The iPhone 6 has just hit the market, and everybody who is anybody has picked one up. Users have stuffed them into their tight jean pockets and gone about their day, confident in the fact that their ultra sleek, ultra thin, smart phone will rocket them into the next generation of information technology and social media. There’s only one problem. After several days of walking with the iPhone in their pockets, many users have claimed their phone has bent. The phone is still operational, mind you, but it’s merely bee curved in an uncomfortable and ugly way.
As a result, users with way too much time and money on their hands took to the internet to see if the phone is, in fact, bendable, and the answer is resoundingly: yes! The phone bends easily to the pressure of human hands, or as is the most common case, the pressure of tight human jeans against your thighs. It doesn’t even take that much pressure to do so either. The case itself is very malleable and the screen bends with it.
The key here, is the point at which users are seeing the bend take place. It most commonly occurs right below the side buttons and only on one side of the phone. This is because most of the phone is really just a flimsy thin aluminum case. The thing that makes the phone so rigid is actually not really the “phone” components at all, it’s the battery, which takes up a majority of the space inside the phone itself. The battery runs up and down the majority of the side opposite to the buttons, making the phone nearly completely rigid on that side.
However, on the other side of the battery are a number of different small electrical components. These too give the phone some rigidity. However, right below the buttons there is a small space with no components, just very thin and flimsy wires in them. This is the part of the phone that bends so easily. With nothing pushing back against the aluminum case, it bends as easily as… well… an aluminum can. On the “upside” this does mean you can bend your phone back into place, but it will be creased and scarred and will never quite have that fresh out of the factory look.
Users are taking to twitter under the hashtag #BendGate to voice their displeasure with the flimsiness of the new iPhone. Similar smart phones, like the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, are not caving to similar pressure, mostly because of the construction of their outer case and different arrangement of phone pieces
As it stands, if you want your iPhone 6 to keep its shape, we recommend purchasing a very very sturdy case, something like an Otterbox, or other reinforced skeleton made of hard plastic. Soft rubber cases simply won’t do.