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Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

I understand this is a problem and the phones shouldn't be susceptible to problems like this from normal use. Apple will probably just have to eat this one. The thing that annoys me a little is that if any other phone had a similar bending problem, nobody would give a hoot. In fact it looks like the HTC One had pretty much the same bend-ability[1]. That doesn't make what happened to these people's phones acceptable, but I think it's useful perspective.

[1] https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2014/09/consumer-re...

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Live by the sword, die by the sword. In this case, the 'sword' is the perception that Apple is a leader in quality.

In this case, the 'sword' is a strategy that originally tried to appeal to everyone, from the least competent user to professionals. Judging from some of the idiocy I see in app reviews, a part of what's happening is that the LCD users are bringing expectations down to their level.

What does one expect when you subject a deliberately thin electronic device to the full force of your body?

Where do you put your phone? I put mine in my pockets. It's not unusual for a fair amount of strain to be applied there.

I put mine in my pockets. I also exercise some intelligence and common sense in how I do it.

It's not unusual for a fair amount of strain to be applied there.

For you and other people, apparently not.

You "exercise some intelligence and common sense in how [you put your phone in your pocket]"? What? What does that look like?

My Samsungs, HTC's, and older iPhones did just fine with me exercising exactly no intelligence when I put them in my pocket.

• I put my phone in my front pocket, instead of the back, so I'm not sitting on it;

• I then make sure to buy pants with front pockets deep enough that my phone is not being pressed into my groin when I sit;

• and I take my phone out of my pocket if someone is about to sit on [or straddle] my lap, charge into me at waist height, or drop a large object on my leg while I'm laying on my side.

You know, common sense.

Yeah, that's pretty much me. I don't do it to pamper my phone. It's that I find all of those situations uncomfortable otherwise. However, I still do feel that people who behave callously in those situations are exhibiting: "This is why we can't have nice things."

Please realize that not everyone shares this sentiment, and would rather want a phone suited to their current situation, instead of having to adapt to their phone - like having to buy pants that fits the phone. To me, that's just as much common sense.

There are many phone-sized objects, though. It's not so much that you buy pants to fit just your phone, as that you buy pants that are functional according to the current expectations of society on what you should be carrying around with you; and clothiers also take this into account and make most pants with pockets large-enough to fit those same expected accessories.

I mean, I do approach the problem from the other direction as well; one reason I don't buy a phone that's approaching phablet size (other than not being able to hold the things in one hand) is that it wouldn't fit in the pockets of most pants, greatly narrowing the range of pants I could wear (or necessitating an—admittedly probably cheap—tailoring to add deeper pockets.)

But as it stands, I'm not limiting myself much—my phone is only slightly larger than my wallet, so I'm just avoiding clothes that not only wouldn't fit a phone, but wouldn't fit a wallet. There aren't that many pants (for men, at least) that have pockets that small/shallow/tight.

The people are using it wrong(but not the previous generation that did not bend), maybe Apple should sell them some cases for protection /s

Totally agree, e.g. if Samsung hat problems with their batteries, nobody would give a hoot. Just because everyone is out to get Apple.

Batteries exploding causing fires, damage, and possible harm to those around it

vs.

An expensive slab of metal and glass that, surprise, bends if you do things like sit on it with it in your back pocket or other unnecessary forces.

100% completely, completely different. One is an actual danger (Samsung), the other is mistreating and not respecting the device (People who spend a ton of money on an iPhone and then treat it roughly).

To be fair, an order of magnitude more devices bent than exploded.

Not entirely true, Samsung sales dropped heavily when their batteries exploded and were banned at airports with signs on airports not allowing you to board if you had samsung on you and there is likely some sort of lawsuit against samsung for exploding batteries. Apple sales likely didnt get as fazed.

Theres no real hate, its more because they lied. People reserve a right to sue about a product if there are fraudulent claims.

