It's (speculated to be) flexing PCBs under BGA chips again.
This is a serious problem when making devices thinner: they become more flexible, but the joints are not flexible, so after a while you get a crack all the way across a joint and it either becomes intermittent or capacitively coupled.
A decade ago I had a white plastic-bodied Macbook which developed a similar fault in the graphics. But it's not just Apple, the famous "red ring of death" was a similar problem induced by thermal cycling rather than physical bending.
It's reminiscent of the iBook G4 problems with cracking RoHS solder (caused by heat, not bending). Apple denied up them until the National Consumer Agency of Denmark investigated and produced this excellent report:
It happened to my computer. Apple delayed and denied and charged me, but wouldn't fix the problem. Eventually I gave up, but I've never bought an Apple device since that failure.
Thermal cycling issue in macbook pro 17, 2011. After 3 years, I had to put the logic board into the oven for 10 minutes, ever month. After a year of that apple finally issued a service bulletin and replaced that board.
Presuming that manufacturers aren't about to stop trying to make thinner and thinner devices...
Is this class of issues correctable (to a degree) with a change in the design of those components -- for example, proactively splitting the board at the point that the fissure is likely to appear and coupling it in a flexible way -- or is this a materials science concern where we need to find new methods to build the components' substrates so they are innately flexible?
You can't split the board, it's the solder joints on the surface that are the problem. So far as I know there is no flexible soldering technology, and creating one would be pretty extreme materials science.
(To see the problem, place a coin on a credit card and bend the card - note that the coin no longer touches across its whole surface)
The normal solution is to make the PCB stiffer (thicker, or invent something better than FR4), or to make the overall casing stiffer. Either by changing materials or changing the aspect ratio. Fundamentally a long flat thin object is going to be bendy or brittle. The older iPhones that were smaller with glass front and back were an extremely good design from this point of view.
> Fundamentally a long flat thin object is going to be bendy or brittle
I think GPs idea was to make the PCB no longer long, but have two smaller PCBs with flat flex between them. Then when the phone bends, the PCBs wont bend but let the flat flex take the stress instead.
> (To see the problem, place a coin on a credit card and bend the card - note that the coin no longer touches across its whole surface)
Now cut the card in half and connect it with half a cm of tape and bend it - the two halves will be flat and you'll get a V shape instead. Put the coin on one side and no problem.
I guess it depends on how much open space is in the phone or if the whole PCB is completely flush with the bent casing.
Doable, and might even be a good idea for long thin PCBs, but it messes with both your routing and placement and therefore consumes PCB area. Also upsets your controlled-impedance traces. And adds an extra assembly step. To estimate doing this, take the PCB image and Paint and try to clear a 3mm gap in it. How many components do you have to move? Do you have to make the whole thing 3mm longer? Aren't most of them decoupling capacitors that must be kept right next to their corresponding IC?
(Look at the smallest .04 x .02 resistors on there!)
More cynically, the PCB only needs to be made as bend-resistant as the display: you don't care about your BGAs if you've cracked the screen.
The article does mention a fix the repairers have been applying, involving the "sticker shield" - not shown in the hero image, it's the metal casing that's been removed and you can see the edges of. That's a few mils off the surface of the PCB and evidently stiffens it enough (on the I-beam principle of operation) to avert the problem.
Alternatively, let the case flex slightly and have the board float in a gap attaching to the center as apposed to the edges. You still need to connect the buttons to the main board, but that's not a major issue. basically: [---|--|---] with [ ] as edge, -- as board and | as attachment points.
This is not going to be as flat as possible, but it let's you play with some flex vs thin and completely stiff.
Simply making the cross section of the iPhone rectangular again would go a long way toward stiffening it up. The curved edges are beautiful to see and great to hold, but they're quite a bit weaker as beams.
So far as I know there is no flexible soldering technology, and creating one would be pretty extreme materials science.
There are already polymer glue solder alternatives. They are nowhere near as good as solder, however.
The normal solution is to make the PCB stiffer... Fundamentally a long flat thin object is going to be bendy or brittle
What about changing the layout, such that you can introduce many, many voids in the circuit board? If you can divide up the board into many separate "compartments" then each individual segment can be proportionally stiffer and less flexy. (Long, thin things are "bendy" because the material can act as a lever against itself, so many short stubby things can be very stiff locally.)
It would probably be very hard/expensive to manufacture, but you could have something like an LGA socket, with the springy contacts soldered to both the IC and the PCB. Thay way, the board can flex all it wants without overly stressing the solder joints.
It's not even just consumer electronics. I work on a particle physics experiment, and some sensors we use to detect particles are ball-bonded to the readout electronics. It turns out that thermal cycling between say -20 and 20 °C (operational vs. room temperature) a couple of times the balls break and we loose sensitivity in part of the sensor.
