I blame myself. In the midst of a lovely podcast conversation with Apple‘s senior VP of Hardware Engineering, John Ternus, and the company’s global head of Marketing, Geg Joswaiak (affectionately known as “Joz”), I brought up “bendgate”. Things kind of went off the rails from there.
We were chatting, along with Tom’s Guide’s Global Editor in Chief Mark Spoonauer, about the incredibly slim Apple iPhone Air, a product Apple unveiled just a day earlier, and, without irony, touted its strength.
I sat in that keynote audience and heard the specs, which include a Grade 5 titanium frame and the new Ceramic Shield 2 for maximum durability. Still, memories are long, and it’s hard to forget the last time Apple unveiled a big-screen thin phone. What people might not remember is that the iPhone 6 Plus was only 7.1mm thin, and it featured a big-for-its-time 5.5-inch display.
Almost as soon as the iPhone 6 Plus hit store shelves, people were torquing and bending it. It held up so poorly that Apple would, in the iPhone 7 Plus, introduce a whole new class of aluminum.
I said the magic word
The iPhone Air is only 5.6 mm thick, making it Apple’s thinnest phone ever. It seemed, at least to me, a risk, so I put the question to Ternus and Jozwiak, even daring to mention the term “bendgate”. Are they concerned, and how have they prepared the $999 iPhone Air for the punishment it’s surely about to endure when it ships later this month?
Ternus quickly reminded me, “You heard us say in the keynote, …it is more durable than any previous iPhone, and that is 100% true.” He listed existing water ingress measures (IP68), and the tougher (by a factor of three) Ceramic shield that covers both sides of the iPhone.
“It exceeds our internal metrics for bend strength,” said Ternus, which is when Jozwiak chimed in, “which are really high.”
Joz (as I’ll call him from here on out) then added that he thought the teams “chose the right materials for these products, and the titanium here on such a thin product was key to creating an incredibly strong, incredibly strong, enclosure.”
I’ve seen an iPhone Air fly
I wanted to ask about whether or not Apple had conducted any butt tests, meaning, had they asked people to sit in the iPhone Air, but Joswiak cut me off. He had other ideas.
I watched as Joswiak started waving his iPhone Air at me, only belatedly realizing he was about to toss the 165-gram phone in my direction. Suddenly, the phone was flying through the air. Naturally, I fumbled it, and it bounced across an adjacent tablet. I scrambled to grab the clearly unblemished phone, relieved it hadn’t ended up on the floor behind us, but Joz was not done.
“Try to bend it, ” he said, grinning at me.
“Go ahead, it’s on me.’
I realized that I was on video and about to try to potentially destroy one of Apple’s most important employees’ personal phones.
I did not want to, but I could not deny the challenge.
I held the iPhone Air in front of my face and put my thumbs on the face and my other digits on the smooth back, and then I bent the phone, or rather I strained mightily as it flexed just a bit but did not give in. There was no cracking, and I could see the confident and almost beatific smile on Joz’s face as I gave it my all.
Mark Spoonauer also gave it a shot and jokingly wondered if Apple Store shoppers would be encouraged to try this test.
More protection than you think
I admitted this was better than a butt test. The phone clearly bows, but it snaps right back into a perfectly flat slab the second you stop trying to bend it.
“If you put enough load,” said Ternus, “you can get it to flex a little bit,” and Joz finished the thought, “but it comes right back. That’s the idea.”
While that’s not a lot of movement given that these are rigid materials, I was curious how the lithium-ion battery is protected in these situations.
“We have a metal can on the battery,” Ternus told me, ” which also makes the battery itself a much stronger component…we feel really good about it.”
So there you have it, I just inadvertently settled the “bendgate” question for the iPhone Air. This is clearly a very durable phone. I gave it my all in a surprise bend test, inspired (heck, almost demanded) by the head of all Apple Marketing.
Thanks, Joz, for scaring the heck out of me and giving me a chance to dispel at least one worry about Apple’s exciting, new, and incredibly thin iPhone Air.
I think I need to go lie down now.
By the way, if you want to see this moment and perhaps watch the full and fascinating conversation, check out Part 1 of the podcast interview on Tom’s Guide and Part 2 on TechRadar’s YouTube channel.
You can read Mark Spoonauer’s report here.
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lance.ulanoff@futurenet.com (Lance Ulanoff)
