There are worse things in life than a free U2 album automatically installed in your iTunes library. And now that new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus owners have had some time, we get to hear exactly what those worse things are.
See also: You, Too, May Want To Delete That U2 Album From iTunes
Thumbs strained! iPhones microwaved! Apple phablets wilting under the strain of wedding attendance! Never mind the iOS 8 changes that troll our resistance to change or your inability to carry on now that Camera Roll is gone. Here are some very real and ridiculous iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus problems worth complaining about.
Will It Bend? (It Might!)
One thing SquareTrade apparently overlooked in its iPhone durability tests was to place an iPhone 6 Plus in a wedding attendee’s front pants pocket for 18 hours of driving, dancing, dining and otherwise celebrating nuptials in the typical way. But for the MacRumors forum commenter who claimed to have inadvertently put his new iPhone through such an endurance test, the results were not so celebratory:
As I lay it on the coffee table and sat down on the couch to relax from the drive (yes, sitting again ), I saw the reflection of the window in the iPhones slightly distorted.
As MacRumors’ Kelly Hodgkins points out, the larger-yet-thinner smart phones get, the greater the pocket storage risk. “Unlike smaller phones that can slide out of the way, pressure points from sitting or bending now have greater potential to cause the longer iPhone to flex in a way that will damage the device,” Hodgkins writes.
The solution? Don’t sit down with a ginormous iPhone in your pants pocket, unless it’s encased in something as rigid as your resolve not to be careful.
https://twitter.com/Dfigs23/status/514467458737270786
Operating Outside The “Thumb Zone”
Big mitts are no longer immune to the thumb strain common to smartphone users cursed with delicate hands. “Thanks to the larger new iPhone 6 Plus, some men are now experiencing the smartphone ‘thumb stretch’ that has plagued women (and their generally smaller hands) for a while,” observes NBCNews.com’s Julianne Pepitone, who illustrates her point with some choice quotes from a variety of male sources.
Indeed, all iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus owners are in for stretching, as illustrated in a “thumb zone” heat map by Quartz designer Scott Hurff, using data from mobile interface expert Steven Hoober:
How are the new iPhones going to mess with your designs? I tried to find out for you: http://t.co/KghJf1pKZ4 pic.twitter.com/YBUrdqn2uF
— Scott Hurff (@scotthurff) September 18, 2014
As Hurff points out, iPhone screens may be getting bigger, but our thumbs stay pretty much the same. The best way to avoid the owies, it seems, is switching up how you hold your iDevice—which, Hoober found, people pretty much do anyway.
Not Microwave Safe
Whether or not people are falling for an iOS 8-themed prank executed over the weekend by those scamps from 4chan is unverified. Then again, owning a smartphone doesn’t make you smart by proxy.
Since the faux Apple graphics encouraging iPhone users to try charging their smartphones in the microwave appear far more authentic than photos of that three-breasted woman in Tampa plenty of people want to believe is real, let’s be clear on two things:
- With or without an iOS update, you cannot charge your iPhone in a microwave.
- Since everyone’s mama—with the exception of Paris Hilton’s—taught their kids that metal and microwaves don’t mix, those #AppleWave photos and videos of allegedly microwaved iPhone 6es circulating on social media are likely not real either.
As Lisa Vaas of Sophos writes:
I’m very suspicious of whether the photos going ’round the Twittersphere as purported evidence of the con’s effectiveness aren’t in fact borrowed from the video Mr. Toasty iPhone 5 posted two years ago.
Who else need a new iphone and microwave? 😭😂 pic.twitter.com/qRP9Xt2pQp
— Ralph (@ralph23jays) September 19, 2014
Lead image screencapped from Microwaving My New IPHONE5
