Do you know how many people have actually reported a bent iPhone 6 to Apple (according to Apple, anyway)?
That’s nine out of over ten million. Even if you only look at the 1.1 million units of the iPhone 6 Plus, Kif Leswing at GigaOm helpfully does the math for me and points out that this is a bending rate of 0.0008%. It’s possible, I suppose, that many more phones have bent, but that none of those people have actually notified the one entity that is in any real position to help them.
Leswing goes on to note:
In fact, the attention around what some have called Bendgate or Bendghazi says more about the media’s insatiable appetite for Apple stories than it does the latest iPhone. The story first picked up steam when a few blogs noticed a single anecdote posted to the Mac Rumors forum. Subsequent calls for other reports turned up two other stories and pictures. But the story really blew up when a popular YouTube channel, Unbox Therapy, posted a video in which the narrator sacrificed his device and purposely tried to bend the iPhone. Not surprisingly, when a grown man actively tries to break a fragile electronic device, he usually succeeds. [Emphasis added.]
Now, to be fair, the iPhone 6 will bend under pressure—Consumer Reports did science to one and found that it can only withstand up to 70 pounds of pressure. I don’t know how much pressure is in your pocket, but 70 pounds sounds like a lot.
The media just love a good tech-fail story, and a story about a phone that bends where it’s not supposed to bend is probably easier to write than one about significant problems with an iOS update.
