".
The video shows a bend that is in no way fruitful. This is clearly defective by design. Of course, design being that humans are defective, not Apple products.
Apple's first attempt at the "too large to be considered serious" market is the last player to enter the market. Remember, it's not about being the best, it's about being last.
A solid wood or steel carrying case would prevent damage and bending. A steel case would be especially useful as it would act as a Faraday cage thus preventing government spies from tracking your every step and comment as all rf would be blocked.
OR, a cheap flip phone might work, too.
10 cents worth of aluminum (or aluminium if outside USA) is the cheapest option for a metal casing to add an extra $50 to the price, at the cost of battery accessibility. So, why not have tried carbon fiber or even titanium? Because it would have cost apple $255 to make the phone and not $249, seriously they just can't afford that!
...it's an undocumented feature. Really!!
Or maybe it's just corporate rot setting in. Jobs would have gone thermonuclear on his own senior staffers had he survived to witness this.
(tentative note to Apple PR on this one: too much spinning makes you dizzy and fall over a lot.)
"Jobs would have gone thermonuclear on his own senior staffers had he survived to witness this."
I doubt it. Jobs would more likely have blamed the sheeple stumping up stupid amounts of cash for his company's inferior product, for misusing it in some way.
And then he'd probably try to sue them for slander.
Thermonuclear - you are onto something there. What if the body were made out of not Aluminium, but Depleted Uranium? Or, why not go for the full-fat non-depleted version and at the same time do away with the (conventional) Li-Ion battery and make a nuclear battery - no need to charge you i-Phone, but you may end up getting cancer/burn your ear off.
He wasn't very expert though was he, as it's do-able...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7MIJP90biM
How to Draw seven red LINES, all Perpendicular, some with green ink, some with transparent ink, and one in the form of A Kitten. (response to "The Expert" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= BKorP ... )
This isn't something that is going to going to happen to a phone in a normal front pocket. If you keep it in your back pocket, or have jeans that are so tight you have to exhale before you can put your phone in your pocket, then you might have problems!
I did kind of wonder about this when I first saw how thin they were, especially the larger one. Looks as though Apple has reached (if not surpassed) the limit of thinness unless they move to a Titanium case or get that Liquid Metal finally working.
Though I have to say I'm kind of impressed how much it can be bent and the screen stays intact. I would have thought it would take very little bend before the screen would fracture.
Titanium is stiffer than aluminium, weight for weight. However, the lower density of aluminium means that to achieve the same strength the cross section is wider, so the structure as a whole is stiffer. This is why aluminium bicycles have tubes with thicker wall sections (and thus thicker tube diameters) than steel or titanium bicycles.
Stiffness is not the same as strength.
Sure, but Alu doesn't spring in the same way steel or ti do, and that's what this phone case needs to do. Apple use a 'unibody' construction technique where they take a solid piece of Alu and mill it down to spec. Great for thermal performance, recyclability et al but not strong or springy in extremis.
"Looks as though Apple has reached (if not surpassed) the limit of thinness unless they move to a Titanium case or get that Liquid Metal finally working."
Titanium is a medium-performance material (contrary to its Hollywood PR machine.) Even its alloys aren't very impressive compared to a good steel alloy. And Liquidmetal is less stiff and less strong than titanium. If you're looking for an affordable improvement over an aluminum case, I'd recommend a high-end stainless steel like 15-5PH.
Compare:
Titanium-6% aluminum-4% vanadium, the most common titanium alloy. Average yield strength: 950MPa / 140,000psi. Average stiffness: 1200GPa / 17,000,000psi. Hardness (Rockwell C scale): 33. Density: 4.5g/cc.
Liquidmetal. Average yield strength: 1640MPa / 238ksi. Average stiffness: 93GPa / 13.5 Msi. Hardness: 53 Rc. Density: 6g/cc.
