The crisis of the bending iPhone 6: Solving the problem
Given the painful possibility that new iPhones may lose their shape when pressure is applied in pockets, forward thinking is required. Here is the answer.
I've been up all night.
Ever since I heard reports that brand-new iPhone 6 Pluses had their minuses, I've been doing what all responsible people should have been doing: drinking pinot noir while trying to avert disaster.
Should you only now be emerging from dreams in which you wore a purple dress and were referred to as "Your Majesty," you may not know that there have been reports that the iPhone 6 Plus is excessively flexible.
Those who have been shoving it in their pockets and then coding for 24 hours straight have discovered that their iPhone becomes bent out of shape. It takes on a permanent stoop, looking not unlike a British prince of advanced years or a president bowing to some obscure potentate whose oil he desires.
This is not merely inelegant. It is imperfection at its worst. Apple is all about design exactitude, not instant aging.
Display specialist Dr. Raymond Soneira insists that the deformation may not be permanent. I don't think you should take any chances, though.
I would therefore like to offer solutions before this crisis becomes an epidemic and Apple stores are besieged with lines of people trying to give back phones that they planned to sell on the black market for three times the price they paid.
The first solution: don't put your phone in your back pocket.
This has never been a good look. Even in the days when all phones did was flip, it created an unsightly bulge in an area which is, for so many, a fulcrum of human attraction. It makes you look as if you have two entirely different buttocks, one which underwent a botched enhancement.
The iPhone 6 Plus provides, therefore, an excellent opportunity to return your rear view to its natural shape.
What about your front pockets? Clearly, the types of Dockers worn by San Francisco 49-ers coach Jim Harbaugh would likely accommodate the iPhone 6 Plus with no problem.
Style like Harbaugh's, however, brings up desperate issues of taste, ones which no iPhone owner could possibly risk.
Moreover, what happens when you sit down with your phone in your front pocket? Some speculate that the tightness of your pants is significant here. The tighter they are, the more pressure they exert on your phone. It seems clear, too, that a lot depends on whether you lean forward when you sit or maintain a more correct upright position.
You'd imagine that you'd be able to feel your bones or the chiseled tautness of your thigh muscles beginning to crush your phone. Perhaps, though, you're so engrossed in your work that you don't sense what you're doing to your status symbol until it's too late.
My digestion has already been twisted by some who suggest that this is the time for a belt clip or even a phone holster. Please, just look at this link and understand that the world is in a terminal state and anyone who suggests this should be escorted away for immediate remedial treatment.
The ideal solution is, in fact, both geeky and retro: we all need to return to the glorious days of the shirt pocket. Once it was a place to hang your Mont Blanc pen. Now it has a more beautiful use.
Whether you wear a T-shirt or one with buttons, whether you wear tight sweaters or drapery of a looser kind, you're going to have to have a special built-in iPhone Plus breast pocket.
We're in the era of wearable tech, aren't we? Tech and fashion are beginning to embrace each other like ill-washed teens on the subway. So Prada, Gucci and Dolce and Friends should immediately design all their garments with a perfectly sized, perfectly tight iPhone Plus top pocket. (I'll leave the finer design details to them.)
The pocket must be perfectly tight so that the iPhone Plus won't fall out when you bend down to pick up your dog's morning emissions. It must come in sizes that reflect the two Apple phones. You should also be able to order garments that have pockets for your Samsung, HTC, LG and any other devices that may be at peril.
The minute that the Pradas of this world have not merely solved the problem but also insisted that this is the new fashion, H&M, Zara, Forever 21 and the rest will follow suit. And when they follow suit, the perfectly pocketed shirts will be in the stores before the posh designers have got their act together.
It's true that all of us will have to wear our iPhones close to our hearts. But isn't that a lot more symbolic and true than placing them near our bottoms and crotches?