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A Design Defect Is Breaking iPhone 6 Pluses

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Re: A Design Defect Is Breaking iPhone 6 Pluses

#11

Post by lloeki »

pjc50 wrote: post #2

It's (speculated to be) flexing PCBs under BGA chips again. This is a serious problem when making devices thinner: they become more flexible, but the joints are not flexible, so after a while you get a crack all the way across a joint and it either becomes intermittent or capacitively coupled. A decade ago I had a white plastic-bodied Macbook which developed a similar fault in the graphics. But it's not just Apple, t…

> It's (speculated to be) flexing PCBs under BGA chips again.

Also, operational heat (from SoC, battery, whatevs...) can repetitively flex boards ever so slightly as it heats up and cools down, and on the long term will cause BGA chips to lose contact over time. That's what famously happened on the Xbox 360, but it more silently happened on numerous other devices too.

BGA is a necessity nowadays due to pin density, but it's a tech that's incredibly easy to ruin at the slightest design or manufacturing mistake.

Re: A Design Defect Is Breaking iPhone 6 Pluses

#12

Post by iXce »

ebbv wrote: post #7

This is pretty breathless reporting for iFixit. We can all draw whatever conclusions we want based on anecdotes. For example, I know a lot of people who have iPhone 6 and 6S phones and none of them have had this problem. But let's look at some numbers; the article mentions that all of these repairers see "several a week." Let's round up and say that's 4 a week, or 208 per year per repair shop. They only mention a few…

Even under your hypotheses, I'd say 100,000 faulty devices is already a very significant amount. In terms of retail price, we're looking at more than 60 million USD, and 100,000 customers who were sold a (possibly) flawed device. I'm not sure what perspective should be taken into account, but I'm pretty sure we should not be simply looking at whether the rate of failures is above or below 1% given the volumes involved.

Re: A Design Defect Is Breaking iPhone 6 Pluses

#13

Post by kalleboo »

ebbv wrote: post #7

This is pretty breathless reporting for iFixit. We can all draw whatever conclusions we want based on anecdotes. For example, I know a lot of people who have iPhone 6 and 6S phones and none of them have had this problem. But let's look at some numbers; the article mentions that all of these repairers see "several a week." Let's round up and say that's 4 a week, or 208 per year per repair shop. They only mention a few…

> Let's be pessimistic and say that only 20% of people who have this problem get it repaired

20% of people taking their phone to a third-party repair shop sounds very high. I'd say a vast majority would take their phone to Apple, who say it can't be fixed and to buy a new phone.

Re: A Design Defect Is Breaking iPhone 6 Pluses

#14

Post by pjc50 »

Mtinie wrote: post #4
pjc50 wrote: post #2

It's (speculated to be) flexing PCBs under BGA chips again. This is a serious problem when making devices thinner: they become more flexible, but the joints are not flexible, so after a while you get a crack all the way across a joint and it either becomes intermittent or capacitively coupled. A decade ago I had a white plastic-bodied Macbook which developed a similar fault in the graphics. But it's not just Apple, t…

Presuming that manufacturers aren't about to stop trying to make thinner and thinner devices... Is this class of issues correctable (to a degree) with a change in the design of those components -- for example, proactively splitting the board at the point that the fissure is likely to appear and coupling it in a flexible way -- or is this a materials science concern where we need to find new methods to build the compo…

You can't split the board, it's the solder joints on the surface that are the problem. So far as I know there is no flexible soldering technology, and creating one would be pretty extreme materials science.

(To see the problem, place a coin on a credit card and bend the card - note that the coin no longer touches across its whole surface)

The normal solution is to make the PCB stiffer (thicker, or invent something better than FR4), or to make the overall casing stiffer. Either by changing materials or changing the aspect ratio. Fundamentally a long flat thin object is going to be bendy or brittle. The older iPhones that were smaller with glass front and back were an extremely good design from this point of view.

Re: A Design Defect Is Breaking iPhone 6 Pluses

#15

Post by muninn_ »

phelm wrote: post #10
ebbv wrote: post #7

This is pretty breathless reporting for iFixit. We can all draw whatever conclusions we want based on anecdotes. For example, I know a lot of people who have iPhone 6 and 6S phones and none of them have had this problem. But let's look at some numbers; the article mentions that all of these repairers see "several a week." Let's round up and say that's 4 a week, or 208 per year per repair shop. They only mention a few…

Have another look at your numbers, you have assumed that there are only 100 repair shops in the word. I would imagine this number is much higher (a google search for 'iphone micro soldering repair shop' gives 473k results)

Right. He was underestimating to demonstrate that even a very small number of shops and iPhones/week would yield a large amount.

