Apple is first to market with a "foldable device"

[Coaxialgamer]

21 hours ago, corrado33 said:

Come on people. The title should be "Turns out if you sit on expensive electronics they break"

 

No shit. 

 

The article even says "For the record, I don’t think it’s that much of a problem. This device will mostly live in backpacks and on tables, not accidentally bending in pockets."

 

21 hours ago, firelighter487 said:

ok, the first thing they say is it will bend if you sit on it, to which my reply is gee you think!?

 

then, about the backpack. i had an asus zenbook of which the display bent from regular use carrying it in my backpack. where is the outrage?

on a serious note, how full was the backpack? if i stuff my backpack full of stuff and then stuff an ipad in there too i wouldn't be surprised if it bent. 

 

about the devices being bent out of the box, i will agree that's bad. 

 

I think you guys are somewhat missing the point.

 

These are mobile devices. Tablets and phones will not always be handled with utmost care. Thus , they need to be built so that they can sustain some amount of abuse from the user , whether intentional or not. Of course sustained and repetitive abuse towards a device will not be good in the long run , but more and more we're seeing some of these devices behave like they are made of papier mâché.

Many people sit on their devices , or put them in full backpacks , and they don't usually break. These are 1000$+ devices. They shouldn't behave like glass cannons.

 

You'd be pretty pissed if your car broke down by running over a pothole right?

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

1 minute ago, Coaxialgamer said:

 

I think you guys are somewhat missing the point.

 

These are mobile devices. Tablets and phones will not always be handled with utmost care. Thus , they need to be built so that they can sustain some amount of abuse from the user , whether intentional or not. Of course sustained and repetitive abuse towards a device will not be good in the long run , but more and more we're seeing some of these devices behave like they are made of porcelain.

Many people sit on their devices , or put them in full backpacks , and they don't usually break. These are 1000$+ devices. They shouldn't behave like glass canons.

 

You'd be pretty pissed if your car broke down by running over a pothole right?

if you are not careful with your devices that's your problem.

[Coaxialgamer]

1 minute ago, firelighter487 said:

if you are not careful with your devices that's your problem.

careful ≠ disintegrates upon contact

 

It's not like other manufacturers are having problems with this basic concept.

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

Just now, Coaxialgamer said:

careful ≠ disintegrates upon contact

 

It's not like other manufacturers are having problems with this basic concept.

if you sit on your iPad, you can expect it to break. 

 

if you drop your phone, you can expect it to break. 

 

if you are careful with them, and treat them like what they are, complicated delicate expensive electronics, you should be fine. 

[ZacoAttaco]

Samsung phones explode, Apple products bend, Google products just look bad. I just accept it now.

 

_TRIGGERED

 

 

[Coaxialgamer]

Just now, firelighter487 said:

if you sit on your iPad, you can expect it to break. 

 

if you drop your phone, you can expect it to break. 

 

if you are careful with them, and treat them like what they are, complicated delicate expensive electronics, you should be fine. 

You're missing the point here :

Apple has consistently had trouble making devices that don't have basic problems like these. The iphone 4 had antenna issues . the iphone 6 has bendgate. The iphone 7 had touch IC issues . And there are more examples than even that.  Last i heard , the note 9 doesn't have any problems when sit on. Most phones can survive a drop just fine.Most phones can survive a trip in a full bag without fault.

It's precisely APPLE who cannot keep in mind practical realities when designing a product. The worse part is that they are even aware of some of these issues beforehand: they knew the iphone 6 was more prone to bending when it was still in R&D. The lack of under-fill under the 7's touch IC was a conscious decision. 

[TechyBen]

8 minutes ago, firelighter487 said:

if you sit on your iPad, you can expect it to break. 

 

if you drop your phone, you can expect it to break. 

 

if you are careful with them, and treat them like what they are, complicated delicate expensive electronics, you should be fine. 

I have a samsung, done all this, it's not broken.

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

4 minutes ago, Coaxialgamer said:

You're missing the point here :

Apple has consistently had trouble making devices that don't have basic problems like these. The iphone 4 had antenna issues . the iphone 6 has bendgate. The iphone 7 had touch IC issues . And there are more examples than even that.  Last i heard , the note 9 doesn't have any problems when sit on. Most phones can survive a drop just fine.Most phones can survive a trip in a full bag without fault.

It's precisely APPLE who cannot keep in mind practical realities when designing a product. The worse part is that they are even aware of some of these issues beforehand: they knew the iphone 6 was more prone to bending when it was still in R&D. The lack of under-fill under the 7's touch IC was a conscious decision. 

if you want to hate on Aple, fine. but at least talk about the product the topic is about. 

 

2 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

I have a samsung, done all this, it's not broken.

you got lucky. nice!

