this video sparked an online viral storm
about the new iPhone six smartphones and
how they Bend under pressure from their
hashtag ben de gates took off on social
media people bending their phones
blaming tight pants and spoofing the
whole story
Consumer Reports wanted to bring some
science to the matter and find out how
much force does it take for a phone to
bend not been back so we took six smart
phones including the new iPhone into our
labs for stress testing we used what's
called an in strong compression test
machine right behind me we started at 10
pounds of force for 30 seconds then
released
then we upped the force and ten pound
increments and noted when the phones
first began to deform our test lineup
the iPhone 6 plus obviously along with
its comparably sized competitors the
Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and the LG g3 we
also tested the smaller iPhone 6 along
with the HTC One m8 and for Apple fans
still holding on to their iPhone 5 we
threw that one into we tested one sample
of each turns out it takes a lot of
force to permanently bend one of these
new iPhones and all the other phones we
tested for that matter even the phones
that bent first the iPhone 6 and HTC One
took 70 pounds of force before bending
permanently the iPhone 6 plus took more
punishment at 90 pounds
but it's smaller thicker precursor the
iPhone 5 outperformed both its siblings
in our test with no noticeable
deformation until 130 pounds of force
finally there was the LG g3 and Samsung
Galaxy Note 3 which sprang back to form
up until we applied 130 pounds and 150
pounds respectively at that point their
screens separated from their cases and
stopped working for comparison we tested
a few pencils in the end it took 80
pounds of force to break 4 I got 4 right
here I can tell you that's pretty tough
alright maybe three oh wow and this is
what 100 pounds of force looks like on a
tennis ball fresh out of the can
one note a bent phone is bad but can
still function all the iPhones and HTC
One look beat up after our initial test
but we're still working so we went
further to see how much more they could
take as we move beyond 90 pounds of
force the screens on those phones
started separating from their cases the
iPhone 5 held out the longest of these
four maxing out at 150 pounds of force
Apple's official response is with normal
use a bend in an iPhone is extremely
rare and through our first six days of
sale a total of nine customers have
contacted apple with a bent iphone
six-plus so what's the bottom line for
bendgate well based on our comparative
test here at Consumer Reports while not
the strongest phones on the market fears
of a serious structural design flaw and
the iPhone 6 and 6-plus
seem overblown follow our ongoing
coverage of the new iPhone 6s and all of
our electronics reviews at Consumer
Reports org
you