back to article Apple sued over shoddy iPhone touchscreens

Apple is being sued by a class of former iPhone 6 and 6 Plus owners who accuse the company of failing to address a design problem that caused the handset's touchscreen to malfunction. A complaint [PDF] filed in the Northern California US District Court accuses Apple of violating both California state and US federal laws for …

  1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

    "Apple did not respond to a request for comment on the matter."

    10 points to Vulture house for keeping trying.

    1. Baldy50

      Probably too busy patching those jailbreak vulns they found last week and if there’s any more.

  2. djstardust

    Not again .....

    My mate showed me his 6 plus at the weekend with exactly this fault.

    He went in to see the minimum wage 18 year old "genius" who told him it needed a new motherboard and as it was out of warranty it would be around £200.

    I despise companies who use slave labour, sell their products at an exhorbitant mark up, avoid tax and then don't admit their products have design faults and make the customer pay to rectify them.

    No more to say really .....

    Oh .... bastards!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Not again .....

      Sorry mate,

      I don't think you understand, apple are the greatest company to have ever existed.

      Their products are the best our planet has to offer and never fail.

      How is that so difficult to grasp?

      Maybe growing a ponytail will help you see the light?

      If you suffer hair loss I'm afraid there is no hope, you are destined to spend your life using inferior non-apple products.

      Don't feel too bad though, I'm managing my way through life without Apple and a shaved head.

      And the last time one of my mates showed me his 6+ I ran, I ran fast and I ran far.

    2. Mage Silver badge

      Re: Not again .....

      Out of Apple Warranty, or bought more than two years ago?,

      EU SOGA, enacted into Law even in UK. Italy has fined Apple for selling 2nd year Warranties for iThings.

      SOGA is two years minimum, manufacturing defects, not working as claimed, dishonest advertising etc. Retailer that sold it to you is responsible, which is only Apple if you bought on Apple Web site or Apple Store.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Not again .....

        Retailer is only responsible for the first year of the two, the manufacturer, i.e. Apple is responsible for the second if you can show that it was a manufacturing default, which shouldn't be hard in this instance due to multiple cases.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Not again .....

      Your use of £ indicates UK. So your mate should have responded that as it has been less than 2 years since the 6 plus was released then the phone is still under the mandatory EU 2 year warranty, let alone the sale of goods act which mandates up to 7 years. Given many phone contracts are 2 years long the expected life time of a phone should be a minimum of 2 years, and so the sales of goods act applies for at least 2 years as well.

      If this is a design fault then why is it not impacting the majority of devices? A specific batch is far more likely, got a working one right here in front of me. It is far more likely typical abuse people dish out to their phones instead of treating them like the expensive computers they are.

      1. Lee D Silver badge

        Re: Not again .....

        These bloody EU product-fitness rules eh?

        God, those bureaucrats that we've voted ourselves out of really never did anything to our benefit.

        Thank God for Brexit, eh, where we can fall back on substandard product warranties!

        (/sarcasm)

      2. alun phillips

        Manufacturing defect

        It is indeed a defect, according to ifixit its due to inherent flex in the board which is exacerbated due to the thin device design. Apparently it is manifesting in increasing numbers of devices in the repair business. Why yours still works is possibly due to how you store your device.

    4. Planty Bronze badge

      Re: Not again .....

      Tell your mate to stop buying overpriced hipster iShit

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Not again .....

      Sounds familiar...

      I know of a phone that failed one day before warranty ran out. It was replaced. 95 days later the wifi chip in the replacement handset leaked it's smoke and stopped working.. 550 SGD to repair (>200 sterling)

      Local repair shop fixed it for 105 SGD (< 50 sterling) with a no fix no fee service.

      Apple phone repair is obviously on the same cost scale as buying one of their phones...

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    In general regardless of the alleged fault I would suggest *never* to keep a touchscreen phone of any kind in trouser pockets. Bending and humidity - probably bad for ball grid array / surface mount chips and glass coatings... Worth the shame of a manbag with a strong strap if you are a bloke. And some padding or folding/bouncy cover on your unit just in case it all goes pear-shaped sometime :P

    1. DainB Bronze badge

      Nice try

      There's probably a billion of phones being carried in trousers pockets at this moment and if only iPhone 6 and 6 plus affected this has nothing to do with bending and humidity.

    2. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken
      Coffee/keyboard

      Ball grid array???

