Apple is facing claims that its new thinner iPhones can bend out of shape in the pocket.
The problem is especially pronounced for the £620 (Dh3,715) iPhone 6 Plus, which has a slimline body but a supersized screen.
Pictures and videos of warped and damaged iPhones swept the Internet as hundreds of users realised their new smartphones were ruined.
One video, uploaded to YouTube by Lewis Hilsenteger of US website Unbox Therapy, shows the iPhone 6 Plus bending under the pressure of his fingers alone. Last night the video had been viewed more than 13.8 million times.
One new iPhone 6 Plus user told the MacRumors website that his phone had become irreversibly bent after he sat on it during a long drive.
“The 6 Plus was about 18 hours in my pocket while sitting mostly,” he said.
“As I lay it on the coffee table and sat down on the couch to relax from the drive, I saw the reflection of the window in the iPhone slightly distorted.”
Bent phones appeared to work as normal, but some screens shattered if they were forced back into shape.
The problem has echoes of the launch of the iPhone 4 in 2010, when Apple was forced to give new owners a free case to solve an antenna problem.
The new models — the 6.25-inch iPhone 6 Plus and 5.5-inch iPhone 6 — sold more than 10 million in the three days after they were launched last Friday, breaking records for opening weekend sales.
There is no suggestion that a phone would bend if it was not put under sustained pressure, but many users will be concerned at the new models’ apparent lack of robustness.
The iPhone 6 Plus and the £539 iPhone 6, which are both about a quarter of an inch thick, are each housed in a single piece of lightweight moulded aluminium alloy — a feature which commentators say is behind the lack of durability.
Apple yesterday refused to comment on the reported problems. But the weak area of the phone appears to be around the volume buttons where the frame is at its thinnest.
Many of the images of damaged phones appear to show the bends occurring where segments of the shell were cut out to make room for the buttons. When significant and prolonged pressure is placed on the phone, the buttons seem to create a fulcrum point around which the phone bends.
Industry analysts said that if consumers want lightweight phones with ever bigger screens, they might have to stop putting them in their pockets.
Dominic Sunnebo, global strategic director at Kantar Worldpanel, a technology market consultancy, said the reported iPhone fault was a direct result of the drive for bigger screens and slimmer frames.
`In China, where these larger devices make up a third of the market, people don’t carry their phones in their pockets,’ he told the Daily Mail.
“Perhaps in the UK, where we are not yet used to these larger phones, users are going to have to start treating them like tablet computers and use a bag.”’
Apple is not the first to have the problem of smartphones bending as firms try to put larger screens on thinner and lighter bodies. Sony’s Xperia Z1 drew complaints that it bent in pockets, and there were similar problems with the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the BlackBerry Q10.