It seems people hate these ball bonds and want to move away from them. One alternative is wirebonds, which have their own problems. They are pretty fragile and time consuming to set. I've also learned today that they start to vibrate and break if nearby wires carry a signal at their resonance frequency, which is pretty crazy.
The golden alternative would be to build everything (sensor + electronics) from one monolithic wafer. Instead of making a silicon sensor, some silicon ASICs, and joining them with a PCB, you'd directly put the electronics in the sensor and make it one big CMOS circuit. However it will take a couple of years until we can do that.
except with the RROD Microsoft admitted the issue and provided a replacement or repair service. Apple are just ignoring the issue and leaving the customer suck up the cost and hassle.
My 20 month old (i.e. out of warranty and with no Applecare policy) iphone 6+ started showing the symptoms a week and a half ago. The "Genius" at the Apple Store immediately recognised the symptoms and processed a free replacement (refurbished) phone without any prompting or negotiation on my part.
So while it's true that they are staying very quiet about it in public, it does seem that knowledge of the problem and a free replacement policy has been communicated within the company.
Note: if you are in the EU, settle for nothing less than a new phone (rather than refurbished).
There was recently a lawsuit in the Netherlands where someone sued Apple after receiving a refurbished phone after replacement under warranty [1]. She won the case:
The judge based his verdict on a verdict of the European Court of Justice [2], so it's likely that the outcome would be the same in other EU countries.
[1] 20 months would still fall under warranty in the EU.
What's tong with refurbished? With regular devices, only a few are tested each batch. With refurbished, every single piece of the device should be tested.
Your experience is an example of how capricious Apple's handling of the issue is. I walked in with a 14 month old phone in the exact same situation as yours, including the immediate identification of the problem by the Genius Bar rep, and I was told buy a new one. Period. No help, no willingness to help. Just buy a new one.
So when I've gone in for service at an Apple Store, they always take my Apple ID down. I always wondered if those who buy more get better service. For example, the person who has a purchase history of four or five iPhones, a few iPods, and pair of iPads, and a few Apple laptops might have a better chance of getting an out of warranty fix than someone who has only ever purchased one or two iPhones. It always seemed like this would make sense because Apple wouldn't want to alienate its diehards. Just a theory...
I've wondered that too. I've gotten much better service in terms of hardware replacement at Apple stores than my friends, and I spend a lot more with Apple than they do
Did you read the article? Considering the number of phones they talk about it is certainly not widespread or even Apple policy to replace these phones if out of warranty.
Perhaps a timely reminder than the plural of anecdote is not data.
Microsoft denied the RROD for a long time and then made people jump through a lot of hoops in order to get a replacement or repair. Also RROD was far more widespread (in terms of % of devices affected) than this issue appears to be.
Most people I know who got RROD ended up just throwing their 360 out.
Yeah I have started buying Chinese phones, started with a OnePlus One and I have just ordered a Xiaomi Redmi Note and most people consider them to be inferior because they are Chinese, oblivious the fact that their Apple device and many Androids are manufactured in China too.
Also never had an issue with the Oneplus, it has taken a battering and I have successfully changed the screen 3 times, survived a full submersion while turned on and numerous drops. It is currently missing the on\off button due to my carelessness but it is still going strong.
> It's (speculated to be) flexing PCBs under BGA chips again.
Also, operational heat (from SoC, battery, whatevs...) can repetitively flex boards ever so slightly as it heats up and cools down, and on the long term will cause BGA chips to lose contact over time. That's what famously happened on the Xbox 360, but it more silently happened on numerous other devices too.
BGA is a necessity nowadays due to pin density, but it's a tech that's incredibly easy to ruin at the slightest design or manufacturing mistake.
Happened to my launch-week iPhone 6 Plus. Apple employees at the store were aware that phones had this issue but acted like it wasn't a problem they could treat. They treated it as a "bad screen" problem by replacing screens. After a couple of screen replacements the issue didn't go away.
Ultimately, I had to pay $329.00 for a refurbished phone after they swapped out a few screens which didn't make the problem go away.
I don't understand how they would make you buy a refurbished phone. Anytime I have had any issues on my iPhone, if Apple couldn't fix it, they just give me a new/refurbished phone free of charge.
How would they make you buy a refurbished phone? I recently dropped my iPhone 6s (again) and screen finally cracked, I brought it to apple - they tried to replace the screen and it did not work, so they just gave me a brand new phone for a price that I paid for screen replacement (~$140)
My understanding of the heuristics (as an owner of iPhone 6 Plus [not 6s], with many broken screens)- if there is body damage around the screen in the thin aluminum parts, you need a full replacement (the screen can't sit properly and can't seat properly). If there's no body damage, they replace the screen. If the replaced screen still doesn't pass calibration, you get a refurbed phone
Remember "bendgate"? It turns out that while the bending may not be big enough to be permanent or visible it may still be enough to cause a chip to loosen from the PCB. Louis Rossmann has a great video on the subject
i had this happen to my 6+ a year while under warranty. The Apple Genius Bar I took it to had seen this problem before and knew to twist it to get it working. He made sure it was backed up to iCloud and then gave me a replacement. This new phone also got the gray bar of death after 3 weeks.
