There May Be a Major Design Defect With the iPhone 6 [Video]

An increasing number of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus devices are suffering from a gray, flickering bar at the top of their display and an unresponsive touchscreen. iPadRehab believes this may be due to a design defect and it's related to Bendgate.

Initially users may notice a gray flickering bar at the top of their display. Twisting the phone or putting some pressure on the display makes it go away. However, after a short remission, the 'illness' gets worse and the gray bar spreads. Touch functionality gets increasingly glitchier over time and eventually touch is lost altogether.

"This issue is widespread enough that I feel like almost every iPhone 6/6+ has a touch of it (no pun intended) and are like ticking bombs just waiting to act up," says Jason Villmer, owner of STS Telecom.


Replacing the touchscreen doesn't help. Eventually the gray bar will appear on the new screen as well. That's because the problem isn't the screen but rather the touchscreen controller chips (Touch IC chips) on the logic board and an unanticipated, long term consequence of Bendgate.

In both the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s, the Touch IC chips connect to the logic board via an array of solder balls. Over time, as the phone flexes or twists, the solder balls crack and start to lose contact with the board.

“At first, there may be no defect at all. Later you might notice that the screen is sometimes unresponsive, but it is quick to come back with a hard reset,” microsoldering specialist Jessa Jones explains. “As the crack deepens into a full separation of the chip-board bond, the periods of no touch function become more frequent.”

If that wasn't bad enough there are two more design flaws contributing to the issue. In other iPhone models, a little blob of cured 'underfill' is found beneath critical chips to keep the solder balls secure. That's been omitted from the iPhone 6. Additionally, previous iPhones have had a rigid, metal EMI shield covering the chips, but that was replaced with a pliable sticker shield for the iPhone 6.


Capable repair shops are able to fix this problem and even strengthen your device to help prevent it from reoccurring but iPad Rehab and iFixit are calling on Apple to start offering customers a viable solution.

Check out the video below for a more detailed look and let us know in the comments if you've suffered this problem and what Apple did about it.

Read More [via iFixit]