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Smartphones That Get Bent: Is This a Design Issue or a User Issue?
Dude STOP BENDING IT!Dude STOP BENDING IT!
When it comes to smartphones, thin is in. But it should be of interest to product designers that as ubiquitous as these skinny devices are becoming—Apple sold 10 million iPhone 6 and 6 Pluses over the weekend, for chrissakes—there really are some basic design problems with smartphones that haven't been totally covered.
Here's what's been in the news: Responding to reports that the iPhone 6 Plus can be bent out of shape when carried in a pants pocket—even a front pocket—while sitting, Lewis Hilsenteger of Unbox Therapy posted a video of his iPhone 6 Plus Bend Test. The results weren't pretty, as the image atop this entry attests, and his video quickly racked up millions of hits.
Cult of Mac, however, was quick to point out that this structural flaw is not new to the iPhone 6 Plus, nor Apple in particular. In CoM's "The Shocking History of Bent Smartphones," they round up examples across manufacturers and models:
So here's the issue: We either want thin phones with large screens, or designers are pushing them on us, yet the slimness combined with broadness (i.e. increased leverage) has a major drawback for a subset of users. In your opinion, where does the fix lie—on the design side, or the user side?Design Side
D1. Try to maintain the same thinness while using stronger materials. Sure, we could go NASA and carbon nanotubes, but who could afford the resultant product?
D2. Use the same materials but make the phones thicker. What percentage of people would buy thicker phones? Isn't there a skinny-phone arms race?
D3. Introduce a new, convenient method of on-the-go smartphone storage that precludes the problem of stress. A lot of people a lot smarter than me would have to work on this one.
User Side
U1. It is the user's responsibility to buy a protective case that precludes the problem. Few of us buy a new pair of sunglasses without also buying a protective case for them. Ought this understanding be automatic for smartphones?
U2. The user should coddle the device. Going again with the sunglasses analogy, we tend to handle an expensive pair of wraparounds more gingerly than say, our keychain.
U3. The user should devise an off-the-body way to transport a smartphone. It made sense to slip Star-Tacs in our pockets. Have the form factor of smartphones now reached the point where we ought switch to bags?
Of course, there will be a subset of readers who will think "Well, this has never happened to me, so this isn't a problem at all." But we're curious to see what suggestions the more enlightened among you have.
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Comments
However, a phone is constantly switching states between 'use' and 'stored' at a rate which is much higher than most other kinds of devices or products, and as such, faces much higher rates of potential damage from scuffs, scratches, fractures from dropping, and bending in pockets. The average phone gets manhandled and potentially abused in so many different ways, and thought must be given how to design to combat this.
I have generally have great respect for the aesthetic approach that Apple takes with their products, and I own the iPhone 6 (not Plus) if that means anything. However, their absolute focus on beauty has come at the expense of function. There is obviously still some truth in the old cliche of 'form follows function', and to ignore it is to be shortsighted. With most products, to say that something is truly well-designed, it must work well in the scenarios for which it was intended. A naked, caseless iPhone is very much unsuited for many of the normal scenarios it faces daily (and yes, as are the majority of other phones out there). It naturally follows that if it can physically fail in those scenarios, it is not truly well-designed piece, at least functionally. If the user has to change his quite-normal habits to accommodate the device, there's something lacking. If a user needs to buy a case to achieve a truly functional phone, one that's easy to hold w/o dropping and stands up to normal abuse, then what happens to the beautiful aesthetic aspect of the phone design itself? Most cases are hideous and very unflattering to the very form/material aesthetics that attracted the user to the phone in the first place! It's a really ironic reality.
It's true that it's not easy to find an ideal compromise between the beautiful, fragile phone and the ugly, functional one. If the 6+ does in fact bend in what are fairly normal pant pockets and daily activities, I do believe that Apple strayed a bit too close to the former.
Don't want bent technology, don't bend it.
I've had naked itech since the beginning and no I don't sit on or abuse it, just as I don't abuse or bend my TV, Monitors. Would you take a hammer to your car just to prove it can break?
Morons.
On another note, kudos to whoever is making that glass. That much bend without shattering? I'm impressed.
This stupid drive towards bigger screens is continually overlooking human factors such as comfortable reach of fingers and thumbs, and this desire to put as big a screen as possible on the front has led to a lot of designs becoming 5 sided enclosures instead of 6 sided, where the screen wraps the edges of the sides. Removal of the structure of the 6th side is significantly reducing the strength of the whole product. Apple's best designs of late were the aluminium extrusion iPods. Now that was using your noodle to make something good looking, highly functional and fit for purpose.
If Johnny Ive really wants to be a Dieter Rams, he better remember the basics that a product needs to function, not just look good. Also... how hard did everyone laugh at the camera lens protruding from the back of the case. I know others have done it, but it doesn't make it a good idea. Stands out like a giant pimple on a supermodel.
Step it up apple. All the design juice in the world and you came up with warmed up leftovers.
Having a phone in your pocket is well established use. No different from the established use of all numeric digits in phone numbers. Apple doesn't omit the number 6 in its design, why does it omit stiffness? A lot of phone numbers have the number 6 in it just like a lot of people put the phone in their pocket.
Also, Apple touts the durability of its glass, why not the remainder of the phone?
On the other hand, a phone this expensive deserves a little coddling. It's not exactly dishwasher safe.
The real solution here seems to be: stop wearing skinny jeans
I think the solution is to continue to make the phones thinner, and to either design them to bend and return to shape, or to build in supports that will stiffen the chassis of the phone.
Unfortunately they have under-engineered the chassis, and created a product that cannot quite perform within the parameters that it should.
When companies produced wider/longer phones people bought them. If you can't treat a thin computer the size of a small notebook well then that's your problem.
This however is another epic blunder resulting from choosing form over function. The thought of carrying a phone in something other than your pocket is ridiculous and should not even be entertained! This is an example of how a brand has become bigger than it's products, to the extent that the users themselves start to rethink their own natural intuition when handling the product, in an attempt to defend the inherent design flaw.
The Apple has fallen very far from the tree..
I imagine a nice set of structural ribs throughout the uni-body would solve the issue; It's pretty hard to bend/fold a properly reinforced panel, regardless the span.
Maybe Jony Ive should take the team to visit the construction site of their new facility to see how structural engineering can solve this.
I had a naked iPhone 5 for 2 years that developed a very nice curve from being in my pocket; it still works today.
Like any nice expensive product made of metal and glass, it is incredibly resilient if coddled, and incredibly fragile if not.
- Coddle away.