Harken, if you will, all the way back to late September when iPhone 6 Pluses were bending left and right and causing pundits to theorize that there was a scandal brewing along the lines of Watergate.
Or, actually, you don’t have to harken, you can just read the Boy Genius Report, which is still going full-Bendgate (tip o’ the antlers to Rob Wensing for the links).
On Halloween Day, BGR’s Chris Smith asked “Has Apple quietly fixed its iPhone 6 Plus ‘Bendgate’ problem?” Now, before you wonder how Apple could get people to stop sitting on their phones, there’s an easy answer: Make them run so hot people don’t want to put them in their pockets. Problem solved. But what Smith was actually “reporting” was a Reddit piece by a d00d who thought he saw a red thing inside his iPhone 6 Plus.
Turns out, no, there’s just some variation between individual devices and Apple has not created a system of internal flying buttresses to support the iPhone 6 Plus. So Bendgate is still in play!
Take it away, BGR’s Zach Epstein!
“Apple said ‘Bendgate’ affected 9 iPhone 6 units—here’s a video of 300 bent iPhones”
Oh, sick burn, Apple! Except for a few things. Apple said at the end of September only 9 people had “reported” bent phones. That’s a little different. Also, Zach seems unclear on the notion that as time moves forward, more people might bend their phones as more people got the iPhone 6 Plus. Was Apple lying about getting 9 reports? Heck if the Macalope knows and heckerer if Epstein does. But the existence of this video does nothing to disprove their statement.
And what about this video?
Now, despite the fact that the site [it came from] didn’t get much publicity, it has collected photos of at least 300 bent iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus units.
Hmm. Has it? Because the Macalope looked at the video and he noticed two things.
COMPUTER… SCAN LEFT AND ENHANCE.
First, a number of the bent phones are floor units in Apple Stores. This means they were not bent through normal use but bent by jerks who stop into Apple Stores and try to bend phones. Second, the Macalope didn’t even watch the whole video and he noticed that at least some of these pictures are repeated. If you look at the pictures at time index 0:16 and 0:24, you’ll see they’re different shots of the same phone. A number of others look like they might be repeats as well.
But way to take it at face value, Zach.
With “Bendgate,” a more recent issue that involves iPhone 6 Plus and iPhone 6 model bending in people’s pockets, Apple tried the same strategy [as with Antennagate]. It invited tech journalists and bloggers into its facilities and instructed them to write about the extensive durability tests Apple’s new iPhones endured ahead of launch.
“That’s E, X, T… E, N…”
Only sites like BGR that are keeping it real speak out about the really important issues that Apple doesn’t want you to know about.
Well, if a video of not quite 300 bent iPhone 6 Pluses, some of which were deliberately bent, won’t convince you, this “proof” will.
“Proof Apple knows the ‘Bendgate’ problem is much more serious than it publicly admitted”
A BGR reader who asked not to be named recently contacted us with an interesting note from his experience at the Apple store. While returning an iPhone 6, he observed that a screen popped up on the Apple Store rep’s POS system during the return process, and it asked for a reason for the return. On that screen, a single option was listed, and it wanted the sales rep to specify whether or not the iPhone was being returned because it was bent.
Seriously, that’s their “proof”. Look, the Macalope knows you don’t believe him when he claims they really wrote that, but that’s why he’s provided the link so you can check it yourself. It’s astounding, he knows, but there it is in all its dumb, dumb glory.
Another way to take this, of course, is that the iPhone 6 Plus is so good it only has one possible problem. That is not, of course, how the brain trust at BGR has chosen to take it.
Ah, so still skeptical? Well, let this cautionary tale by BGR’s Brad Reed be your final warning! (Until next week, when there will be more warnings.)
“Yet another ‘Bendgate’ skeptic gets burned with a bent iPhone 6”
See? One man in Detroit broke the Bendgate chain and fell ill the very next day! Then he got hit by a bus, thrown over a cliff, and he exploded in mid-air! YOU MOCK BENDGATE AT YOUR PERIL!
How many iPhone 6 Pluses has Apple shipped? Millions. Tens of millions, maybe. Is 300 a big percentage? No. Meanwhile, there could just as easily be a video of the hundreds Galaxy Note 4s that shipped with screen gaps except for one thing. Nobody expects Samsung to ship a phone as nicely made as an iPhone. And that’s what’s really behind Apple’s many -gates.