Steel (15-5PH stainless, H900 condition). Average yield strength: 1380MPa / 200ksi. Average Stiffness: 207 GPa / 30Msi. Hardness: 46 Rc. Density: 7.8g/cc.
Steel (Aermet 340). Average yield strength: 2160MPa / 310ksi. Average Stiffness: 207 GPa / 30 Msi. Hardness: 57 Rc. Density: 7.86g/cc.
If you don't mind the knock in strength, you can do interesting things with lighter metals like aluminum and beryllium just because you can afford to add so much extra material without adding weight compared to denser materials.
Aluminum (6061, T6 condition). Average yield strength: 276MPa / 40ksi. Average Stiffness: 69 GPa / 10 Msi. Hardness: crap without anodizing. Density: 2.7g/cc.
Beryllium (Materion SR-200 alloy). Average yield strength: 345MPa / 50ksi. Average Stiffness !! : 287 GPa / 42 Msi. Hardness: meh, anodize it. Density !!: 1.85g/cc. Too bad about the berylliosis thing, this stuff is great. I keep a file of nude beryllium photos at my desk at work.
The strongest, stiffest, hardest, toughest, easily-available materials are steels. Some tungsten alloys outperform the best steels in stiffness and strength but are more than twice as dense and I don't want to think of the cost difference. Beryllium is a freak among light metals in that it is substantially stiffer than steels - most lighter alloys (titanium, aluminum, magnesium) have fractions of steel's stiffness (in order: half, third, and quarter.) In certain applications, the right composite can be stronger than steel, but carbon composites give up scratch resistance, toughness, hardness, cost, and ease of manufacturing for complicated phone case shapes. High-end steels not only outperform titanium in properties, they're also easier to work - titanium alloys are annoying to machine, being a bit gummy and prone to ignition.
Because mass production is driven by "good enough" needs, not "best," steel is naturally kicked aside by aluminum. You can get adequate strength and stiffness (especially compared to plastics) while saving weight (compared to other metals) with aluminum. It also has endearing thermal conductivity for electronics. Beryllium is better on most counts than aluminum, but has a disease named after it and is expensive.
Search through the Materion (Brush-Wellman) site for their paper on Beryllium health issues. It's only a factor during the machining process where it can become airborne and thus inhaled. Once Beryllium is in a finished form, there isn't a health issue.
The expense is huge since it has to be machined/formed with specially modified machines that extract any chips/dust durning the process and capture it. There are only a few companies that are certified to do that work, Materion being one of the largest. It shouldn't be a problem to do it in Mexico, China or some other country with no/lax regulations other than getting the raw stock shipped there. Be is used in nuclear weapons and the men in suits take notice of people and companies that buy it.
Too bad there aren't many mechanical engineers in the world that can tell these companies that there are issues with making things too thin and expecting them to survive very long.
Sorry, Mr. Worsthal, but I very much doubt that you sell an aluminium alloy with the necessary characteristics. I'm not being rude, but the problem here is almost certainly with the cross section. If you use an alloy with an extremely high E value, it will just crack rather than bend. With the sections they are using, even making it out of high tensile steel might not solve the problem.
There's another company that uses a magnesium alloy frame with an outer mould of polycarbonate, but everybody laughs at them because it's "not premium". They don't seem to have this problem.
Replying to myself. I am wrong. There are several aluminium alloys which would make for a stronger iPhone 6 and 6+. Unfortunately they are devilish hard to work with and they are mainly used for lightweight armour in the military field. The cost per iPhone would increase significantly, and it's even possible that the stuff, and its machining and forming techniques, isn't for export to China, though I'm sure Mr. W will correct me on that.
Perhaps this is the plan; having sold Joe Punter a £700 phone, sell him a £700 NATO-approved case to protect it.
Given the length of the device and its thinness, only someone with a very poor grasp of basic physics would be surprised that it will bend. I suspect Apple knew it would bend if mistreated, but underestimated the number of absolute tools out there who would abuse it in this way (and then be surprised).
