Is the iPhone X the Most Fragile iPhone Apple Ever Built?

www.newsweek.com ^ | 11/7/17 at 7:26 AM | By Anthony Cuthbertson

[Red Badger]

When Apple unveiled the iPhone X in September, it seemed the tech giant had finally addressed one of the most common complaints about iPhones: Their propensity for the screen to shatter when dropped.

Apple said the glass on its three new iPhones—the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X—would be tougher than not just its predecessors, but all other smartphones out there.

The new generation of iPhones “are reinforced by a steel and copper structure with the 50 percent deeper strengthening layer using our dual ion-exchange process,” Apple said, adding that it is “the most durable glass ever made in a smartphone.”

Since its release on Friday the usual slew of tests and reviews that come with the launch of a new Apple product have inundated social media platforms. It didn’t take long for Apple’s claims to be put in doubt, with some initial drop tests concluding that the iPhone X is the “most breakable iPhone ever.”

Electronics insurance firm SquareTrade conducted a series of drop tests and other durability experiments designed to see if Apple’s most expensive iPhone ever is also its most durable. In a video posted on Monday, the company gave the iPhone X a “high risk” breakability score, noting failures of the Home swipe and Face ID, as well as extensive shattering and splintering.

SquareTrade is using the drop tests as a way to push its insurance on iPhone X customers, saying in the video: “Technology comes at a price. Drop it, and you’ll pay.” But several other drop tests performed by independent bloggers since the iPhone X release have shown similar results.

[Ronin]

I must be the only regular iPhone user in the world who has never once broken a phone. So far I have used a 1, a 4, and a 5s. (I don’t jump each time a new model comes out.) I still have all of them. The 1 is on a shelf, my wife uses the 4 as an iPad, and I using the 5s. Not one of them has a scratch or a chip anywhere.

[mad_as_he$$]

Wrong again. As usual.

How did that PG&E thing work out for you? lolololl.....

[ConservativeWarrior]

Obviously you don’t use an iPhone if you think it’s painful to browse.

---

Browsing or working on any phone-sized screen is painful.

That’s why companies make computers. Even Apple. ;)

[relictele]

Frankly, I doubt you really own an iPhone.

You...doubt it? Who enshrined you as the arbiter of truth and Apple ownership? What you believe or don't believe is of no concern to me but to mock your spittle-flecked button-mashing in a public venue here's a photo of my phone:

Incredibly enough, the photo was taken by my iPad and vice versa:

I realize this invalidates your haughty claim of denial but them's the breaks.

You are not one of the 750 plus members of the Apple Ping List. . . that tells me a lot.

It tells you nothing except what the voices in your head say. It's a desperate attempt to invalidate criticism because you have a strange, bordering on irrational, obsession with a company's products. And we thought Rush Limbaugh was hooked! And how and why is the Apple Ping List relevant? It's a voluntary list. It's optional. It's a mere 750 members on a site with hundreds of thousands of users, tens of thousands of whom probably also own Apple hardware.

No, they're not.

Yes, they are. This chart demonstrates the following:

1) A massive amount of searches related to degraded performance and response in a short amount of time.

2) A rapid subsidence of those searches as bug fixes are issued

It is safe to assume that not every user obtains the newest hardware. In fact, it's safe to assume that most of them do not for reasons of finance, inconvenience, or the fact that they just bought a new phone a year ago. Therefore, the searches and the problems are related to new iOS on existing hardware.

They have a few minor problems that some users experience in the first roll out.

A statement for which you have provided no empirical evidence ie the kind you demand from others. A 'few minor problems' would not elicit a panicked x.01 update within 24 hours of release, to say nothing of x.02, x.03 issued in under a week. iOS 11 is the most recent example.

They are ironed out within a couple weeks with point releases.

I hate to have keep explaining your position as well as mine, but this statement invalidates your previous one. There are either bugs or there are not. Updates issued almost immediately after the first release in response to user complaints confirms that these are, indeed, bugs.

No body, not even Apple, can find every minor bug on the first release.

The point is they don't try very hard given their budget and manpower. Why is it an article of faith with you that they do? It's obvious that the Shiny New Object phenomenon is the main driver of behavior at Apple and among many in its user base. iOS 11 has produced widespread reports of an inability to type the capital letter 'I,' for example. It may be a minor annoyance and become the subject of a humorous meme but testing full keyboard/character functionality would seem to be the most basic of QA procedures.

There are too many combinations of software/hardware interactions that people use for beta testers to try.

Now THIS is unadulterated horseflop. Too many combinations? iOS is proprietary. It's owned by Apple. It runs only on Apple hardware (VM experiments notwithstanding). There have been only 11 versions of iOS issued. On the hardware side, there have been 10 or fewer full versions of the iPhone with variations within generations. There are, actually, a relatively LOW number of combinations of hardware and software which directly contradicts your statement.

And if you're speaking of apps, that is not the subject of the article or the initial response. Apps are the responsibility of the developers - but their even more frequent patches indicate they also are more concerned with rapid deployment than with stability.

All in all, they are usually pretty rock-solid for the majority of users.

And despite this subjective claim, the chart shows massive spikes in searches for help. Oh dear, how inconvenient.

There is nothing that comes out that is a "disaster" as you put it.

So your subjective claim trumps mine? Interesting criteria - and convenient also. But it's obviously a dramatic - and relative - term. You seem to want to exclude Apple from any and all responsibility for their product and procedures. They, not you or I, are the ones pushing iOS releases as technological revelations. They nag you on the device. They nag you in iTunes. If it's so wonderful and a must-have why are there so many problems, complaints and requests for help upon release?

You are posting FUD, unadulterated FUD.

Actually, it's not unadulterated. I added water per the label's instructions.

No, I'm afraid I'm writing about my experiences and those of many others. Again, the chart absolutely supports my position, which is why I posted in the thread in the first place.

I note that you have completely avoided the topic of Apple's response to bug reports. Posting in a 'User Community' is as futile as trying to fly by flapping one's arms yet it is Apple's most frequent response to reports of trouble.

Trolls who post FUD

Step 1: stick fingers in ears. Step 2: yell 'Troll!'

If you've got so much energy why not check post history? I've been here since 2004 and have discussed innumerable technological topics. You and I have, in fact, had productive and not-so-productive discussions on various subjects but regrettably you have lost the plot on this one, mostly because you are playing the man and not the ball.

usually try to give themselves some authority by claiming ownership of an Apple device

I'm making no claim whatsoever. Your inference is your own. My 'authority' is experience combined with ownership combined with a knowledge of and traffic in many Apple user forums (official and otherwise) in which - surprise! - widespread problems related to iOS bugs are a large portion of the discussion. Which brings us full circle.

[ImJustAnotherOkie]

Ahh denial..

[TheBattman]

"one of the most common complaints about iPhones: Their propensity for the screen to shatter when dropped."

I'm not particularly gentle on my iphone... And while I do use a screen protector (glass) and generally keep my phone in a case (not an Otterbox or Lifeproof or similar armor-style case), I've had drops and have never even cracked a screen. I did get a few scratches on my first iPhone screen (iPhone 3). about ¼ of the Android phones I see in the wild (friends, family, church members, general public) have cracks and or shattered screens. And remember - there are several Android-based phones that have plastic screens - so are not likely to shatter.

So I've never really understood the argument that iphone screens are particularly susceptible to breakage, or even more fragile than any other make. That being said - an essentially all-glass device (with a stainless minimalistic "frame") certainly would seem to be an invitation to damage. Add to it the technology in the screen is far more expensive than most - and yes, I can see some expensive repairs for iPhone X devices.

[TheBattman]

There’s something else going on - my daughter has an iPhone 6 (is a hand-me-down of a hand-me-down). It is not appreciably slower than my wife’s 6+, and only slightly noticeably slower than my iPhone 7+.

EVERY computing device seems to slow down over time, whether that be a smartphone, a tablet, a laptop, a desktop, or even a mainframe computer. As code becomes fragmented on the drive (even solid state drives suffer from fragmentation), and as the actual memory capacity is filled up - the nature of the beast is that it slows down in dealing with the additional overhead.

Throw in that not only new and updated OS versions add additional burdens to the finite resources, but apps continue to evolve (and add bloat) which further task the various components, and it is unavoidable to see a measurable “slowdown” over time (even if that is more perception than reality when compared to newer devices).

Not to throw a straw man into this, but I’ve never seen a device from any maker, particularly Android-powered, that didn’t slow down - and indeed, Android often sees crashes and even malware to further tax the device and user.

But back to your particular situation - again, in a side-by-side comparison, running the same OS, there is very little appreciable difference between my daughter’s iPhone6 and my iPhone 7+ in app opening, and general tasks. And right now, there is actually a bit of advantage on her iPhone 6 - as I am in the beta program for iOS with my iPhone... so it it still needs optimization.

[Godzilla]

Protecting my investment is why I bought a protective case for my iPhone 5

[TheBattman]

Apple has more money than God or the US Mint but they are quite content to let their hapless, helpless user base be a worldwide army of beta testers.

Interesting theory - yet Apple releases early betas to developers to test, then to ANYONE who wants to sign up (for FREE) to we in the public beta program. These public betas go through many revisions to address user-reported problems across many device generations. Most iOS releases are relatively bug-free (relatively), and additional issues that arise on general release are almost always quickly addressed with follow-up updates quickly.

If your primary profit is in hardware, would you release the "latest and greatest" hardware (at a premium price) with the older OS that may not even support the new tech you are introducing in your product (without having to kludge together something that may or may not be reliable)?

The conspiracy nuts here on FR, particularly when it comes to Apple, are just as idiotic and ridiculous as the Leftist/Marxist 9-11 conspiracy theorists all over the vast Progressive matrix.

I am not alone in the experience of having Android devices that were absolutely hosed by Android updates (which are almost always manufacturer-specific and pushed out. Slowdowns are the least of your problem when manufacturer updates literally brick your device.

[relictele]

You and the OP keep referring to bugs as 'issues.' Bowdlerizing flaws, especially those which break functionality working in the previous edition may be an interesting linguistic exercise but it does not lessen their number or severity. iOS 10, for example, caused havoc with Bluetooth devices for no apparent good reason, not least because Bluetooth standards hadn't changed which meant the fault was entirely Apple's. The problem was NOT 'quickly addressed' - quite the opposite - and in fact was seemingly ignored or denied by Apple until they issued their usual 'oh yeah, that's a bug after all' admission.

Are issues/bugs addressed? Yes. Are there often many of them? Yes again. Is public outcry the primary driver of Apple's rapid response? Yes again.

Now for the user base. If they download Apple updates in good faith based on Apple's New & Improved marketing, they are entitled to cock a suspicious eye at Apple the NEXT time New & Improved comes around.

If your primary profit is in hardware, would you release the "latest and greatest" hardware (at a premium price) with the older OS that may not even support the new tech you are introducing in your product (without having to kludge together something that may or may not be reliable)?

Not necessarily. But, again, it is Apple suggesting that the new iOS is a must-have for all device users except for those specifically excluded from upgrade candidacy.

A conspiracy requires multiple parties aligned to perpetrate a fraud or at least an offensive act but Apple is a single monolithic entity as is their mobile technology line. It does not require a conspiracy nor a nut to point out well-documented missteps they have made in the past and to suggest that haste makes waste, which it clearly has on multiple occasions. As before, the chart clearly shows a link between new versions of iOS and problems reported, searched for, etc.

I gladly use and prefer Apple mobile products especially after about 6 months of Android hell but adoption and use doesn't require unblinking religious commitment to a company, its software or its hardware. Apple have QA and customer service difficulties like any other vendor and it isn't blasphemous to point this out.

[Arlis]

40 years in computere - you are correct.

The slowdown on mine was sudden, shocking, & the immediate result of installing IOS 11. Aps that would load in a second or two suddenly were taking 15 - 25 seconds to open.

[Swordmaker]

I must be the only regular iPhone user in the world who has never once broken a phone. So far I have used a 1, a 4, and a 5s. (I don’t jump each time a new model comes out.) I still have all of them.

Nope, I've had a 1, 3, 3GS, 4, 4S, 5, 5s, 6, 6S, 7Plus, and now an X, plus I've had three iPads and one iPad Pro. All of them have either been handed down to family members. Only one of those, an iPad 2, has ever gotten a broken screen, when my grown younger daughter accidentally dropped it after it had been handed down to her. It cost under $20 and 45 minutes of my time to replace the screen.

The iPhone 1 was handed down five times until it wound up with my granddaughter when she was three years old as a WIFI only iPod Touch (no phone connection) to play games on. . . until she got my first iPad for that use. That was seven years after that iPhone was released and it was still on its first battery and it still retained about 80% of a normal charge when we finally retired it and put it in a drawer.

Lately, I am trading in my iPhones on the AT&T Next program so my disappointed family aren't getting hand-me-downs. They have to buy their own.

[Red Badger]

You can sell those old phones................

[Swordmaker]

How did that PG&E thing work out for you? lolololl.....

Thanks for asking. It was finally finished after the city put every roadblock they could think of in the way of doing a do-it-yourself gas line install, delaying inspections as long as they could. It was completely ridiculous. This is, after all California, and they do not want individuals doing anything.

The final insult was that PG&E said they could NOT reconnect the gas until the City of Sacramento faxed them the final inspection checked off. . . but the City of Sacramento Building Department claimed they don't do that, ever. Call back PG&E who says, yes, they do. Call back City, "no, we don't. We never fax a final inspection to anyone!" PG&E: "We can't connect gas without a final inspection certification from the inspectors!" City: "We don't provide it!" Me: "Let me talk to your supervisor!" Supervisor: "I'll have your inspector call you." Two hours later, Inspector: "Oh, I forgot to FAX the final to PG&E." Me: "Can you do it now?" Inspector: "I'll do it when I get back to the office in about 20 minutes." I call PG&E an hour later. PG&E: "No, we don't have a FAX from the City of Sacramento yet." PG&E, another hour later: "No, not yet." PG&E two hours later: "Nope, not yet." next morning, PG&E "No, no fax." Call inspector: "Oh, sorry, forgot." PG&E: "GOT IT! We can make an appointment for the end of next week." Me: "No, not acceptable, you sent someone to came out in 20 minutes to red tag and turn it off. My tenant has been without gas for three weeks." PG&E: "OK we can have someone there in the morning." WHEW!

I discounted the rent by 50% for my tenants for their lack of ability to cook or take showers for three weeks. This was a job that COULD have been done in three days had the city not taken so long to come out to do the inspections. . . the delays were deliberate, intended to punish anyone who dares not use a plumbing contractor.

[Swordmaker]

Ahh denial..

I said LIAR. You said that AppleCare for the iPhone X is $600. It's not. Your claim is a lie.

"This doesn't take into account AppleCare, the extended warranty program users can opt to add to their new purchase to protect it from defects or accidental damage. As with older iPhones, AppleCare for the iPhone 8 costs $129 for up to two years of coverage. The iPhone 8 Plus is $149, while the iPhone X jumps to $199." —Sep 13, 2017

SamsungCare cost for the same two years for the Samsung Galaxy 8 is $9.99 per month, or $239.76 for the same coverage.

The cost for extended warranty for the Google Pixel 2 is $229 for the same 24 months.

Apple's extended warranty is the least expensive of these. So, the propaganda which was not even a nice try, and the denial is YOURS, Okie.

[dhs12345]

Wow!

I still have my G5. Going strong. My wife’s and sons too.

But if I do want to upgrade, nice to know it is somewhat affordable. Can’t afford a 1000 bucks, though!

[Swordmaker]

Wow! What is that? iPhone 5? 5C? SE? For a second there I thought it might be a 3GS. All right, I apologize. . . but your post had all the bullet points a troll usually hits. They raise red red flags from years of keep the list. . . and usually it turns out to be true.

There are too many combinations of software/hardware interactions that people use for beta testers to try.

Now THIS is unadulterated horseflop. Too many combinations? iOS is proprietary. It's owned by Apple. It runs only on Apple hardware (VM experiments notwithstanding). There have been only 11 versions of iOS issued. On the hardware side, there have been 10 or fewer full versions of the iPhone with variations within generations. There are, actually, a relatively LOW number of combinations of hardware and software which directly contradicts your statement.

And if you're speaking of apps, that is not the subject of the article or the initial response. Apps are the responsibility of the developers - but their even more frequent patches indicate they also are more concerned with rapid deployment than with stability.

Yes, I am speaking of apps. . . and it is the subject of what happens when an OS of any kind is released into the wild. No beta test program can be exposed to every combination of device/software that is in use in the wild. There will be combinations that cause issues that are unforeseen have conflicts, especially in apps that need to use the same resources. It just happens and until they occur there is no way to predict them. It's the nature of the environment. This is the REASON for beta testing in the first place, hoping to find the more egregious conflicts.

So, no, it's not "unadulterated horseflop," relictele. It's factual.

Did you add the pinch of salt as well? 8^) That adds flavor.

1) A massive amount of searches related to degraded performance and response in a short amount of time.

2) A rapid subsidence of those searches as bug fixes are issued

Look, relictele, I've been running the Apple Ping list for many years and following these "Issues" or problems with new iOS releases, and OSX or macOS releases as well. There is no "massive amount of searches related to degraded performance and responses in a short amount of time when compared to the sheer number of devices in the wild. Those "searches" are minuscule compared to number of people who DO NOT HAVE PROBLEMS. We are talking about a very small number of users, especially when you look and see how many of those hits are duplicates.

Currently there are over 1.25 BILLION iOS devices in use around the world. . . but searches come up with a very few complaints most of which are duplicate hits. For example "iOS 11 complaints" resulted in 544,000 hits, most of them relate to battery issues. That is generally handled by the simple fix of restarting your iPhone with a cold restart.

GotaBeMobile.com had an article on 24 problems related to iOS 11 updating. . . and almost every single one of them was solved by the simple solution of doing a forced restart of the iPhone. . . something that is usually advised to do on doing a major update to the iPhone. Such a restart clears all the registers of old settings that a warm restart does not. If you do it after an update, you simply don't run into these problems.

Many of the other article found in that search were speculation articles about what you might run into if you upgraded. Just because there are a "lot of hits" does not mean there are a lot of problems, or that everyone is experiencing them, as you imply or that Apple is just shoving junk out the door for "hapless users to beta test." That is far from the case, and not at all the truth. There are actually tens of thousands of registered beta testers signed up with Apple to test iOS before it ever gets released to the general public. . . but some conflicts will just not get caught. . . and they will be fixed.

"rapid subsidence of problems" is exactly what I said. . . in the first couple of weeks after the release, usually with the first two point updates. Apple has to KNOW about the problems the users in the wild are having to be able to target the problem and fix it. I NEVER said there were not "bugs" in iOS releases. I said they were MINOR issues that affected a small minority of users. That is the truth. Here is what I said, and you even quoted me.

They are ironed out within a couple weeks with point releases.

I hate to have keep explaining your position as well as mine, but this statement invalidates your previous one. There are either bugs or there are not. Updates issued almost immediately after the first release in response to user complaints confirms that these are, indeed, bugs.

Your explaining my "position" as well as yours is NOT YOUR JOB. That is you trying to explain away the fact that the minor problems are Ironed out in a few minor 11.1.x upgrades after they get reported to Apple. If they do NOT get reported to Apple, they will not get fixed. . . and the only way they can be found is if a large number of people use the OS with the software that may interact incorrectly. A single report of a problem is not sufficient to indicate a problem.

The point is they don't try very hard given their budget and manpower.

There is your problem. You have no clue about the work that goes into developing a new release of an operating system such as a new iOS release so you can Monday Morning quarterback like you do and claim they weren't ready and if they just put more money and effort into it would be perfect when it was released to PLEASE YOUR SENSIBILITIES about how well it should run and how many problems it should have. I would be willing to bet you've never done a lick of development in your life. Have you? There are over 90 million lines of code in macOS. . . and iOS is a major subset of that. I've heard there are over 50 million lines of code in iOS and that a good majority of it was rewritten in iOS 11. It's larger than Windows. Frankly, it's surprising there aren't more problems with such a huge undertaking.

YOU want an update to be perfect when it is released. So do I, but I've done coding and I know that NOTHING ever is. Not even with Apple. Some releases are better than others. iOS 11 was a MAJOR upgrade and has a few more bugs than others lesser upgrades in the past.

On the hardware side, there have been 10 or fewer full versions of the iPhone with variations within generations.

That is factually untrue. Just because it has been ten years since the iPhone was released does not mean there have only been ten models of iPhones. . . and there are model distinctions that differentiate them.

1. iPhone — Samsung ARM 11 processor, 412 MHz
2. iPhone 3G — Samsung ARM 11 processor, 833 MHz— Oleophobic screen — App Store
3. iPhone 3GS — Apple A4 processor 1.0 GHz clocked to 800MHz — 24 bit color screen
4. iPhone 4 — Apple A5 processor 1.0 GHz clocked to 800MHz— Flash Encryption
5. iPhone 4S — Apple A5 processor 1.0 GHz clocked to 800MHz Dual Core — Full System Encryption Added
6. iPhone 5— Apple A6 processor 1.3 Ghz Dual Core — Larger 4" Screen
7. iPhone 5c — Apple A6 processor 1.3 Ghz Dual Core — Larger Screen, plastic case
8. iPhone 5s — Apple A7 64 bit processor 1.3 Ghz Dual Core with M7 motion coprocessor and Secure Enclave — TouchID sensor
9. iPhone 6 — Apple A8 64 bit processor 1.4 Ghz Dual Core with M8 motion coprocessor and Secure Enclave 4.7" screen — TouchID sensor
10. iPhone 6 Plus — Apple A8 64 bit processor 1.4 Ghz Dual Core with M8 motion coprocessor and Secure Enclave 5.5" screen — TouchID sensor
11. iPhone 6s — Apple A9 64 bit processor 1.85 Ghz Dual Core with M9 motion coprocessor and Secure Enclave 4.7" screen — TouchID sensor
12. iPhone 6s Plus — Apple A9 64 bit processor 1.85 Ghz Dual Core with M9 motion coprocessor and Secure Enclave 5.5" screen — TouchID sensor
13. iPhone SE — Apple A9 64 bit processor 1.85 Ghz Dual Core with M9 motion coprocessor and Secure Enclave 4" screen — Dual Rear Cameras — Optical image Stabilization — TouchID sensor
14. iPhone 7 — Apple A10 64 bit processor 2.33 Ghz Quad Core with M10 motion coprocessor and Secure Enclave 4.7" screen — TouchID sensor
15. iPhone 7 Plus — Apple A10 64 bit processor 2.33 Ghz Quad Core with M10 motion coprocessor and Secure Enclave 5.5" screen — Dual Rear Cameras — Optical image Stabilization front & Rear — TouchID sensor
16. iPhone 8 — Apple A11 Bionic 64 bit processor 2.39 Ghz Hexa Core with M11 motion coprocessor with Neural Engine and Secure Enclave 4.7" screen — single Rear Cameras — Optical Image Stabilization both front & Rear — TouchID sensor
17. iPhone 8 Plus — Apple A10 Bionic 64 bit processor 2.39 Ghz Hexa Core with M10 motion coprocessor with Neural Engine and Secure Enclave 5.5" screen — Dual Rear Cameras — Optical image Stabilization both Front 7 Rear — TouchID sensor
18. iPhone X— Apple A11 Bionic 64 bit processor 2.39 Ghz Hexa Core with M11 motion coprocessor with Neural Engine and Secure Enclave 5.8" OLED screen — Dual Rear Cameras — Optical image Stabilization both front & rear — 3d sensor FaceID

Each of these are have both design, structural, and functional differences, even with in numeric model designations.

Would you like to be added to the Apple Ping List?

[Swordmaker]

You and the OP keep referring to bugs as 'issues.' Bowdlerizing flaws, especially those which break functionality working in the previous edition may be an interesting linguistic exercise but it does not lessen their number or severity. iOS 10, for example, caused havoc with Bluetooth devices for no apparent good reason, not least because Bluetooth standards hadn't changed which meant the fault was entirely Apple's. The problem was NOT 'quickly addressed' - quite the opposite - and in fact was seemingly ignored or denied by Apple until they issued their usual 'oh yeah, that's a bug after all' admission.

It's a "bug" when it effects ALL users. It's an issue when it effects a very small minority of users. That was the case with the bluetooth problem in iOS 10. It WAS only a small number of users, in fact a tiny fraction of 1 percent of iPhone/IPad users. It was such a small number that over 100,000 beta and public beta testers had not a SINGLE tester run into it in over three months of testing iOS 10 Beta versions. It required millions of users after the release to come up with several hundreds or thousands of users who had bluetooth devices that failed to connect or consistently stay connected.

It turned out to be a problem with a batch of Bluetooth radios that were slightly less than optimal and required a software update that could identify those and adjust the connection parameters in the bluetooth radio's firmware to allow for the problem in connecting. Problem solved.

Apple was even able to identify the batch of Bluetooth chips and when it was shipped by who were making the complaints who had actually brought their iPhones in to the Genius Bars. They were consistent to a specific time of manufacture and a specific run of one sub-supplier of the Bluetooth radios. Sometimes THAT is what it takes to find such problems.

However, since not every single iPhone user was having a problem with Bluetooth, it was NOT A BUG in the software. It was an issue with some users' iPhones. How do you find that? You work the problem and find out exactly what the problem IS with those users' devices. The software itself was not "buggy;" It worked as it was designed to work, but to closer tolerances than previous software, likely to save battery power. The problem, the issue, was in some flakey hardware that nominally passed original quality control but was actually marginal. A software FIX actually did take care of it by allowing those marginal radios to work once the problem was identified.

Why did it take so long? Because the problem was not Apple's problem. It was a problem with the supplier of the Bluetooth radio chip. Once Apple had identified where the problem lay, the supplier had to come up with a FIRMWARE UPGRADE that Apple could push out to all of the users who had a problem. That took months to design and write the firmware update that solved the issue in the radio AND kept it within the Bluetooth STANDARDS of the devices it had to connect to.

Some problems are not quick fixes. Apple had pushed out some early patches that solved some of the problems for some users who had chips that were just slightly out of specs, but it did not fix the underlying issue with the more flakey chips that would mostly work but still would drop signals. The worst, Apple just swapped out iPhones for. Others had to wait for the firmware update from the chip maker.

Is public outcry the primary driver of Apple's rapid response? Yes again.

No, it is not "public outcry." Apple is driven to create perfection in its products. Apple does NOT wait for news media to work on improving its software or to fix problems. Apple has mechanisms in place for users to REPORT problems they are experiencing which YOU decry as somehow wrong. Report it on Apple forums IS the best way to report a problem if you don't want to bother calling 1-800-my-Apple which will get you a free one-on-one talk with an Apple support tech person who speaks English and is located in the USA for free. They WILL help you. . . and if they can't, they will escalate it to second tier, who will keep at it until they get you the help you need. . . up to replacing your device.

However, if you DO post it on an Apple forum, they are monitored by Apple employees and often the answer to how to handle your problem is already posted.

Not necessarily. But, again, it is Apple suggesting that the new iOS is a must-have for all device users except for those specifically excluded from upgrade candidacy.

There is a REASON why an update no longer supports a DEVICE, not a specific USER, which you are implying, as though somehow Apple is deliberately discriminating against the USER due to some nefarious reason. The reason is that the DEVICE cannot support the functions the update is designed to update. It would be pointless to update the device and have the device choke and bog down on software it is ill equipped to use. It is simply OUT MODED by the passage of time and the development of more modern technology which has superseded its capabilities. It is not something nefarious or deliberate. The hardware is just not up to the job the software is update designed or intended to do.

Sometimes, the update is for functions the old hardware is literally missing. It just does not have it. Too bad, so sad, but if you want those functions, and sometimes they are for your security, you have to bite the bullet and BUY HARDWARE that supports them. It is not Apple's fault that technology has moved beyond your six year old device. . . but Tempus Fugit, Time Flies, and to stay up with it, you have to move on.

I would not call update advisories from Apple as mere suggestions. Sometimes they are more imperative than that. Sometimes there are severe security threats out there that really need to be addressed by updates. . . and the only way to handle them is through an update that patches something discovered in a software flaw.

[Swordmaker]

You can sell those old phones................

I either handed them down to extended family members or in the past several upgrade cycles I trade them in on the AT&T Next program. The older ones may be worth something, but they no longer belong to me. They belong to my kids or grandkids. If they want to sell them, they are welcome to do so. I don't need the money and the hassle isn't worth it to put them on eBay.

Thanks for the advice, though.

[Red Badger]

Another thing that can be done with ‘old phones’ is they can be donated to women’s and childrens’ protection charities.

The phones can be used to call 911 even without a carrier or a SIM(IIRC). Be sure to include any charging devices...............