[GoldenLag]

1 minute ago, TechyBen said:

I have a samsung, done all this, it's not broken.

example of bad design: The huawei Mate 9 Pro has quite weak and fragile glass. While its very hard bend its glass is major flaw.

[mynameisjuan]

I think this has been blown up when Jerry didn't mean for it to. People like Ben from Tech something made it seem like it was a new bend gate when it wasn't. 

 

But there were drop test done and the metal did give causing a warp in the metal.

 

Just becareful with your $2000 tablet.

 

[TechyBen]

5 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

example of bad design: The huawei Mate 9 Pro has quite weak and fragile glass. While its very hard bend its glass is major flaw.

Oh I totally agree. I hate glass front/back phones. Give me plastic anyday. I could eat the stuff and still be safe. XD

 

If things carry on, I'm salvaging old phones or building my own. Though the Samsung F does look promising. XD

[LAwLz]

34 minutes ago, firelighter487 said:

if you sit on your iPad, you can expect it to break. 

 

if you drop your phone, you can expect it to break. 

 

if you are careful with them, and treat them like what they are, complicated delicate expensive electronics, you should be fine. 

I think the problem here is that we got very, very expensive devices which are meant to be very portable, and yet they break if you don't baby them.

Let's think of this critically for a moment. These devices are meant to be used, thrown in and out of bags, get taken with them in places like clubs (lots of DJs use them), maybe left with their children, and so on.

 

 

Making things more fragile can be very costy for us consumers if it breaks.

Making things sturdier, assuming no major drawbacks, is just a benefit for us. The sturdier a device is, the better.

 

So when a company makes things more fragile it is a step backwards, at least in that specific regard. Remember what happened when "bendgate" happened? Apple started using sturdier materials in the iPhones. The consumers benefited from that outrage, even if it was quite overblown.

I don't think there is anything wrong with wanting Apple to improve their products, and in order to do that we need to criticize their current products.

Feel free to keep defending Apple and saying that people just need to be more careful with their products, but in the end Apple did take a step backwards with the new iPad when it comes to durability, and with enough pressure they will improve it for the next version. What you're doing is encouraging them to not improve on the next version by pushing that this is a fine design and doesn't need to be changed.

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

@LAwLz sure, i'm fine with them improving it, and i too think the sturdier the better, but again...

 

you shouldn't throw them in bags, you put them in bags. 

and in my opinion you don't leave a $1000 device with childeren. 

 

and it also depends. if Apple made a device as thick as the original iPad again, i'm sure people would complain a lot, saying Apple is going backwards. so... 

[LevitatingBusinessMan]

22 hours ago, corrado33 said:

The article even says "For the record, I don’t think it’s that much of a problem. This device will mostly live in backpacks and on tables, not accidentally bending in pockets."

Read the article yourself, that's a quote from MKBHD. 

Also a lot of people are saying that it shouldn't be suprising for a product to bend so easily, and that if you sit on your ipad it breaking is your own fault. But this thing is a 1000 dollars and breaks in half after the guy put some pressure on it. That thing will bent fast, way too fast. I have used an old iPad which would always be somewhere on my bed for when I wanted to netflix and I probably slept on the thing a couple of times, no problem at all. It sucks having to worry about something you just spend a thousand bucks on to not just completely bend like it's a piece of paper if you accidentally drop your backpack onto something. I know it's not an iPhone and it won't be in someones pocket but I still think a tablet should be able to survive being in the house and not just at the desk

[LAwLz]

Just now, firelighter487 said:

you shouldn't throw them in bags, you put them in bags.  

Again, it's a device meant to be very portable and easy to use. You shouldn't have to baby it. You didn't need to with the other models so this one requiring extra care is a step backwards.

 

1 minute ago, firelighter487 said:

and in my opinion you don't leave a $1000 device with childeren.  

Apple disagrees. If I recall correctly, they have a few times bragged about how their devices are so intuitive that even babies can use them.

Also, even if you don't think you should do it, people do. It is very common to leave children with iPads. It might not be good for a wide variety of reasons, but I think companies should take their customers' use cases into account when designing their products.

 

People shouldn't have to adapt to products. Products should be designed with users in mind.

Your constant "you shouldn't handle it this way, you should handle it that way" is a pretty clear example of you trying to steer people into using the iPad a certain way, because Apple has now taken a step backwards and made it more fragile to the point where people might have to adapt and use it differently. That's bad design.

 

 

6 minutes ago, firelighter487 said:

and it also depends. if Apple made a device as thick as the original iPad again, i'm sure people would complain a lot, saying Apple is going backwards. so...  

They don't have to. There are many ways they could increase the durability of the iPad Pro without making it thicker, and certainly not as thick as the original iPad.

In fact, the previous iPad Pro model was more durable than this one, and it was not as thick as the original iPad. So even Apple has released products which are stronger without going to the hyperbole lengths you suggest.