      1. imanidiot Silver badge

        @allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

        Indeed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_grid_array

    3. Lee D Silver badge

      Kept every phone I've ever had (sine the Philips C12 "savvy") in my pocket. Never had a phone die, crack or do anything but obsolete itself over time. Nokia and Samsung for the most part.

      Responsible for dozens of iPhones etc in work. Almost all have cracked screens or get weird screen lines and/or just die without cause.

      I'm guessing it's not just a coincidence.

      A phone that you can't put in your pocket, indeed... should I also carry a watch in my waistcoat?

    4. Dave K
      WTF?

      I've kept an iPhone 3G, Samsung Galaxy S3 and now an LG G4 in my trouser pocket regularly over the last 8 years and have never experienced a single issue with doing so. That's without counting the various Nokias and Sony Erricsons I've done the same with in pre-smartphone days.

      I'm not going to start strapping pouches or man-bags onto myself just to compensate for one manufacturer's flimsy construction issues.

    5. Triggerfish

      @Ac

      I'd rather have a mobile phone that's mobile TBH, if I have to start buying manbags to carry them then it becomes a bit useless.

  4. Unicornpiss
    Meh

    Well...

    As someone who has had to support hundreds of these little beauties, I can say assuredly that we've had this type of failure... and many, many other kinds. Without meaning to denigrate Apple, though I am certainly no fanboi, I can say the 6 is the most fragile and unreliable iPhone we have ever had at our company.

  5. Sitch

    Has the shine come off the Apple yet people? I quit them 3 years ago.

    1. Lee D Silver badge

      Some of us never started on them.

      I have never personally owned, rented, chosen to use after having been donated, given or bought, or otherwise selected an Apple product.

      I manage them in work.

      I fix them for others (what little you CAN do beside tapping a couple of buttons and pressing Reset).

      But I've never given them a penny of my money.

      Every one I have touched, used or somehow interacted with finds a way to bug me within minutes. Everything from update loops, a multitude of unskippable modal popup dialogs, sheer frustrations at lack of configuration or access, or just plain nonsense that's completely unintuitive (have you seen the iPad first-time setup where every page has the next button called something different, in a different place and all the "No, I don't want that" options are triple-confirmations in tiny text with weird worded labels?).

      Even their PACKAGING frustrates me. Macs come in pyramid-shaped boxes that don't stack or sit on top of each other (even alternating upside-down). iPads comes in a box with no fingerholes so you have to pull against the vacuum you are making in the box, and then they have the expensive fragile product just sitting on the top, first thing to fall out, get poked, or otherwise break before you've even unpacked. I've unboxed THOUSANDS of their devices for work, and every one is packaged stupidly.

      Apple's "design" just drives me insane, in all cases. Looks shiny, works like junk when you want to just use it, unless you know "the Apple way". The Macs I've used most have the power button you cannot feel on the rear of a product that's 99% screen facing you. Assuming so they don't "ruin the look" but it's just BAD DESIGN.

      The several hundred iPads I manage had a problem with iCloud going down a few months back (beginning of this year?) and all decided to loop between "you need to login to Apple iCloud" and "login failed" with NO WAY to cancel, back out, No To All, or do anything else at all, ever, in any app, setting or other use of the machine until the problem was resolved. Great design. Oh, they pushed an update a few months later that "fixes that", until the next problem that they never considered the design of.

      Don't even get me started on actual management of the devices. What a farce.

      1. Unicornpiss

        @some of us never started on them

        This has been my experience as well. As far as the worst packaging award, that has to go to the 5c with that stupid plastic box held together with tape, that can't be reused or reclosed even, plus having to struggle to just get the phone out of it. I am not the most "green" person, but that had to have been the least environmentally conscious packaging in the world at the time.

        Beyond the incessant popups for passwords, worse by far than even Windows constantly stealing focus (Enter your password! Do it now! You didn't do it! Nag! Nag! Nag!) is the on-screen keyboard that only a 3-fingered pixie could love. And the way you can't seem to get the cursor inserted just where you want it to correct an error. And the 6's glass over the screen will shatter with a mean glance at it, necessitating a rugged case for all but the most careful users.

        To be fair though, if we had a company full of Android devices, I'm sure I'd find something to hate about them too, as nothing really behaves consistently in the tech world.

  6. Nameless Faceless Computer User

    But, wait... there's a fingerprint reader.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like