https://web.archive.org/web/20071021235338/http://www.forbru...
It happened to my computer. Apple delayed and denied and charged me, but wouldn't fix the problem. Eventually I gave up, but I've never bought an Apple device since that failure.
Is this class of issues correctable (to a degree) with a change in the design of those components -- for example, proactively splitting the board at the point that the fissure is likely to appear and coupling it in a flexible way -- or is this a materials science concern where we need to find new methods to build the components' substrates so they are innately flexible?
(To see the problem, place a coin on a credit card and bend the card - note that the coin no longer touches across its whole surface)
The normal solution is to make the PCB stiffer (thicker, or invent something better than FR4), or to make the overall casing stiffer. Either by changing materials or changing the aspect ratio. Fundamentally a long flat thin object is going to be bendy or brittle. The older iPhones that were smaller with glass front and back were an extremely good design from this point of view.
I think GPs idea was to make the PCB no longer long, but have two smaller PCBs with flat flex between them. Then when the phone bends, the PCBs wont bend but let the flat flex take the stress instead.
> (To see the problem, place a coin on a credit card and bend the card - note that the coin no longer touches across its whole surface)
Now cut the card in half and connect it with half a cm of tape and bend it - the two halves will be flat and you'll get a V shape instead. Put the coin on one side and no problem.
I guess it depends on how much open space is in the phone or if the whole PCB is completely flush with the bent casing.
(Look at the smallest .04 x .02 resistors on there!)
More cynically, the PCB only needs to be made as bend-resistant as the display: you don't care about your BGAs if you've cracked the screen.
The article does mention a fix the repairers have been applying, involving the "sticker shield" - not shown in the hero image, it's the metal casing that's been removed and you can see the edges of. That's a few mils off the surface of the PCB and evidently stiffens it enough (on the I-beam principle of operation) to avert the problem.
[1] http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/12/9315471/iphone-6s-new-alum...
This is not going to be as flat as possible, but it let's you play with some flex vs thin and completely stiff.
https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/DSCkX6EfcARJYOHa.h...
The proposal is just to do a little more of that.
There are already polymer glue solder alternatives. They are nowhere near as good as solder, however.
The normal solution is to make the PCB stiffer... Fundamentally a long flat thin object is going to be bendy or brittle
What about changing the layout, such that you can introduce many, many voids in the circuit board? If you can divide up the board into many separate "compartments" then each individual segment can be proportionally stiffer and less flexy. (Long, thin things are "bendy" because the material can act as a lever against itself, so many short stubby things can be very stiff locally.)
It seems people hate these ball bonds and want to move away from them. One alternative is wirebonds, which have their own problems. They are pretty fragile and time consuming to set. I've also learned today that they start to vibrate and break if nearby wires carry a signal at their resonance frequency, which is pretty crazy.
The golden alternative would be to build everything (sensor + electronics) from one monolithic wafer. Instead of making a silicon sensor, some silicon ASICs, and joining them with a PCB, you'd directly put the electronics in the sensor and make it one big CMOS circuit. However it will take a couple of years until we can do that.
My 20 month old (i.e. out of warranty and with no Applecare policy) iphone 6+ started showing the symptoms a week and a half ago. The "Genius" at the Apple Store immediately recognised the symptoms and processed a free replacement (refurbished) phone without any prompting or negotiation on my part.
So while it's true that they are staying very quiet about it in public, it does seem that knowledge of the problem and a free replacement policy has been communicated within the company.
There was recently a lawsuit in the Netherlands where someone sued Apple after receiving a refurbished phone after replacement under warranty [1]. She won the case:
https://www.iphoned.nl/nieuws/rechtszaak-apple-garantie/
The judge based his verdict on a verdict of the European Court of Justice [2], so it's likely that the outcome would be the same in other EU countries.
[1] 20 months would still fall under warranty in the EU.
[2] http://curia.europa.eu/juris/liste.jsf?language=en&num=C-404...
On refurb, many (but absolutely not all point of contact for chips to PCB) are tested, but require lower tolerances
Perhaps a timely reminder than the plural of anecdote is not data.
Most people I know who got RROD ended up just throwing their 360 out.
Also never had an issue with the Oneplus, it has taken a battering and I have successfully changed the screen 3 times, survived a full submersion while turned on and numerous drops. It is currently missing the on\off button due to my carelessness but it is still going strong.
Also, operational heat (from SoC, battery, whatevs...) can repetitively flex boards ever so slightly as it heats up and cools down, and on the long term will cause BGA chips to lose contact over time. That's what famously happened on the Xbox 360, but it more silently happened on numerous other devices too.
BGA is a necessity nowadays due to pin density, but it's a tech that's incredibly easy to ruin at the slightest design or manufacturing mistake.
This is a serious problem when making devices thinner: they become more flexible, but the joints are not flexible, so after a while you get a crack all the way across a joint and it either becomes intermittent or capacitively coupled.
A decade ago I had a white plastic-bodied Macbook which developed a similar fault in the graphics. But it's not just Apple, the famous "red ring of death" was a similar problem induced by thermal cycling rather than physical bending.