For example reinforcing the aluminum could help.

Or maybe use other materials such as carbon fiber reinforced plastic, Kevlar, magnesium alloys, the list goes on.

 

For example, by changing the aluminum chassis for a standard carbon fiber one, they could reduce weight by about 50% (for the chassis, not the overall weight), increase rigidity by about 30%, as well as increase the tensile strength by about 60%.

Swap that common carbon fiber out for something a bit more fancy like a one-directional fabric, using high modulus carbon fiber and you can get 4 times the rigidity of aluminum, half the weight and over 3 times the tensile strength.

[mxk]

"just put a case on it and you'll be fine"

[Rain7]

6 hours ago, corrado33 said:

Watch the original video again. The guy clearly isn't a small dude, and he shakes his hand (as if he hurt it) after he bends it too (and his hands were ALSO shaking.)

I watched it again and even placed it into after effects and went frame by frame, he snaps it with relative ease and only starts to shake his hands when he wanted to go further and try to fully split it in half. If you want to see a real test of his strength then watch his Razer Phone 2 test (which I give them props for despite me not being a big fan of Razer).

 

Oh and before you say that a phone and a tablet isn't the same, the point of me giving it as an example would be to show you how his hands would really look if he had any actual difficulty with the bend test.

[D13H4RD]

I think I'll have to share my personal 2 cents.

 

I've watched Zack since around 2015. I first knew him through that infamous Nexus 6P video where he snapped a Nexus 6P, as if it were a cracker and people called him out for using a pre-production device (even though it wasn't). So he bought another 6P and filmed an unboxing of it and proceeded to snap it like a cracker moments after he unboxed it and set the device up. Since then, I've found those failure videos entertaining, like the Xiaomi Mi5 snapping like a cracker or the Nextbit Robin folding almost quite literally like cardboard.

 

This isn't a phone though. This is a tablet, which brings one big change; size.

 

In this case, if you increase the surface area of the aluminum but either retain or reduce its depth, it tends to flex more easily, especially when it is a flat surface. To get around it without increasing the depth, you either add some reinforcement in the chassis or you shape/press the aluminum in a manner that adds strength without changing its actual mass. You can also blend it with composite material much like modern airliners although I would think that's pricier.

 

The new iPad Pro is thinner than its predecessor. Combined with the placement of the charging port and Apple Pencil connector right in the middle of the device and those two combine together to make it rather easy (compared to a phone) to bend out of shape if lets say you accidentally sit on it. The lack of reinforcement did it no favors.

 

It's also worth noting that iPads bending out of shape is nothing new. The 2015 and 2017 models also bent out of shape, but those didn't gain much traction. I personally have a 2015 Pro that has a small bend on the volume rocker area. Which makes me perplexed as to why they made it thinner.

[D13H4RD]

6 hours ago, LAwLz said:

You didn't need to with the other models so this one requiring extra care is a step backwards.

Not entirely. The previous models were similarly prone to bending but not as much as this one. 

 

6 hours ago, LAwLz said:

For example, by changing the aluminum chassis for a standard carbon fiber one, they could reduce weight by about 50% (for the chassis, not the overall weight), increase rigidity by about 30%, as well as increase the tensile strength by about 60%.

There's only one problem with (pure) carbon fiber. Unless it is used as part of a composite, it can be quite brittle. It'll hold up much better to bends but no so much from drops. 

 

They'd have to use some form of composite material to have the strength of CF whilst making it less likely to break from its brittleness. 

 

I don't know if it's just me but I've never particularly cared about how thick my tablet is as of late. 

[williamcll]

People are too heavy these days.

[Canada EH]

8 hours ago, firelighter487 said:

treat them like what they are,

<$100 devices is what they are, I puke on one or while puking it falls in the toilet, no big deal to me.

 

However, I do see people all the time with their cell phone in their back pocket, just so strange, along with white shoes or white anything clothing, even white phones.

[suicidalfranco]

meanwhile at samsung HQ

https://www.techradar.com/news/samsung-built-a-robot-butt-just-to-test-its-smartphones-durability

 

[captain_to_fire]

 

[Red Hardware]

There are 2 things to note:

1st: This thing is a tablet so it's massive making it more breakable/ bendable

2nd: Apple is not innocent here, they probably could've made it more strong. If you see some drop tests, you can clearly see that the aluminum used here is soft, softer that what we see in phones which is not a thing you should do on a tablet.

BUT since it's a tablet, it's less likely to be dropped or abused. But again, since it's a tablet, it should last for a longer period of time compared to phones and it might get carried in a backpack full of there stuff 

Using a thin layer of glass and a soft aluminum is not going to help with any of that but again, since it's a tablet, it's not going to be as big of a deal as iPhone 6 plus was.

[XenosTech]

Never surprised by some of the comments made by certain users on this forum.