I speculate that I was bending the phone in my pocket. I had gained 20 pounds in six months due to job stress and suddenly my pants were tight and my phone was stressed in my pants pocket. I bought looser pants and then lost those 20 pounds and haven't had it happen again
Seen as its a Californian company and most of the execs are very cargo pants-ish I also don't think they're designing products taking into account people in other parts of the world like to wear smarter skinnier fitting clothes.
>“But the fact remains—compared to earlier iPhone models, the iPhone 6/6+ is kind of a ‘bendy’ phone. Its slim form factor and larger surface area subject the logic board within the phone to mechanical flexion pressure that no other iPhone has had to deal with[...]”
Thank god they are rumoured to be making phones even slimmer then, _and_ getting rid of the headphone jack as well!
Apple seems to be putting form ahead of function these days.
Apart from that it was a great design, very user serviceable. Whole thing comes apart with just two screws, glass isn't part of the touch screen so smashed phones can be fixed for <$10 in < 10 minutes.
Apple likes to bleat on about how environmentally sound they are but glueing everything together and making it disposable piece of electro-garbage just makes that whole spiel ridiculous to me.
Having replaced the screen on a 4s myself, I can say your 10 minute estimate was way off. You could replace the back glass in 2 minutes flat, but the front glass was much much more involved.
Replacing the front glass required you to disassemble every 0.something mm screw in the thing and pull all of the parts out. It took me over an hour, partially because I had to carefully document each and every screw to make sure they go back in the right place (I didn't want to swap a 0.7mm and a 0.8mm screw somewhere).
I think the screw heads are a red herring. The screwdriver costs next to nothing, it's really not a problem spending a few dollars on tools for a phone that comes apart well. I think there are much more relevant things to complain about as far as actual "serviceability" goes.
The reality is, if you aren't the kind of person who can spend a few minutes researching and procuring the correct set of screwdrivers, you really should not be opening the case anyway. If you've ever opened up an iPhone and for example replaced the battery I think you would agree, the pentalobe screws are just the appropriate level of deterrent. Crucially, there's no DRM on the battery preventing me from swapping it out myself.
The iphone 4 originally shipped with regular phillips head screws on the outside, but Apple quietly switched those out to the pentalobe head screws sometime after the initial batches of phones came out.
While I totally understand what you're saying and agree with you, I've had 2 of the 85W Mac power adapters replaced out of warranty (2012 rMBP). I'm a "road warrior", travel around 250k miles / year, probably pack / unpack my computer 4-8 times per day, and I'm good about winding/unwinding the power cord, but it's just not designed for that kind of wear & tear.
I think I've gotten replacements because I've been able to show the electrical arcing that takes place (for anyone reading this who doesn't know what electrical arcing is, look it up). Between the nice spark, the sound and especially the smell, employees are pretty damn quick to replace the part. (I did have an employee initially try to just replace part of it, and when I showed him how the problem remained, I just walked over and grabbed a new one off the shelf and told him "I'll just take this." He scanned it and off I went.)
FWIW, the problem I'm talking about is the little 2-prong AC adapter that slides on to the main power "brick". On an 85W model at least, all that weight is borne and supported by the connection, and the torque (or maybe I should be using a term like "lever" or "moment", I don't recall my physics very well) is too much over time.
Last comment - generally I just take Shoe Goo and goop it over the weak strain relief where the cord emerges from the brick. Sure, I don't look cool, but that part of the power supply doesn't fail.
While anecdotal, I have a charger from a 2006 MBP that has no fraying at all and is in great working order with a MagSafe 2 adapter. I've beaten the crap out of it too and travelled a ton with it. It's a bit dirty looking, but not damaged and perfectly functional, especially for a 10+ year old charger.
It was generally only noticeable in areas of marginal signal, IME. I found it possible to make it happen deliberately if signal wasn't great, but never did it accidentally.
It did work just fine, it actually had the best antenna of any phone on the market at the time - dramatic improvement on the previous models. Yeah it lost signal when held wrong but was still superior to other phones. http://www.anandtech.com/show/3794/the-iphone-4-review/2
Curious: What happens when, during a call, you lose signal and don't recover it? If the call doesn't drop, does it just stay connected, waiting for the signal to come back?
I think the point is that it wasn't ever a complete loss of signal. Signal strength drops a little, maybe the baseband turns up its gain and burns a little more power, and the call stays connected.
You didn't have to hold it a particular way - you had to avoid holding it a particular way. I had one for 2 years and didn't experience dropped calls beyond expected norms.
It frustrates me to no end. I (and I assume many others) would instantly upgrade my iPhone if the next iPhone was thicker but had 2x the battery life. That would be a real improvement in my life.
