Though who knows, maybe some folks have had problems with these devices and it's just not widely reported. Given the high profile launches and expectations of flawlessness from Apple (rightly or wrongly), it may well come under increased scrutiny.
I think we're at least going to have to put an asterix on the tale of the guy that bent his phone in his pants pockets. Until it's been reliably reproduced, I for one won't be jumping to any conclusions.
But surprisingly they didn't test bends.
As for your second point, fair enough, I'd like to see more testing, too. But it's already been replicated numerous times, even on unedited video. All looks pretty reliable to me.
Well, given how Apple consistently said people didn't want bigger phones because they weren't suitable for pockets, its not entirely implausible that when they finally bowed to the sales numbers that showed the first part of that was wrong, they might have gotten the wrong message and thought that the second part was still basically right -- that they believed that people wanted bigger phones even though they weren't convenient for keeping in pockets, so that pocket suitability wasn't an issue for bigger phones.
Admittedly, its inconsistent with the myth of Apple's near-prescience when it comes to consumer preferences, but that myth seem to me to be as much a product of people misreading the high-profile cases where Apple marketing has been very good at creating consumer demand for whatever it is Apple is making as anything else.
This is like antenna gate-- typical Apple bashing pretending like there's some sort of defect when there isn't. And like antenna gate, if you analyze other phones on the market, you'll find they too don't have super human strength.
In fact, the fact that they bent, instead of breaking, is pretty strong evidence that they are the best built phones on the market.
Subject any competing phone to 300pounds of force differential between the center and the edges (or whatever they used to get these to bend) and I'm pretty certain they will be destroyed.
One of the reasons I buy Apple products is that they are built to be durable in a way that very few of their competitors are.
This video says different:
And what about antenna gate, did that turn out to be false? I'm genuinely curious, as all I've seen is that it was a serious issue that was later corrected by Apple. i.e. these people had all the right to complain. Let me know if you've seen other info.
Based upon, apparently, your opinion?
they are built to be durable in a way that very few of their competitors are.
Material porn has absolutely nothing to do with actual suitability to purpose. iPhone devices are absolutely wonderful devices, but the narrative around the build materials, which people wrongly conflate with built "quality", is detached from reality.