Jeez, with those dimensions, I could bend it* with my hands even if it was a solid block.
*not to the same extent though, obviously.
Seriously, though - I do not believe these iPhoners are using their front pockets. Nobody except me does that. Fact.
I use my front pocket for phones. Trying to get other people to follow suit (e.g. when they've cracked their phone screen (again)) is IMPOSSIBLE.
If they are using their front pockets, someone sitting on their lap is going to apply enough force to bend the 6+
The resistance to bending is dependent on the Second Moment of Area of the cross section of the object being used as a beam. It is a power 4 relationship so reducing the cross section of a simple square beam by 10% reduces the resistance of the beam to bending by 34%. Compound the dumbassery by failing to understand that the distribution of material as far away as possible from the neutral axis can improve resistance to bending in the same power 4 relationship and you have the IPhone 6.
Tromos: "to me, the UK definition of pants makes sense --- whilst the US shortening of pantaloons to pants does not; any more than shortening pantograph to graph would."
You've got your example the wrong way round ... you should have said "any more than shortening pantograph to panto would". Interestingly choice as well, when you think that UKers refer to pantomime as 'panto', and not 'mime'. You may also have heard 'undies' which, in context, is a clear reference to undergarments or underclothes. Referring to either of these as simply 'garments' or 'clothes' would be to lose the distinction about which one puts on first.
The use of the word pantaloons is practically medieval and well out of favor. Almost no one uses it in common language, idiotic grammatic pedants aside. Perhaps as another word to describe ladys "bloomers" but that's it. And that reference is even out of date. And 310 million people (at least) can't be considered wrong.
Language CHANGES as time proceeds. Words and sayings become antiquated and develop different meanings. This is the way things are.
This post has been deleted by its author
I'm an mainly Apple user and have cancelled my 6+ order because of this issue. It's disappointing that Apple didn't anticipate this issue - most people (males at least) carry their phone in their pockets. Seems like a rather serious design fault to me.
The same guy who did the bend video also has another video of the Samsung Note 3 which doesn't result in a bent phone or broken glass.
>most people (males at least) carry their phone in their pockets. Seems like a rather serious design fault to me.
Recall the males? I've seen a fair few females whose back pockets have the tell-tall bulge of a phone, though.
What I don't get, at all, is why you'd put a complex object/tool for which you've just paid real money into a pocket of your pants, or into the bottom of your [m|p]urse, to grind along with whatever else ends up in there. Akin to putting a camera, loose, into a purse, backpack, or pannier. Makes no sense; retrieving a phone from a pocket is fiddly (front dress pants pockets aside) to boot. There's a huge market for dedicated cases. And shirts still come with pockets, du-uhn't they?
"What I don't get, at all, is why you'd put a complex object/tool for which you've just paid real money into a pocket of your pants,..."
Because it is easy. My left front pocket is dedicated to my phone. Keys and coins go to the front right, the wallet in the rear right and the rear left I use to assorted small papers.
Free hands, no bags and no funny bags. Why wouldn't I do it?
Even small amounts of flexing, over thousands of cycles of sitting, walking etc, will probably weaken the metal where the stresses are concentrated.
Maybe Apple never heard about the famous Comet disasters, where engineers learned how even small stresses, when concentrated by the shape of metal, can have unexpected consequences.
I've had the Note 1 and Note 3 (and will get a Note 5 next year) on the day of release.
I have constantly had the phone in suit & jeans pockets will no ill effects.
Making a phone rigid with a brittle screen larger (to copy other manufactors) and even more expensive to repair & insure will just mean the already significant number of folk with cracked screens will be joined by an increasing number of bent phones.
What with the raised camera-nipple it was never going to sit flat anyway.