But also we should take into context how many iPhone 6 and 6+s have been sold. The first article on a Google search comes up with Wired who is discussing numbers from Oct-Dec of last year and in that time Apple sold 75 MILLION iPhones.

And I think the iPhone 6 model has only been out for a year or two, right? So even if we quadrupled the defect number per year, we'd still fall quite short of even the recent Samsung recall.

Please keep in mind I'm not saying it's not a problem, just trying to help put numbers into perspective.

Link to article: http://www.wired.com/2016/01/apple-sold-a-record-number-of-i...

Re: A Design Defect Is Breaking iPhone 6 Pluses

#16

Post by kalleboo »

pjc50 wrote: post #14
Mtinie wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presuming that manufacturers aren't about to stop trying to make thinner and thinner devices... Is this class of issues correctable (to a degree) with a change in the design of those components -- for example, proactively splitting the board at the point that the fissure is likely to appear and coupling it in a flexible way -- or is this a materials science concern where we need to find new methods to build the compo…

You can't split the board, it's the solder joints on the surface that are the problem. So far as I know there is no flexible soldering technology, and creating one would be pretty extreme materials science. (To see the problem, place a coin on a credit card and bend the card - note that the coin no longer touches across its whole surface) The normal solution is to make the PCB stiffer (thicker, or invent something be…

> Fundamentally a long flat thin object is going to be bendy or brittle

I think GPs idea was to make the PCB no longer long, but have two smaller PCBs with flat flex between them. Then when the phone bends, the PCBs wont bend but let the flat flex take the stress instead.

> (To see the problem, place a coin on a credit card and bend the card - note that the coin no longer touches across its whole surface)

Now cut the card in half and connect it with half a cm of tape and bend it - the two halves will be flat and you'll get a V shape instead. Put the coin on one side and no problem.

I guess it depends on how much open space is in the phone or if the whole PCB is completely flush with the bent casing.

Re: A Design Defect Is Breaking iPhone 6 Pluses

#17

Post by celticninja »

pjc50 wrote: post #2

It's (speculated to be) flexing PCBs under BGA chips again. This is a serious problem when making devices thinner: they become more flexible, but the joints are not flexible, so after a while you get a crack all the way across a joint and it either becomes intermittent or capacitively coupled. A decade ago I had a white plastic-bodied Macbook which developed a similar fault in the graphics. But it's not just Apple, t…

except with the RROD Microsoft admitted the issue and provided a replacement or repair service. Apple are just ignoring the issue and leaving the customer suck up the cost and hassle.

Re: A Design Defect Is Breaking iPhone 6 Pluses

#18

Post by chris_wot »

This is going to cost Apple a lot of money in Australia. The average length of a phone contract here is about two years, and guess what? Courts have ruled that under the Australian Consumer Competition Law that's pretty much what is considered a reasonable timeframe for a phone to last. And Apple are scare shitless of defying them lest they but hit with another record fine by the ACCC.

Re: A Design Defect Is Breaking iPhone 6 Pluses

#19

Post by manarth »

gerbilly wrote: post #8

>“But the fact remains—compared to earlier iPhone models, the iPhone 6/6+ is kind of a ‘bendy’ phone. Its slim form factor and larger surface area subject the logic board within the phone to mechanical flexion pressure that no other iPhone has had to deal with[...]” Thank god they are rumoured to be making phones even slimmer then, _and_ getting rid of the headphone jack as well! Apple seems to be putting form ahead…

Well, they did (apparently) address the issue in the 6S, by moving the vulnerable components, so presumably they'll have considered this issue in the next iteration. Maybe they'll even restore the metal shields over the chips.

The 7 will probably just have a different set of problems to deal with.

Re: A Design Defect Is Breaking iPhone 6 Pluses

#20

Post by Waterluvian »

kalleboo wrote: post #16
pjc50 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't split the board, it's the solder joints on the surface that are the problem. So far as I know there is no flexible soldering technology, and creating one would be pretty extreme materials science. (To see the problem, place a coin on a credit card and bend the card - note that the coin no longer touches across its whole surface) The normal solution is to make the PCB stiffer (thicker, or invent something be…

> Fundamentally a long flat thin object is going to be bendy or brittle I think GPs idea was to make the PCB no longer long, but have two smaller PCBs with flat flex between them. Then when the phone bends, the PCBs wont bend but let the flat flex take the stress instead. > (To see the problem, place a coin on a credit card and bend the card - note that the coin no longer touches across its whole surface) Now cut the…

But you'd have to make the hundreds of broken connections between the boards you split. So isn't that a really delicate ribbon cable?
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