Hi everyone Aaron here for Zollotech and many of you have been messaging me recently asking
about a potential issue with your iphone 12 series phone where there might be a gap that's
too large between the outside edge of the phone and the display itself or the display glass and
so i wanted to help address this i wanted to look into it myself to see if i thought it was really
an issue or not and to compare it to some older phones as well that were built similarly so i have
the iphone se here for example and my ipad pro so we'll take a closer look at that in a moment
and so i have all of the iphone 12 series phones this year with the iphone 12 mini the iphone 12
and 12 pro and then also this is my normal daily phone is my iphone 12 pro max and so i want to
take a look at the outside edge of the phones and see if there's actually an issue because the issue
is people are saying the gap between the outside metal edge in this case stainless steel and glass
is large enough that you could fit a sheet of paper in there and this could be a problem or
they were wondering if it could be a problem and so i want to talk to you a little bit about this
help address this issue and let you know what you should do if anything if you have this issue
now the first thing is obviously when you have two materials bumping up next to each other
there's going to be a gap of some sort that's the tolerance that apple determines when they
set it for manufacturing if it's within a certain tolerance it should be acceptable and then shipped
out to the customer after quality control and so you can see around the outside edge let me
get up nice and close you'll see that there's a little bit of lint or dust in this outside edge
as i go around it this is the gap that people are concerned about and so as i go down the side here
you can see that there is a little bit of a gap and it may vary slightly based on
overall tolerance is set by apple now some people are saying this is a huge deal because you can put
a piece of paper in there for example or because dust is gathering so i have a piece of paper i've
just broken off or ripped off a piece of paper and if i work at it real hard here on the corner
you have to be really careful you can put a sheet of paper in here so you can see i have a sheet of
paper inside here i can fold it over and it's pushed in between the glass and the frame and a
lot of people are sort of concerned about this whether or not this should be considered a big
issue or not and so first let me address the size of this sheet of paper so this is a micrometer
here i've got it well let me zero it out make sure it's zeroed out i've got it set to millimeters
and if we measure the thickness of this sheet of paper bring it down here and you'll see
we're getting about a tenth of a millimeter or 0.10 millimeter and so if i slide this piece
of paper out here ever so careful you'll see that's the gap we're dealing with here
and so that's a super thin gap and that's the size of the sheet of paper now the question is whether
or not you should be concerned about this and so i had never heard this with older phones for example
and so i took a look at the iphone se and so the iphone se is manufactured fairly similarly and
if i take the sheet of paper yes i can fit it in that little gap there i looked at the same thing
on the ipad pro which is a little bit newer which has an aluminum frame and so with the ipad pro
i want to do the same thing and you'll see it's actually holding the paper in the little gap there
and so yes you can see the same sort of tolerance differences on all of these phones as i go to the
iphone 12 pro for example if i bring it up close there's going to be a little bit of a gap there
and then again on the 12 we'll just take a look at that quickly this has an aluminum frame and
you'll see the gap there and then on the 12 mini for example you should see the same sort of gap
now when you're building millions upon millions of these phones you need to build intolerances and
apple has built these tolerances in for a reason there should be a tolerance between the outside
glass and the metal edge this is for a couple reasons so one of them would be that materials
change based on the temperature so for example when materials get colder they tend to shrink
and gaps can change so when you have two dissimilar materials two dissimilar metals
next to each other you need to account for the difference in temperature changing the the overall
size of the metal whether that be stainless steel or aluminum depending on which device we're
talking about whether it be the ipad pro with aluminum for example those material differences
make a difference because you don't want it to get too small and then bind on the glass causing the
glass to be under tension and potentially crack we've seen that in other devices with super tight
tolerances and they'll actually snap you also have to account when you're manufacturing something for
people sitting on the phone or maybe bending it with its when it's in a back pocket for example
and so you want to make sure that you have enough room so that it's strong enough
you have to have enough room so when you drop it on maybe a floor it doesn't bind up against
the glass and crack the glass there's a lot of reasons for making sure there's tolerances
and based on the tolerances that apple sets whether that be within microns or thousands
of an inch or however they're doing this they need to make sure that they're within those tolerances
