During court filings in an ongoing lawsuit against Apple that alleges touchscreen failure from bending, Judge Lucy Koh revealed internal Apple documents that confirmed they knew the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus phones were more likely to bend than older models.
According to court documents acquired by Motherboard, Apple’s internal tests documented that the iPhone 6 was 3.3x more likely to bend than the iPhone 5S, while the larger iPhone 6 Plus was 7.2x more likely to bend.
Conclusion: #bendgate was friggin’ real, ya’ll
Back in 2014, many i-Heads claimed their brand-spankin’ new iPhones (6 and 6+) were bending in their pockets from poor design — allegations that created a viral controversy known as “bendgate.”
Despite widespread reports of “touch disease,” a touchscreen malfunction due to bending, Apple issued a 2016 statement maintaining i6’s structural integrity — claiming the issue only related to phones that were “dropped multiple times on a hard surface.”
But independent repair experts didn’t buy it…
And in 2016 a class action lawsuit (alleging Apple knew about but didn’t disclose the defect to its customers) was filed against the tech giant.
Apple was then required to turn over its internal testing documents — and, here we are.
In the documents Apple described the bending as “expected behavior,” giving Judge Koh her conclusion: that Apple knew about the bending and made quiet engineering changes to prevent “touch disease” — 1.5 years after it had been sold to millions.