But they'll probably come out with one about the same size, with ~10% more battery life due to software and hardware changes - and call it a great increase.
They even realize the battery thing is a problem, so Apple, the manufacturer of the hardware and the design geniuses, come out with a monstrous, hideous battery case, instead of just improving the underlying hardware. http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MGQL2LL/A/iphone-6s-smart-...
I don't understand this. You say you want more battery in exchange for a larger device. Isn't that exactly what this case is providing? You call it "monstrous" but it's precisely what you're asking for -- more width in exchange for more battery.
It's a bulbous protrusion that completely ruins the design aesthetic of the phone. There's no way Ive would design an iPhone with a big lump sticking out of the back. Why bother with a beautifully finished aluminium chassis if you're going to wrap it in silicone?
I'd buy a thicker phone, but not one with a screen larger than 5 inches. 5" without a case is already uncomfortable to hold, and if the battery were directly integrated into the phone, I could get a little more battery in the added thickness. One option I wouldn't mind seeing more of is phones with removable back covers, to let you replace the battery with a larger one, while giving people who want a thin device the option to stick with the stock cover.
...except for the OP's whole point - they break easy.
For instance, cords. There's never been a load coil on their cords, because they look clunky. So they are noisy as heck. Their cords have no strain relief - again because it looks clunky. So their cords are the #1 replacement item due to breaking all the time right at the connector.
> Apple seems to be putting form ahead of function these days.
I don't want to start a flame war here but I would be interested in the numbers of broken screens. I make it a habit to ask friends with shattered iPhone screens how often they dripped it w/o breaking and most tell me they never dropped it before
Well, they did (apparently) address the issue in the 6S, by moving the vulnerable components, so presumably they'll have considered this issue in the next iteration. Maybe they'll even restore the metal shields over the chips.
The 7 will probably just have a different set of problems to deal with.
Oh, I am so glad we have laws in my country to prevent asshole companies from doing things like this.
Goods that is "expected to last long" has a five year mandatory warranty here and mobiles are included. The rest has two years.
It doesn't matter if they recognize it as an issue, the phone is broken period.
While all us non-americans can gloat about what great consumer protection laws we have (and I'm very happy about them as a consumer!) it's not for no reason that all cool stuff is made by americans. They have the state of Delaware, and they have the government who prioritize business before social issues. Correlated (and if you ask me, causative (is that a word?)) is that most impressive companies and products are invented by Americans.
The main reason why "cool stuff" is made in America is because of massive government subsidy to the computer industry in the 50's, 60's and thanks to publically funded research (Bell labs, PARC etc). Again in the 80's under Reagan there was big investment in the computer industry as they recognized that Japan was starting to take the lead in tech industry.
My understanding is that both Bell Labs and PARC were owned and operated solely by large corporations (AT&T and Xerox, respectively). Do you have a source on government funding of either?
I don't know about the structure of PARC, but I suspect it's not quite as comparable to Bell Labs as you make it sound.
Weren't both of them funding some of their research projects via direct government (DARPA, etc) grants?
AT&T was a government monopoly. They had no meaningful competition that required rapidly innovating AT&T's core products, and they had lots of profit due to their monopoly status. They could afford to dump money into research (in addition to whatever gov't research grants they were getting) and still have plenty of profit left over. That's not quite government funding of research, but many economists will say that given its monopoly status, what it did was de facto government action.
PARC did some great things but they didn't have as broad a range of research as Bell Labs, did they? Xerox never had a monopoly like AT&T did, although I'm fairly sure they got plenty of government research grants.
There were also a lot of open fields in hardware and software that were just starting to be explored back then. Tech companies were investing plenty of brainpower and money into R&D, given little pushes by government grant availability. I think the difference in AT&T's case was the breadth of research due to how much profit they had... again, due to monopoly status.
PARC never had substantive DOD funding, it was funded by the largess of Xerox. Bell Labs did do government work, but was largely funded by the Bell Operating Companies, in the form of a royalty.
Exactly, the biggest research driver is military spending. Procurement is a huge way in which these companies were funded, eg the DOD bought 90% of computers in the 50's and 60's before they became viable as consumer devices in the late 70's.
PARC is heavily DARPA-funded today. In the 70s, PARC hoovered up a lot of Stanford grads who had been working on government funded projects at SRI. It's unlikely PARC would have been as successful without them.
Bell Labs was independent, but there are similar indirect links - lots of freshly minted PhDs cutting their teeth on government funded research, then moving into industry.
Government seed funding was directly responsible for the Whirlwind and TX series projects, for IBM's SAGE system, for the work of important consultancies like Bolt, Beranek, and Newman, and the various ACs (Illiac, Multivac, etc) all of which laid the foundations of modern computing.
IBM, DEC, and eventually Apple and MS productised that work, but it simply wouldn't have happened without government support.
You might be interested in a book called The European Revenge, written in 1973 by two writers from the Economist magazine. It made the argument that some day in the near future, European auto makers, such as Mercedes Benz and BMW, would be able to make automobiles that were as good as American automobiles.
And they were correct. Mercedes Benz and BMW did eventually catch up to the Americans. Nowadays, many people would argue that Mercedes Benz and BMW represent a level of quality that is much higher than what you can get from American automobiles.
If Europe hasn't yet caught up to the USA in consumer electronics, perhaps that is because Europe hasn't yet made the concerted effort to catch up.
I'd argue that as far back as the 30's European manufacturers were making cars every bit as good as those made in America.
That said, they were and are made to a different design ethos - American cars have never been designed for balanced performance like German cars have, they instead have been designed for comfort and trouble-free operation (meaning next to no maintenance). America long made the only car in the world that could go 100,000 miles with nothing but fluid changes, and other wear items. No European car can really do that, all of the German makes have a pretty aggressive preventative maintenance schedule.
Japan to an extent does build cars to the american ethos - they build to the American ethos, but localized to the Japanese market to a greater or lesser extent -but then again they were taught car building by the Americans after WWII - which is I think why Japanese cars have been so successful in the American market.
apart from cars (discussions about Tesla are in another recent thread, others are not really worth mentioning) and couple of other stuff from europe/east asia from nearly any aspect of life, I tend to agree
Just bought a 50" 4K TV from them. It only supported Dolby's HDR out of the box. Firmware update added HDR10 support. The last time Sony, Samsung, etc decided to put the customer first in a stupid format war was... when exactly?
Yes. I thought the sarcasm was self-apparent as the "all American TV manufacturers are shuttered" trope is well-worn and well-known (apparently not). A quick test would have been trying to think of one cool American TV model.
This extended warranty thing is common throughout the EU (in the UK it's 6 years for example). In the UK we pay more than the US for most things but it's hard to pin down the exact reasons and price differences.
In the last couple of years the Sale of Goods Act protections were weakened as part of bringing us into line with Europe. It's now been replaced by the Consumer Rights Act which although clearer gives fewer rights to refund from the seller.
Note it's the retailer rather than manufacturer who is liable, so we have much more confidence that what we buy is "of merchantable quality", safe and legal to sell. Quite a number of HN threads have made this advantage clear.
No, they seem to about comparable i think.
Electronics is generally ok priced here.
I have no idea about apple prices in general, but a "Apple iPhone 6s Plus 128GB Sølv (Silver)" is approx 1257 USD including 25% VAT.
That is about 1/3 of an average monthly salary here, maybe a bit less.
For comparison: it's $949 + sales tax in the US, and 1075€ ($1200) in Germany, including 19% VAT. So the German price without VAT is the same as the Norwegian without VAT.
Mandatory warranty in Germany is 2 years, where in the first six months the manufacturer has to prove that it wasn't defective when they sold it to you if they want to dispute your claim. After six months, there's a reversal in the burden of proof, but claims are usually accepted without dispute. I'm not aware of anything that requires more than two years of warranty here, even for durable goods expected to last longer than that.
Just nitpicking: the mandatory warranty ("Gewährleistung") is supplied by the seller, not the manufacturer. As a consumer you don't need to deal with the latter no matter what the former is trying to tell you. In the same line, the burden of proof after six month is on the seller not the manufacturer.
A manufacturer often has an additional voluntary warranty ("Garantie") distinct from that.
That is the case (including the role of the seller) across the whole EU by Directive 1999/44/EC (although member states can go beyond that and often do by e.g. extending the time).
It is the same here, you never deal with the company, just send it to the store and they handle it from there.
The five or two year warranty is called "Reklamasjonsrett" in Norwegian which covers design and manufacturing flaws.
It also states that the seller can try to fix it three times, after that it needs to give you something equivalent (i.e. a new phone of at least the price of the old) and that they can't charge the customer for any ting relating to the repair.
But we also have the "Garanti" from the manufacturer like you do.
And then people in your country probably get all upset when things cost way more. See "ripoff Britain" or all of the controversy in Australia. Your politicians won't break you the hard truth, but the reason why you pay more is that it's more expensive to sell to you.
Apple charges $99 for the two year warranty in the states. You get that "free" in Europe. Add in all of the other regulatory burdens, labor laws, and such, and it's very easy to see why things cost more in the rest of the Western world.
As a perfect example, they're likely on the hook for many millions of dollars of repairs with this issue in the article in the EU. In the US, only the people that had the problem early on or bought the extended warranty are covered. There ain't no free lunch.
So you're claiming that Apple's manufacturing is SO BAD that the they have to charge a full additional 99$ (more than 1/10th of the price) just guarantee that your Apple device will work for 2 years? Or do you perhaps think that there's another reason (PROFIT!) there?
Apple made $7.6 billion USD in net income in the last quarter; I'm pretty sure they have plenty to cover the cost of repairs because of poor manufacturing quality.
Additionally letting Apple (and other big companies)[0] clean up their own mess creates a perfectly aligned incentive to avoid messing with consumers again.
Edit: clarify
[0]: I actually like big companies. It's mostly just when they, -in spite of massive profits, do stupid things e.g: like whining against basic worker or consumer protection etc that they annoy me.
With regard to Australia; in 2013 there was a parliamentary inquiry into IT pricing entitled "At what cost? IT pricing and the Australia tax". The report can be found here, on the Parliament of Australia website.
Yeah, as an American this sucks. My aunt had this issue and was similarly told to buy another iphone because the "1 year limited warranty doesn't cover this". Took less than 5 minutes on the phone for her to get her money back through amex. Chargebacks are a godsend to us unprotected American consumers. I doubt the chargeback hurt apple much, but any little extra expense to them makes me happy.
Note that in Europe, whatever Apple says, you have a 2 years warranty for this kind of problem.
Also, do the chip really need a replacement, or a simple reflow would work?
I'm not even sure how they would try to argue against it.
"Yes, the phone developed a fault under typical use within the warranty period and yes, a lot of other customers are having the same problem, but" ...?
Apple devices are luxury goods sold at a high premium. You expect that stuff to withstand at least the same everyday handling as their competitors' products in the same market segment.
Do note that the exact implementation differs per country. In the Netherlands, legally, after 6 months the burden of proof moves to the buyer. Which means you need to prove that your product already had a defect at the moment of purchase. Good luck with that... Most people here seem to be completely unaware of this caveat though and I often get into heated discussions for pointing it out.
It depends. It may work with just a reflow, if the board is reinforced so that it is stiffer and doesn't put stress on the balls.
If you take off the chip, you could theoretically re-ball it and put the same one back on, but that requires even more specialized equipment.
I was amused to see in that interview with the Laura the repair person, the new chip was put on slightly crooked. It will still likely work, but isn't optimal.
I don't tend to face these sorts of problems myself, because my phone is always in a case in a holster, so that it doesn't get bent or whatever under normal conditions.
I actually had this issue show up on an iPhone6 right after the warranty period expired. I had phone support multiple times and took it in two different Apple Stores and they acted like they'd never seen the issue before. They eventually gave up (after a myriad of other fixes they had us try that didn't work) and said we'd have to get a new phone.
Luckily, we had insurance on it, but it was still a $99 deductible. It's very frustrating to learn that this problem is quite a lot more common than they let on.
Likely affects every 6+ so they are trying to get by without a recall unless there's some user handling that's the cause. Luckily in Apple store my swap was under warranty and they tried to run tests, but didn't seem successful so they are largely trusting customers. First swap took about 30 mins, second took 15 mins. They are clearly aware it could affect some phones, but they didn't come right out and say it. They just acted as if they've heard the problem many times before.
My wife had the issue, it stopped for a while, and then popped up again right after the warranty ran out. She needed a replacement ASAP (otherwise I would have shopped it around at multiple stores) and they refused to acknowledge that it was a known defect.
I had this same issue with my iPhone 6 Plus screen not responding to touch as this article explains. Took it into Apple in Perth City (Western Australia) and they replaced the iPhone on the spot with a brand new refurbished. This article leads with a story about apple denying it to a customer, but I had my issue resolved within 25 minutes including running a last minute icloud backup. Apples legendary support is real.
Wait. The device was within warranty and they gave you a "refurbished" (i.e. not new) iPhone as replacement?
I'm so glad this is blatantly illegal in various countries. They sold you a faulty brand new product, so they must give you a brand new replacement if they can't fix the defect on the device they sold you.
This is akin to telling the waiter there's a hair in your soup and getting a new soup that was returned by another customer but has since been re-heated and de-haired.
The issue is a design defect--Apple designed a part that has a high failure rate. The article is implying that it is an error in Apple's mfg process and should be fixed even on out of warranty phones.
Me too, relatively quick swap if under one year warranty. And then I had it happen again with the replacement device within days. The second swap was even faster as I explained I had the problem with the last phone too. The Apple store reps clearly knew what was up, tried to run tests the first time, the second time they just trusted me as I knew all the symptoms and the phone was only days used.
Maybe in some locations for some issues. My 6se bent after a few weeks at weak point near volume control and was offered chance to buy refurbed model at half price of original. Design fault in my opinion but that doesn't count for anything much.
I agree it sucks they aren't just covering it for people. However, I have a launch 6+ that I've beat the crap out of and sat on tons of times. It has not bent even a little and I'm a big person. I've also had no touch screen issues. Obviously YMMV but I've literally stepped on the thing by accident, dropped it down a pile of rocks at the beach, and other unintended abuse with no issues at all.
This is going to cost Apple a lot of money in Australia. The average length of a phone contract here is about two years, and guess what? Courts have ruled that under the Australian Consumer Competition Law that's pretty much what is considered a reasonable timeframe for a phone to last. And Apple are scare shitless of defying them lest they but hit with another record fine by the ACCC.
This is inept design. If Apple wants to make devices so thin that they flex, they have to make them more rigid where necessary and allow for more flexing. There are true flexible PCBs, ones with parts on them, not just wiring harnesses.[1]
This isn't the first product where Apple has had this problem. It's embarrassing, or ought to be.
(I don't have this problem; I own a Cat phone (yes, Caterpillar Tractor) which can be run over by a truck [2][3] and still work.)
Have there been any iPhone without "design defect"? Does any one think "design defect" is not made by accident since Apple fights everyone who tried to fix their iPhone on their own?
The iPhone 5 black paint chipping problem, the iPhone 5 sleep/wake button failure, the iPhone 5 battery problem. The bending issue extends to the regular 6 as well, I've encountered multiple devices in the wild that have it. That's about it though.
I would also argue that all of these issues are more isolated than reports make it seem. No doubt, they are all grounds for a good extended warranty program at the very least but they aren't dangerous, recall-worthy or a case where all devices are affected. Just a significant enough number that if it occurs, it should be a free repair or replacement.
Don't know how I missed that one, maybe because it's not as serious, but I'd say it still counts.
I like my iPhone too, but I am curious what other problems are out there. Seems like they've been pretty solid for the most part, but I say that out of potential cluelessness, not defensiveness.
Wow, didn't know this was widespread! Thanks for the tip! Anyway I turn mine on and off with the left button until it goes away. Hope that little tip helps and I hope the issue doesn't get worse
FWIW, this exact same thing happened to my wife's iPhone 6+. She took it in and told the tech the problem. He didn't even look at the phone and took her word for it. She got a new phone that day.
Apple definitely recognizes this as an issue, because I've had three 6+s replaced under warranty (not AppleCare) for this issue in the past six months.
It seems one of the solutions to this problem is not sticking your iphone into a back pocket of your skinny jeans.
I constantly see girls sticking an iphone into the back pocket of their pants that are so tight you wonder how they even got it in there. Then they sit down with the damn phone still in there. I am surprised it doesn't snap in half.
I typically carry my phone or keep it in my front pocket removing it before I sit down in fear of bending it.
It's not a wallet, it's a delicate piece of electronics that requires care in handling.
I wonder why this is being flagged (moved like 15 positions down in 3 minutes).
@dang - is worth looking into whether there is a pattern to the flagging of this post (i.e., IP addresses from a certain company in Cupertino, pattern of other negative Apple PR being flagged by the same users, etc.)?
I recently bought a 80 euros Android, 5.5", quad core, 1gb ram, real GPS, 8gb space, 1280 horizontal resolution. I can break 5 of those and still have more money than if i bought an apple equivalent.
I'm posting this on a 60 euros android i bought 2 years ago.
I'm really skeptical about justifying such price. It is literally 10 times more expensive, and I'm curious if the phone is really 10 times better, or if there are power users who really get something out of paying that much more.
I mean the technologies inside it are the same, the specs are higher, sure, but I don't think it's worth that much. That goes for the price of the latest, top notch CPU or GPUs. 1 year or 2 years later, the price has dropped significantly. So either it's cutting edge patents, or that there are many people ready to pay for a phone that won't the latest one in 6 months.
The point I'm trying to make? Like for everything, top of the line products exist, and just like you said, those are not shielded from defects, despite their price. Price is not synonym of quality, performance of durability. 90% of the stuff you find in an expensive phone are the same.
My point is that despite the price of the iPhone, it's not really worth its price.
This is pretty breathless reporting for iFixit. We can all draw whatever conclusions we want based on anecdotes. For example, I know a lot of people who have iPhone 6 and 6S phones and none of them have had this problem.
But let's look at some numbers; the article mentions that all of these repairers see "several a week." Let's round up and say that's 4 a week, or 208 per year per repair shop. They only mention a few repair shops in the article, but lets say as part of the research they actually talked to 100 repair shops. That brings us to 20,800 iPhones having this problem per year. But of course, not everyone takes their phone to a repair shop when it has a problem like this. Let's be pessimistic and say that only 20% of people who have this problem get it repaired, and 80% throw it away. That's 104,000 iPhones having this problem per year.
It's unclear to me from the article if this is affecting only iPhone 6 or also 6S, I'll assume both. Apple sold over 13 million iPhone 6S and 6S Plus in its opening weekend alone. Just from opening weekend numbers 104,000 phones with this problem is less than 1%, let alone whatever the total number of units sold over the last two years has been.
I have no doubt this is an annoying and frustrating problem for the people that encounter it, but try to have some perspective.
> Let's be pessimistic and say that only 20% of people who have this problem get it repaired
20% of people taking their phone to a third-party repair shop sounds very high. I'd say a vast majority would take their phone to Apple, who say it can't be fixed and to buy a new phone.