Pretty sure the person you were responding to forgot to add /s to the end.

Batteries exploding is a massively different circumstance than a largely-aesthetic¹ issue.

¹I never even heard of "touch disease" before this article, I didn't realize bendgate actually affected touch sensing in the slightest.

It's not just an aesthetic. It can cause a host of other electrical problems which can affect its basic use. Circuit boards aren't designed to be ductile.

That's absolutely true -- but even if it completely and irreparably bricked the device, I think it's fair to say that you'd still be talking about a very different set of consequences from batteries exploding or emitting noxious fumes.

This is whataboutism. Samsung has been punished and taken major losses as a result of their faulty design. Apple still has people trying to pretend that it wasn't such a bad problem.

I saw a shit ton of "bendgate" press. It was a major media issue.

And you know what? In reality it wasn't a major issue. For most people it was just a minor one. My phone was slightly bent. It bothered me that it was slightly bent. Beyond that mild bother though, it had no impact on my life. For the people who suffered "touch disease" (which again, I never even heard of until this article so it can't have been terribly widespread) it obviously was a problem, though one that's easily fixed by having the phone replaced under warranty. Obviously, having a widespread issue affect your flagship phone in this manner is a problem, but it's largely a PR problem rather than a serious issue with the device.

Meanwhile, having your phone end up as a ticking time bomb that could explode at any moment is a pretty major issue.

They're both major issues. The Samsung one is a safety issue. The Apple is a quality and reliability one.

The Ford Pinto and the Yugo GV were both bad cars. The Pinto would kill you. The Yugo was made poorly with substandard materials. Splitting hairs over which was the biggest failure is something for a top ten list. They were both bad for consumers who spent their money on them and were stuck with a product that they couldn't continue to use.

If bendgate prevented you from using your phone then you’d have a point. But it didn’t. For nearly everybody it was purely a (rather subtle) aesthetic issue.

Until it bent to the point where it didn't work. Electrical components are not designed to deform plastically or have residual stresses.

The Ford Pinto and the Samsung both suffered from fuel/power problems that caused them to be dangerous. (Although, the Pinto was worse because they knew about it beforehand and calculated the monetary loses from deaths.)

The Yugo and Apple both suffer from problems with structural stability and reliability, yet one is a joke to a punchline and the other one is Yugo.

None of these scenarios are good for consumers and none of them should be excused as biased or unfair. Bad products should get bad press coverage. In this case, people should have fair warning that the premium that they paid for a prestige brand doesn't mean they're getting prestige level materials.

What about the Note batteries exploding? People seemed to care about that.

The parent was making a sarcastic counterpoint.

Nobody owns a HTC One, so why would anyone care about the problems it has?

iPhone 6 probably sold 100x times as much as the HTC One

There’s some truth to this. The Nexus 6p would bend just looking at it wrong. Nowhere near the controversy.

There's nothing to "eat" because the court didn't certify the class.

Apple are held to a higher standard because of the perception that their hardware is of a higher standard. I don't see the problem.

Although this is changing now, when the iPhone 6 first came out it really was supposed to be miles ahead came to hardware quality. Apple said it, the blogs said it, etc.

   > The thing that annoys me a little is that if any other 
   > phone had a similar bending problem, nobody would 
   > give a hoot.

If you can't carry a mobile phone in your pocket without it bending, the phone is not fit for purpose.

Maybe nobody notices when other companies sell phones that are unfit and, later, lie to the public about it. On the other hand, nobody would defend them either.

Never been a problem for my 6+.

Maybe people who want to carry a phone in their pockets should be more careful when they sit down, or wear pants that aren't so tight.

For the many customers whose phones developed touch disease, it was a problem. And Apple themselves say it's 7x more bendy than previous models... well, except that Apple doesn't say so publicly :(

Do those sticking up for Apple in this thread want Apple to continue releasing flimsier products than they used to? I do not understand why there is so much positivity about this story.

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