Bent iPhone claims put Apple under pressure to respond

 

Experts are divided over whether Apple should respond to claims that its new iPhone 6 handsets are prone to becoming bent when carried in trouser pockets.

Several members of the public have postedphotos to the Macrumors site that appear to show the problem. A reporter for the Geek.com news site also reported his phone had warped.

Other mobiles have bent in the past. And it is not yet clear if the new iPhones' aluminium shells make them particularly vulnerable. Continue..

Even so, the claims have been reported across tech blogs as well as mainstream media including the Independent, the Washington Post, India Today and the Sydney Morning Herald.

Twitter users have also posted thousands of comments about the claims, using the hashtag Bentgate.

The BBC has contacted Apple but the firm has yet to provide any comment.

One industry watcher said the company should investigate the complaints and issue a statement as soon as possible.

"I think initially they should acknowledge the situation," said Jasdeep Badyal, an analyst from the telecoms consultancy CCS Insight.

"Then the second step will be to take action by providing cases or replacements."

He added that even if it emerged that there had been a "faulty batch" or there was only a minor risk of damage, the firm should still issue a statement to make this clear.

But Chris Green, principal technology analyst at the advisory service Davies Murphy Group, thought that Apple should take a different tack.

"This is not an issue that Apple - or other phone companies - need to be compelled to respond to or fix. If anything this is a reflection of how people have started to use devices beyond what they were designed for," he said.

"Even the most recent smartphones are not designed to be put in pockets where they are going to be under the most chassis strain. And this just illustrates the fact that the public's desire for manufacturers to strive for ever thinner and lighter devices means that we are getting ever more fragile devices.

"Just casually sticking a £700 smartphone in your pocket is an increasingly reckless thing to do."