BendGate, the idea floating around on the internet that iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are malleable and bend permanently without much effort, isn’t real. A team of Consumer Reports applied various tests on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus as well as other sets of HTC, LG, and Samsung and found out that it was not true that the new iPhones bend permanently upon applying pressure beyond a certain limit.
“With normal use a bend in iPhone is extremely rare and through our first six days of sale, a total of nine customers have contacted Apple with a bent iPhone 6 Plus,” Apple stated.
But YouTube videos and a Wired report suggest that bending is a real issue for the new Apple devices.
The team applied varying amounts of weight and pressure to a number of phones, including the iPhone 5, 6 and 6 Plus. It found that the iPhone 6 was the first to bend at 70 pounds, along with the HTC One. At 90 pounds, the iPhone 6 Plus began to bend. It took 130 pounds before the iPhone 5 and LG G3 gave way. The Samsung Galaxy Note 3 could handle the most pressure and didn’t bend out of shape until 150 pounds of pressure was applied.
Consumer Reports went a step further and applied pressure until cases fell off the phones. Here’s how many pounds each device required before breaking beyond use:
Here’s the Consumer Reports team stress testing each device:
For a comparison, here’s what even more weight does to a tennis ball and four pencils:
“All the phones we tested showed themselves to be pretty tough,” Consumer Reports concludes. “The iPhone 6 Plus, the more robust of the new iPhones in our testing, started to deform when we reached 90 pounds of force, and came apart with 110 pounds of force. With those numbers, it slightly outperformed the HTC One (which is largely regarded as a sturdy, solid phone), as well as the smaller iPhone 6, yet underperformed some other smart phones.”
Here’s the video of each phone going through the stress test.