Hacker News Reader

Comment by shawndumas | Hacker News Reader

  Phone	                 Deformation	Case Separation
  -----------------------------------------------------
  HTC One (M8)	         70 lbs.	90 lbs.
  Apple iPhone 6	 70 lbs.	100 lbs.
  Apple iPhone 6 Plus	 90 lbs.	110 lbs.
  LG G3	                 130 lbs.	130 lbs.
  Apple iPhone 5	 130 lbs.	150 lbs.
  Samsung Galaxy Note 3	 150 lbs.	150 lbs.

Direct link to the video http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/video-hub/3809044640001/

View on HN

First off, their own results show that the 6 series is considerable weaker than the 5 series.

Secondly, they applied that force for 30 seconds and got significant deformation. I'm fairly sure that, given more time, they'd reach the less significant deformation reported and shown by others, with less force.

Your second point is a valid good one to at least consider.

However just playing devil's advocate: 9 returns to Apple (assuming that figure is true) is absolutely trivial relative to the units shipped.

I think it will be interesting to see where we stand in 6 months time. Will we see tons more phones return?

That's really the only meaningful question here. It doesn't matter if it's quantifiably more likely to bend, what matters is if that results in enough phones getting damaged in normal usage to be an actual issue for people. No one will know that for a while.

Non-ECC memory is more likely to get corrupted than ECC memory, but that doesn't mean that every single person who uses a computing device should be using ECC memory. Just because one thing is quantifiably less robust than something else is meaningless without a concept of "how robust does it need to be?"

Obviously the company thinks the phones have sufficient tolerances. A few people on the Internet have posted firsthand accounts that they think proves that the phones are inadequate. A much larger group of people on the Internet who don't like the company that makes the phones practically salivate over these sorts of events, and have been making sure that absolutely everyone who reads any tech forums is HIGHLY AWARE that this is a very important thing that we should all know and care about very, very deeply. Journalists of course will write about this stuff because many of them interpret their job as writing about whatever people are talking about.

Which brings us to the present, in which the only truth that anyone can point to is: no one actually knows if this is actually a problem or not. The only way to answer that question is to wait and see how many returns there are due to breakage. For people who care about truth, well, that's the truth, boring as it may be. In a few months we'll find out if a big company might make less money because somebody should've used a bigger number on a spreadsheet. Exciting! On the other hand, for people who care about arguing about things on the Internet, well, to hell with them, honestly.

The results show that the 6 series is similar in strength to phones of that size from other manufacturers. It stands to reason that a smaller, thicker phone like the iPhone 5 will be more rigid (though it's interesting that it's easier to deform a 6 than a 6+).

No, the results show that there's as much as a 50% difference in the results between top and bottom. That's a huge difference in structural terms.

Yeah, some of the phones in the test are quite hard to bend, and some are extremely hard to bend. In that sense there's a difference.

It's the difference between "I can bend/break it with my bare hands" to "I can't bend/break it with my bare hands". Things stronger than humans tend to last better under use by humans.

I don't see why whether you can bend the phone with your hands is relevant, unless you actually plan to try to bend your phone with your hands. I could probably break my laptop's screen by bending it with my hands. I can tear the pages out of a book. I can rip apart my clothes. But whether or not I can break these items with my bare hands has almost no bearing on their actual lifespan. I'm much more likely to break my laptop by dropping it, destroy my book by getting it wet, and ruin my clothes by staining them.

Things that are stronger generally tend to last better under use by humans or non-humans, but whether you can bend it with your hands is not a good benchmark. But if it bends in your pocket when you're not intentionally stressing it for the benefit of your YouTube audience, that's more troubling.

It means you can damage it with human scale strength. That's an important durability criteria. If you want something that will outlast cows, you make it stronger than a cow. Likewise for any animal or desired user. Humans are not a special exception in engineering terms. That's why roads aren't made of paper and golf gloves should last more than a couple swings. Likewise a phone should be able to handle reasonable human uses.

I can exert 500lb of force fairly easily. None of the phones can withstand that.

You must be an absolute monster of a man then.

The average human male can't even bench press their own weight. 500lb of force is in elite boxing range. You'd basically have to be an Olympic level boxer to be generating that kind of force "fairly easily".

Can a human generate power easily in that range? Maybe if you jumped on your phone from a 2 story building, or had amazing squats and dropped the weights on the phone. But no sane company would design their daily-use general purpose smartphone for those kinds of circumstances.

