Bendgate, the story about how
When Consumer Reports published its own testing related to the controversy last night, two things became clear. First, given enough force, the iPhone 6 Plus will bend in exactly the manner that Lewis Hilsenteger of Unbox Therapy demonstrated in his original viral video (now viewed more than 41 million times.) Second, the amount of force required, 90 to 110 pounds depending on whether you are looking for a bend or a full screen separation, is not something that is likely to happen in everyday life.
What the Consumer Reports data also shows is that the new iPhones are considerably weaker than last year's model. "How often do you see a new generation 50% weaker than the last?" asks Hilsenteger. Neither the fact that CR showed the 6 Plus to be stronger than the 6 or that 90 pounds of pressure were required to bend it like Beckham completely let Apple off the hook. And as we will see below, Apple and CR may not have been testing exactly the right thing.
So was Hilsenteger just showboating for clicks? Well, yes, that's what he does for a living. But he was also trying to make sense, for himself and his audience, about what the reports of bent iPhones could really mean. So, "for the sake of science," as he says in the video, he tried bending it himself. And he didn't just bend one phone. To make sure the first one was not a fluke, he bent a second one as well, in the same manner. The resulting video contains, as he told me this evening, "two different tests mashed together… [I] preferred the outro from the first bend but the overhead shot was slightly overexposed so I went with the second overhead." This little detail effectively explains the inconsistency of the time displayed on the phone's screen that was pointed out by Elyse Betters of Pocket-lint as evidence that "the video is a fake." Bendgate "birthers" then went on to cite this discrepancy to support the notion that this was all a hoax to attack Apple.
Sorry, it's not a hoax, but neither is it as dramatic a fail as the bent iPhone images would indicate. Hilsenteger himself pointed to the side button cutouts as an obvious weak point, but imgur user alleras4 has taken that idea a step further. In a post on Thursday, alleras4 annotated images from the ifixit teardown of the 6 Plus to show a very particular structural weakness in that location (see image below.) According to the post, the critical issue is that there is a reinforcement that the rocker buttons are attached to that is screwed to the side wall of the phone. Apparently, alleras4 thinks that the lower screw is too close to the weak point of the bottom button cutout and "under a particular type of flexing, the phone is prone to bend mainly because a metal insert meant to reinforce instead spins in an axis too close to the critical point." To translate, if Apple were to place the screw holes a little farther away from the button cutouts the reinforcing plate would be much more effective.
What we have here is a case where everyone is right—but they are talking about different things. Let's look at the image below, also from alleras4's post. Notice the suspension bridge-like structural diagram applied to the original video still. This indicates that there are actually four points of pressure being applied, two with his fingers on the screen side of the device and two with his thumbs below. Because of the very particular structural weakness near the button cutouts, Hilsenteger's left thumb is acting as a fulcrum to apply pressure to the weakest point. Also notice that his thumbs are not truly centered on the width of the phone but are closer to to weaker (button) side.
Compare the above image to the images from Re/Code's tour of Apple's reliability testing lab (and the less informative video from the CNBC tour.) There appear to be two different machines that test situations similar to how Hilsenteger bent the phones. One is a "three-point bend test," which apples a bar of pressure all the way across the middle of the device. The other is the "pressure point test" where 10 kg is applied to the center of the device. All told, Apple says it tested each of the new iPhones (the 6 and the 6 Plus) 15,000 times. alleras4 drew a triangular diagram on one such video still that indicates that the three-point bend test involves only three points of pressure (compared to Hilsenteger's five), with the fulcrum in the very center of the phone. And in that well-reinforced location, Apple has applied 50 pounds of force. Admittedly 50 pounds should be sufficient for normal use. Consumer Reports turned the dial up to 90 pounds with the same type of setup and achieved an Unbox Therapy-grade bend. But if you apply pressure in just the right spot, as Hilsenteger has, you can achieve the bend effect with far less force than 90 pounds.
Simply put, Apple (and Consumer Reports) tested for the normal case not the edge case. Hilsenteger found that edge and, as they say, pushed it. "They have a very obvious weak point," he tells to me of the new iPhones.
Given all of this, it is not hard to imagine that only 9 edge cases have been reported in the first week in the wild. One-in-a-million is not a bad defect rate. But it is also likely that these cases will mount over time as users carelessly slip their phones into their pockets. Most of these deformations will be slight and will not get reported. Some will be more extreme and will be reported to Apple.
This is not a disaster for Apple or its customers. It is not, as one hyperbolic Seeking Alpha writer suggests, a "Black Swan." It is a serious concern that Apple should address by 1) replacing any bent phones without question; 2) offering a free reinforced case for any iPhone 6 customer that wants one; and 3) retooling the particular reinforcement in question (if that, indeed, turns out to have been the source of the problem) and putting it into production ASAP. Apple should as well consider adding some chaos theory to its testing procedures to catch these kinds of edge cases before product release.
As for Hilsenteger, he seems to have become a lightning rod for people's feelings about Apple. We admire Apple's high flying, but we expect its wings to eventually melt. Those who raise the alarm are either parasitic or prophetic, depending on whether you are cheering Apple's ascent or anticipating its demise. In truth, he's not a hater, he's not a faker, just a guy who makes videos (with a 12-core Apple Mac Pro, mind you.)
BONUS ROUND: Bloomberg financial analyst (and Samsung user) Ulimmeh-Hannibal Ezekiel snapped this shot of a bent iPhone 6 at an Apple Store in London today:
