#BENDGATE

By Ben Thomas

The new Apple iPhone 6 has become popular in the social media world, but not always in a good way. The new iPhone is bending in people’s pockets due to its aluminum frame. While Aluminum is lightweight and used in medical practices, it is not very strong. Soda cans are made of aluminum and are easily crushed with a little pressure. The iPhone 6’s frame is easily bent in the pockets of jeans; probably a bad play on Apple’s part to make it lighter and add a nice effect to the phones colors, but costly to the customers who expected to invest in a reliable product.

Twitter users are blowing up the HASHTAG #bendgate #bendghazi ,while taking pictures of their bent iPhones.” I received my iPhone 6 plus 64GB space gray at about 3pm on Friday and set it up, but haven’t worn it out that day, so it wasn’t in my pocket. Yesterday, I left at 10am with the iPhone in my left FRONT pocket of my suit pants. I drove 4 hours to a wedding, which also involved a lot of sitting during dinner etc. but also 2-3 hours of dancing. I left at 2am and went to bed, driving home 4 hours back. So in total, the 6 Plus was about 18 hours in my pocket while sitting mostly. As I lay it on the coffee table and sat down on the couch to relax from the drive (yes, sitting again), I saw the reflection of the window in the iPhones slightly distorted. Now I lay it flat with the display side on the table, take a look. Maybe at 5.5″ it is too thin?” See the forum here:  http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1785905

This problem is particularly irritating to avid Apple buyers, who are having to shell out $200-$300 to fix the bent screens.

This is not the first time iPhones have bent in user’s pockets. While the iPhone 6’s frame is made of very thin aluminum, the iPhone 5 & 5s is made by much thicker aluminum but is still capable of bending.