To give you an idea of what human strength actually looks like here's a paper on hand strength.

http://www.rehab.research.va.gov/jour/70/7/2/swanson.pdf

70lbs is just between the grip strength of a woman and a man.

150lbs is over both.

There are entire categories of human-sized movements that can generate over 70lbs of force. There are surprisingly few that can generate at or over 150. You have to really want to be doing it and you have to be body builder strong.

I would guess well over 50 percent of the population can easily get into that range.

Stepping on your phone can easily generate twice your body weight in force. While running a heal strike can easily be three times your body weight. Hopping on one foot can go beyond that. http://thebodymechanic.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/giandol... http://www.barefootrunning.fas.harvard.edu/4BiomechanicsofFo...

You might argue that's not what we are talking about, but a phone in your back pocket could easily be subjected to more than your body weight when sitting (flopping?) down on a wooden chair.

PS: One of the classic cellphone tests is driving a truck over the thing. For courtiers it's not uncommon for someone to drive over your phone and generally rugged phones can easily service that.

Under those kind of extreme conditions, I'd have no choice but to go with the most rugged possible phone. I think I have an old Nokia around somewhere.

I can choose not to bend/break my phone with my bare hands. That's good enough for me.

Sure, but I think the point is more the "when you have it in the front pocket of your skinny jeans and drunkenly run a bit into the edge of a counter top" case that could very reasonably happen in a 2-year replacement cycle of such a device.

Personally, I'll be getting a rigid case that covers the back and sides.

> Personally, I'll be getting a rigid case that covers the back and sides.

Most cell-phone "rigid" cases are less rigid than the phone's own case, so they only afford protection against scratches and impacts, not bending.

If you run a bit into the edge of a counter top, with 70 lbs of force, I feel, your phone would not be your top concern. Plus I think, people are mostly worried about the phone deforming in your back pocket if you sit down on it. I am not a physics student, but even if you sit down on, say concrete, I think, your ass needs to have some serious muscle tone, such that a metallic object can get deformed without causing you discomfort.

OK, I feel like I have to ask this:

Who puts their phone into their back pocket? Why would you do that? Is it because it doesn't look as good to have it in your front pocket?

Because I sure as hell wouldn't put something that I spent >$200 on, that isn't designed to be sat on, in my back pocket.

No, actually what the parent poster wrote was correct. You say no, but then don't make any point. It does indeed show that the iPhone 6 performs similarly to other similar sized phones.

What do you mean I didn't make a point? A 50% difference in strength is pretty tremendous. That's the point. The iPhone 5 to the iPhone 6 is a pretty serious downgrade, from "I can't damage it with my own strength" to "I can break it if I put a little effort into it".

If you count a 50% difference as "performs similarly" I have some dollar bills I'd like to sell you for $1.50 each.

seriously warped command of the english language there. performs similarly to similar sized phones... The iphone5 is much smaller and therefore less likely to get bent in the pocket. It wasn't that hard to understand.

Then even given that clarification, the iPhone 6 plus performed terribly in this particular test against similar sized phones.

70 to 130 lbs is a huge difference.

Deformation depends a lot more on the force than on how long the force is applied. There is a critical point where a material will permanently deform rather than springing back. More here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yield_(engineering)

Sigh. Even that link causes Safari on OS X to display an image saying:

   WE'RE SORRY
   You need to update your Flash Player

So, by default, the Consumer Reports website is non-functional with those customers who are most likely to have an iPhone. I then visited consumerreports.org using my non-bent iPhone6 and wonder of wonders, the video played.

Morons.

Wow. glad to know my Note 3, as big as it is, is class leading in this particular test. It's definitely a top-notch piece of hardware in every other way.

From specs to hardware build the iPhone 6 just seems really behind the curve and very "blah".

The iPhone 5 was definitely a class leading phone in the hand before this test, feeling like a beautiful instrument. This test is proving it too is a fantastically put together device from a durability POV.

The 6 is very ho hum and I'm adding this to my list of ho hum things about it. It's not a bad phone, but not a great, class leading one in any way either.

I never really thought I'd see the day that a Korean phone designed by a completely anonymous corporate industrial design drone really beat the socks off of Apple's offering, and yet it appears to have happened this year.