I'm sure many many people will have a 6 Plus and never have this problem, so the fact you didn't have the problem with a Note wouldn't mean on its own that it can't happen to others - or at least that it isn't a problem with other phones. Google HTC m8 bent for instance. Apple gets a bunch of negative publicity about some issue that affects a small minority of people with every iPhone release. Remember "Antenna Gate" on the 4, the "yellow screen" on the 4S, the purple tinged photos on the 5, and I'm sure there was something on the 5S I'm not remembering.
Hate to sound like "you're holding it wrong", but people will have to decide not to keep the 6 Plus in the back pocket of their pants or a front pocket of overly snug jeans and then sit down. From the video of the guy who bent the 6 Plus with his hands trying the same with a Note 3, it "bends", but doesn't stay bent. Since circuit boards and glass screens aren't meant to bend, you might still have problems putting that into a tight pocket. It won't stay bent, but repeated bending and holding a bent position while sitting are not good for electronics and could eventually damage it. People wouldn't necessarily attribute it to bending when it stopped working or the screen broke.
I'm sorry but.....
Whats stupid about going down the pub?
And where should the phone be? in your hand and then on the table for the world to see and have the added risk of dropping it or knocking it to the ground if not sticking your pint on the phone you have sat in a puddle of beer ?
Seems you have no idea of the real world most of us deal with.
Oh and all those saying stick it in a steel case etc, the point of this and pshones like it are they are thin, you shouldn't need to double the thickness to do what the manufacturer should have designed it to do. I expect my phone with care from me not to scratch the screen when I put it in an empty pocket and to withstand general usage without damage, that includes putting it in the same pocket as the previous version managed to handle for the past year or 2...
Why the hell would anyone put anything valuable in a back pocket? Talk about a pickpockets dream.When I was much younger I used to irritate my friends and amuse myself by demonstrating how easy it was to nick their wallets (pre-mobile days y'know) and I'm about as light-fingered as a JCB. The bendy thing - well, meh, other phones are available if you want to stuff them in your back pocket, although I'd recommend a really cheap one so the pickpocket would just drop it in disgust (making sure it's in a case so it doesn't break when he/she does so ;-)
Buggy new software, bendy phones. Apple has really fucked up this time. I understand that smaller outfits do not have the resources to get the product right initially; but one of the worlds largest grossing organisations. Come on.
Its taken me 5 attempts to write this as my iPads IOS8 keyboard keeps corrupting!
Bend my Lumia 930 by putting it in my pocket, or by using it as a lever to lift up the washing machine to fish something or from underneath it, or the hammer nails into granite.
Ok we're not exactly comparing size for size but then I'd comfortably engage in some hand to hand combat with a Lumia 1520.
Phones that you can't put in your pocket-pah. Out of interest have they patented the idea?
I watched the video - that was created in the name of science. After his intro and explanation he begins slowly bending at 1:20 into the video. At 1:39 (video timer) in the phone is bent and he turns it and the clock on the phone shows the time to be 2:26. Later in the video starting about 2:16 mins into it he starts rotating the phone in his hands and the time on the phone is now 1:58. He continues talking and rotating the time changes to 1:59. Not sure how scientific this test is if the time isn't tracking. I'm not defending Apple (I have the shiny new Samsung that lives in my front pocket without signs of damage) but I can't take this test serious - although I do believe it happens. Was this just bad editing?
The iPhone 4 was stainless steal with Aluminosilicate glass on the front and back:-
It stands great pressure and always goes back to original shape. And yeah it suffers from shattering:
http://www.tested.com/tech/smartphones/429-whats-so-special-about-iphone-4s-aluminosilicate-glass/
iPhone 6+ has an aluminium shell for lightness, which apparently lives up to that other characteristic of aluminum, it bends and stays bent.
Yuri Geller has been appointed to Apple's R&D team.
Also I have tried intentionally to break an LCD panel from a phone and they can take quite a lot of bending before they finally snap: the laminated glass structure is remarkably resilient.
Most of the broken screens are due to point impact exceeding the elastic limit of the glass.
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