“Bendgate” may be a bit overblown.
Consumer Reports ran lab tests on the two new iPhone models, and found that it is difficult to bend the devices under pressure. Apple said on Thursday that only nine customers’ iPhones have bent.
To test the strength of the hardware, the consumer watchdog placed the phone on two wooden points, then applied force on top with a high-precision compression machine. While the iPhone 6 and the larger iPhone 6 Plus bent under less pressure than did the iPhone 5, the Apple phones were not the weakest: The HTC One deformed and separated from its case under less pressure than the other phones tested.
“Impressively, despite some serious damage from our Instron machine, some of the phone continued to work,” Consumer Reports wrote in a post on Friday. “Several of the screens illuminated and were functional to the touch; we even completed a call from one phone to another.”
Apple this week scrambled to rebut the fallout of a video that went viral showing a bent iPhone 6. On Thursday, the infamously tight-lipped company sent an unusually long statement to The Huffington Post explaining that the bend is “extremely rare.”
Still, coupled with the botched rollout of a glitchy update to the iOS 8 operating system, Apple had a rough week. The company’s stock rebounded on Friday after taking a hit from the dual snafus.
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