All that being said, #bendgate is seriously overblown, just like antenna-gate. This is most likely a desire to hit Apple where it hurts the most, image, in order to extract free stuff/lower price/whatever like what happened last time with antenna-gate.

> From specs to hardware build the iPhone 6 just seems really behind the curve

Obviously people see what they want to see, but: http://www.anandtech.com/show/8559/iphone-6-and-iphone-6-plu...

Specwise it looks like a top-end phone from last year. RAM, screen, etc.

I'm glad to see it's doing well in the javascript benchmarks at least. Speaks highly of Apple's nitro engine.

Speaking of screens: http://www.displaymate.com/iPhone6_ShootOut.htm

For fun compare to a similar sized phone that's come out at the same time as the iPhone 6.

http://www.displaymate.com/Galaxy_Note4_ShootOut_1.htm

Based on our extensive Lab tests and measurements, the Galaxy Note 4 is the Best performing Smartphone display that we have ever tested. It matches or breaks new records in Smartphone display performance for: Highest Absolute Color Accuracy, Highest Screen Resolution, Infinite Contrast Ratio, Highest Peak Brightness, Highest Contrast Rating in Ambient Light, and the smallest Brightness Variation with Viewing Angle. Its Color Management capability provides multiple Color Gamuts – a major advantage that is not currently provided by any of the other leading Smartphones. The Galaxy Note 4 delivers uniformly consistent all around Top Tier display performance: it is the first Smartphone display to ever get all Green (Very Good to Excellent) Ratings in all test and measurement categories (except one Yellow for a Brightness Variation with Average Picture Level) since we started the Display Technology Shoot-Out article Series in 2006, an impressive achievement for a display. The Galaxy Note 4 has again raised the bar for top display performance up by another notch.

It's not like the iPhone 6 is a bad phone. If it were an Android device it would be considered an above average to a good in the field. But it's not, it's an iPhone and expectations are that it should come out as class leading. Which it isn't along most measures to date.

I have a hard time trusting prose with inappropriate capitalization

What is infinite contrast ratio? Is the phone able to emit zero light from a pixel instructed to show RGB(0,0,0) when another area asks for RGB(255,255,255)?

Multiple color gamuts—does the phone's screen actually extend well past sRGB, or did they just discover perceptual color mapping?

The compact camera market went through a spec-obsessive phase, and it resulted in 14+ megapixel compact cameras that struggled with anything less than direct sunlight. My 12 megapixel dSLR sounds weaker spec-wise, but works better in every lighting situation—even this aging piece of kit gives me pleasing images at ISO 5,000, well past its design limits.

There's a lot more to design than stuffing in faster CPUs, more RAM, and more screen and camera pixels.

You haven't shown that it isn't class leading. You've only shown that one phone beats it in one category and not by a lot, two categories if we count pounds to deform.

The Anandtech link above shows the new iPhones basically among the leaders in every category. The displaymate reviews extend that. How you spin that into merly above average and last years quality is beyond me.

Choosing a different android device to trump each separate specification of the iPhone just proves that there is no single android device that is as good overall.

Did you read the iPhone 6 link? It was done after the Note 4, as mentioned in the write-up. Also mentioned in the write-up was

"Based on our extensive Lab tests and measurements, the iPhone 6 Plus is the Best performing Smartphone LCD display that we have ever tested."

Read the two articles again. In several categories the Note 4 comes out ahead, sometimes significantly.

Not really, it speaks highly of their SOC.

No, iPhone's A8 is optimized for single-core performance, which is way more meaningful in real applications than combined multi-core performance. 99% of apps run on single core. Although, A8's combined multi-core performance is also on par with other high-end smartphones.

See comparison to SGS5 in Geekbench 3: http://www.phonesreview.co.uk/wp-content/phoneimages/iPhone-...

> "99% of apps run on single core."

This really isn't true. A rudimentary "Hello World" app, maybe, but all of the common apps that are being run are heavily multithreaded.

Even an app that just uses stock/fairly common libs (like AFNetworking) is going to be multithreaded by virtue of those things alone.

Multi-core performance is critical in the iOS ecosystem, single-core is hardly a concern anymore.

I think the GP's implication is that the A8 can deal we'll with apps that primarily work on the main/UI thread - which most apps do.

Just because an app is multithreaded doesn't mean it's going to scale to use more than one core on average. It doesn't matter if you can do networking in a background thread if your UI is just going to block until the results come in.

Obviously those tests were rigged.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com