I'd say 80% is already a vast majority? But ok if you think 20% is too high we can go crazy and say half a million phones have this problem each year. That's still less than 4% of the 6S/6S Plus sold opening weekend. Let alone whatever the total 6, 6 Plus, 6S and 6S Plus sold over the last two years is (which I couldn't find a figure for from a quick search.)
The point is, it doesn't appear to be a widely occurring problem based only on what this iFixit report contains. Maybe there's more data out there that indicates it is more widespread? If so this article should have had that data.
No, because the 3rd-party shops are much, much cheaper than Apple's, and also more widely distributed. (Good luck finding an Apple store in or near a small town.)
Widely distributed sure, but it sounds like Apple is quietly handling this issue by providing the affected customers with refurbished phones at no charge.
Even under your hypotheses, I'd say 100,000 faulty devices is already a very significant amount. In terms of retail price, we're looking at more than 60 million USD, and 100,000 customers who were sold a (possibly) flawed device.
I'm not sure what perspective should be taken into account, but I'm pretty sure we should not be simply looking at whether the rate of failures is above or below 1% given the volumes involved.
The point of the article seemed to be that this is a very widespread problem, and I was refuting that point. If you look at it from the percentage of devices sold, it doesn't seem to be widespread at all.
If you want to take the view that if Apple sells you a faulty device they should repair it for free regardless of whether you're the only person in the world who has the issue; I would agree as long as the device is still under warranty. My guess is these aren't or the people wouldn't be taking them to third party repair shops.
Given the numbers we have and the hypotheses (75M devices sold, 100k defective devices), that would be 0.1% of the total volume sold, which does not sound that small (1 out of 1000 devices, what would we say if it was, e.g. 1 out of 1000 cars of a brand to be defective ? or 1 out of 1000 medical pills ?)
As for the warranty, if it's a design flaw and a widespread issue (and for that, even 0.1% of the whole volume should be significant enough) that pops up after 1 year of usage (because of thermal/physical wear under normal usage conditions), isn't it something that manufacturers should repair even out of warranty ?
Have another look at your numbers, you have assumed that there are only 100 repair shops in the word. I would imagine this number is much higher (a google search for 'iphone micro soldering repair shop' gives 473k results)
Right. He was underestimating to demonstrate that even a very small number of shops and iPhones/week would yield a large amount.
But also we should take into context how many iPhone 6 and 6+s have been sold. The first article on a Google search comes up with Wired who is discussing numbers from Oct-Dec of last year and in that time Apple sold 75 MILLION iPhones.
And I think the iPhone 6 model has only been out for a year or two, right? So even if we quadrupled the defect number per year, we'd still fall quite short of even the recent Samsung recall.
Please keep in mind I'm not saying it's not a problem, just trying to help put numbers into perspective.
Googling for "iphone witch doctor repair shop" gives 263k results. So there are roughly half as many iPhone witch doctor repair shops as iPhone micro soldering repair shops?
how about a google for "iphone repair shop" (with double quotes) gives 155k results. Eyeballing a few pages of results seems like the vast majority of results are for real iPhone repair shops. From this I would confidently estimate that there are > 15k and < 1.5m iPhone repair shows worldwide.
Read my comment again, I was positing perhaps the author of the article talked to 100 repair shops. Yes, there are certainly more repair shops than that worldwide. I was just drawing a line from what data the article has to what we could guess from it reasonably, each step trying to give the benefit of the doubt to the problem being as widespread as we can infer from the article.
Number of google results for a keyword doesn't really give a good indication of how many stores there are for that thing in the world. 473,000 repair shops would be 1,000 for every Apple Store. I'm sure there's a lot but that seems a bit high.
Regardless, I didn't attempt to draw the line through number of iPhone repair shops in the world because we have no evidence whether all repair shops in the world are seeing this problem, only the ones the author of the article talked to.
There's no particular reason to think that the repair shops which the author of the article chose to speak to are special in any way, so it's reasonable to assume that all the other repair shops are seeing similar numbers. It's definitely not reasonable to assume that the only iPhones that are failing are the ones served by that handful of repair shops.
> it's reasonable to assume that all the other repair shops are seeing similar numbers.
I don't know, it depends on how many the author actually spoke to and how he came by them. If he found them because he saw them all talking about this problem, that's not a statistically reliable means of sampling repair shops. His selection was biased and driven by the issue.
> It's definitely not reasonable to assume that the only iPhones that are failing are the ones served by that handful of repair shops.
This is a serious problem when making devices thinner: they become more flexible, but the joints are not flexible, so after a while you get a crack all the way across a joint and it either becomes intermittent or capacitively coupled.
A decade ago I had a white plastic-bodied Macbook which developed a similar fault in the graphics. But it's not just Apple, the famous "red ring of death" was a similar problem induced by thermal cycling rather than physical bending.