and these are checked by quality control before they're passed to the customer for example
now the other thing is many people are saying well there's a gap there won't water get in because
apple has ipcertified these for ip68 for about six meters for up to 30 minutes and apple's thought
of that because if you take a look at this photo of a disassembled iphone 12 pro for example from
ifixit you'll see that there's a rubber or sort of adhesive gasket around the whole outside edge
that helps seal it from water intrusion and also helps with structure and rigidity overall so at
this point i think this isn't too much of an issue unless you could fit your thumbnail maybe in there
where there's a huge gap between the glass and the frame itself if you could put your thumbnail in
there or something larger of course that could be a problem but if you're seeing dust get in there
that's not that big of an issue especially in the age where we're cleaning our phones more often
because dust will get into small areas that are difficult to remove you could hit this with a
little bit of air compressed air it would probably blow that right out just like we get dust in the
lightning port and in the speakers and microphone ports so it's not really something i would be
concerned about unless like i said there's a huge gap there and i've even looked at older phones to
take a look at that and see if we had that sort of issue on say an iphone 11. so here's an iphone 11
we take a look at the outside gap you're going to see it's going to have the similar tolerance
now when you have a phone sitting on top of that frame it's going to be a little bit different
so i went along the outside edge on this one let's see if we can fit paper there as well and on the
outside edge of my iphone 11 for example you'll see that there's paper i can fit a little paper
in there so there's going to be tolerance gaps that are one-tenth of a millimeter that's pretty
normal in my opinion and like i said i really would not worry about this now if you have
a tolerance that's much larger than that where you could physically see into the side of it i've seen
some photos like that then sure bring it to apple have them take a look and let and they'll let you
know whether or not that's acceptable or not but for the most part when you're manufacturing two
materials like this butted up next to each other it's difficult not only to manufacture
on this scale to the level that apple does with the quality they do but it's also okay to have
small changes between different phones because there's so many of them we're talking about
a hundred million devices and there's very few companies that can manufacture that many devices
perfectly every single time now like i said tolerances are to be expected up to a certain
point you're going to see this on everything from vehicles to lenses for cameras cameras themselves
but something that you use this often obviously is going to be more noticeable than not
if you have a screen protector and a case you probably won't even notice it so to me this is
not a big issue i've looked at every edge of all of these phones and i've not been able to find any
issues where i think it's a big enough gap that i would be concerned about yes there's a little bit
of a gap down at the bottom but again there's material differences you have to account for
and again manufacturing differences there could be some suppliers that cut it just slightly slightly
differently with the glass as opposed to the frame the aluminum i would expect to be a little bit
different than say the stainless steel for example so you'll see there's a gap all the way around
and it's fine and then i did take a look at this is another iphone 12 pro and again this one has a
screen protector on it but if we look around the outside edge yes there's a little bit of a gap
again this is manufactured this way no one is going to have no seam whatsoever in there so
i really wouldn't worry about it i've had quite a few people concerned about it but
again unless it's something where you can see into the phone i wouldn't worry about it or fit
maybe your thumbnail between that gap then it's maybe a large enough gap but again keep in mind
there's a gasket there with adhesive so hopefully that eases you a little bit helps you understand
how things are built a little bit and again one tenth of a millimeter is not something i'd be
concerned about maybe if we had a gap a little bit bigger like this then i would be a little bit more
concerned but i think it was manufactured quite well and i haven't seen too many issues on this if
your phone starts creaking or the phone the screen starts popping up will then absolutely bring it
into apple and usually they'll take care of it no problem unless it was found to be dropped or
fallen into water or something like that generally they'll take care of it without a problem i'd love
to hear from you below whether or not you have any issues where you think it's too big of a problem
where you can actually see into the phone not where you could fit a sheet of paper and again i
wouldn't fit a sheet of paper in there i wouldn't want to break any seals or anything like that so
just leave that alone enjoy using your phone and let me know your experience in the comments below
if you'd like to get your hands on this wallpaper of course i'll link it in the description like
i normally do and if you haven't subscribed already please subscribe and if you enjoyed
the video please give it a like as always thanks for watching this is Aaron i'll see you next time