“By now you’ve probably heard about #Bendgate, the silly name for an issue that some new iPhone 6 Plus owners have been reporting where the device warped while in their pockets,” Josh Ong reports for TNW. “So far the problem seems to be fairly isolated, but we struck up an Apple support chat anyway to see how it’s covered by the company’s warranty.”
Ong reports, “When asked if a bent enclosure during normal use of an iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus would qualify for a replacement, the representative said: ‘That is 100 percent up to the Genius you speak with at the store. There is a test called a Visual Mechanical Inspection that the device will have to pass. If it is within the guidelines, they will be able to cover it. If not, the replacement would be a paid one.'”
“When asked for details on the Genius Bar guidelines, the representative said the information wasn’t provided to chat support staff,” Ong reports. “Apple’s support team also said that it is ‘looking into this with an insane amount of detail.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote earlier:
Lately, the thought has crossed our minds: Was iPhone 6 Plus designed with Liquidmetal in mind, but Liquidmetal, unfortunately, wasn’t quite ready in time?
MacDailyNews Note: The Apple-Liquidmetal deal is basically this: Apple contributes engineers and R&D – basically figuring out how to practically make Liquidmetal into commercial parts – and contributes their inventions back to Liquidmetal (via Crucible Intellectual Property, LLC, a Liquidmetal subsidiary) which gets to use Apple’s inventions in fields other than consumer electronics (sporting goods, aviation, medical, military, etc.). In exchange, along with an already-paid one-time license fee of US$20 million, Apple owns sole rights to use Liquidmetal in electronics via “a perpetual, worldwide, fully-paid, exclusive license to commercialize such intellectual property in the field of consumer electronic products.”
Related articles:
Wired reviews Apple’s 64-bit iPhone 6 Plus: ‘Too big to fail, but not to bend’ – September 25, 2014
Apple CEO Tim Cook’s banana skins: U2, ‘Bendygate’ and iOS 8.0.1 – September 25, 2014
Video: Apple iPhone 6 Plus bend test – September 23, 2014
Apple granted two new Liquidmetal production patents – August 26, 2014
Apple extends Liquidmetal exclusivity deal through February 2015 – May 21, 2014