Owners of iPhone 6 Plus who manage to fit the new Apple phablets into pants pockets are at bit shocked and perturbed to soon see their spanking new smartphone taking on a slight curve.
While the phones don't contort into a full arc like that of a contact lens, iPhone 6 Pluses seems to have some sort of a structural weakness near the button cutoffs on the sides of the device. The aluminum-backed phones apparently tend to bend backwards a few degrees under moderate pressure and hold the new form.
The thinner form factor of the iPhone 6 line and aluminum rear have likely culminated into the flexible aspect, though Apple, as of Wednesday afternoon, had yet to make any official comment on the phenomenon.
The iPhone 6 Plus can cost up to $949 without a contract and around $299 with a 24-month commitment. It may be unappealing to some to dress the thinnest iPhone to date in an OtterBox, but hard shell cases appear to be the best solution to keeping the phablets from succumbing to the bends when they're submerged in pockets for too long.
Time, and hopefully Tim [as in Cook, Apple's CEO], will relate if the iPhone 6's bending watys presents any longterm detriment. Being bendy doesn't necessarily mean weakness, as some other handsets have proven.
The bendy iPhone 6 Plus joins a storied line of conformist phones that include the iPhone 5, the iPhone 4, the Sony Xperia Z1, the Samsung Galaxy S4, the HTC Evo and other devices that struggled to live up the pressures of serving highly active consumers.
While the iPhone 6 handsets are proving to bend a little bit, they are also proving to be quite lucrative for Apple as the 6 series boasts the largest profit margin of any iPhone series yet.
The 16GB iPhone 6 costs Apple just $200 to manufacture and at the high end of the line, the iPhone 6 Plus, Apple pays just $216 to have the device minted, according to a report from IHS. That $16 difference in price is especially significant, considering the Plus models sell for about $100 more than the base phones.
Apple has strong track record of offering phones with desirable features and capitalizing on a high markup, said Andrew Rassweiler, senior director, cost benchmarking services for IHS. In the past, that included more RAM, says Rassweiler.
"In the past, the premium versions of iPhone offered higher memory configurations for additional profit," says Rassweiler. "While Apple continues this memory strategy, the company is also taking a similar approach with the iPhone Plus, structuring its pricing to add bottom-line profit on models that have a very desirable feature: a large phablet-sized display."
Take a look at an iPhone 6 stress test, if you haven't already conducted one yourself:
