Apple iPhone 6 ‘hard to bend’, glitch-free software update

New flagship phones back on track after successful roll-out in 22 countries - including the UAE.

1st: iPhone 6 with 3.1% market share. Alessandro Di Marco / EPA

Apple got the latest iPhones’ global introduction back on track with a rollout in 22 countries, a glitch-free software update and backing from Consumers Reports tests that show the handsets are hard to bend.

Stress tests on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, along with comparable smartphones from competitors, showed that it took “significant force” to damage any of the devices, Consumer Reports magazine said in a study published on its website. In a sign that consumers were ready to overlook the smartphone’s rocky first week, long lines formed at stores as Apple introduced the latest iPhones to a second wave of markets, including Russia, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

The new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are Apple’s most important products to debut this year, leading a wave of gadgets that will go on sale, including new iPads and the Apple Watch. While Apple touted a record 10 million sales of iPhones during the opening weekend, the celebration was cut short by an iOS mobile-software update that disabled cellular service, causing Apple’s engineers to pull it back. The company also had to respond to a social-media firestorm over claims that the large-screen iPhone was susceptible to bending if sat upon.

“Apple customers are probably some of the most demanding customers in the world,” Francis Sideco, an analyst at IHS, said in a telephone interview. He said that no news was good news, because “if they weren’t fixed or if there were new issues that had cropped up, we would’ve seen it”.

About 600 people lined up late last week outside Amsterdam’s Apple Store, with 400 customers at the Barcelona shop, the Cupertino, California-based company said.

Apple released on September 25 its second fix, iOS 8.0.2, for its mobile operating system, which is included in the new iPhones and available as an upgrade for recent models. Apple also said that it had only received nine customer complaints about bent iPhone 6 Plus devices.

Stress tests showed the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are as “tough” as other comparable phones including HTC’s One M8 and Samsung’s Galaxy Note 3, Consumer Reports magazine said on its website on Saturday. “Our tests show that both iPhones seem tougher than the Internet fracas implies,” the report said.

Apple’s stock rose 2.9 per cent to close at $100.75 in New York on September 25, after declining 3.8 per cent a day earlier.

Apple chief executive Tim Cook is counting on the new handsets, which generate more than half of Apple’s annual $171 billion in revenue, to fuel sales growth. He’s using the iPhone 6, which has a 4.7-inch display, and iPhone 6 Plus with a 5.5-inch screen to push into the turf of Samsung, HTC Corp. and other manufacturers of smartphones with jumbo-sized screens.

Demand for Apple’s new handsets has the company poised to sell more than 61 million iPhones in the last three months of the year, surpassing last year’s record 51 million sold, according to Barclays.

“People who want an iPhone are going to buy one, regardless of what the news says,” said Carl Howe, an analyst at 451 Research. “Given that they are backordered in every country in which they are available, they’ll have no problem selling them if they don’t want the phone.”

Sales are also set to pick up as the new iPhones become available in more countries. The list expanded to also include Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Isle of Man, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Qatar, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan and Turkey. In total, the iPhones will be in 115 countries by the end of the year, Apple has said.

Apple apologised for the early iOS glitches and said that fewer than 40,000 iPhone 6 and 6 Plus devices were affected by the iOS 8.0.1 problem that caused users to lose cellular reception.

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