When Zack Nelson — a.k.a. YouTube’s JerryRigEverything — tried to bend the iPhone Air, it hurt his fingers.
Apple wants to prove that its thinnest phone is durable. The company’s execs challenged interviewers to try to bend the phone. Apple said the device “exceeds Apple’s stringent bend strength requirements” and is “more durable than any previous iPhone,” in a release when it unveiled the device.
Nelson has amassed over 9 million followers for poking, prodding, and scratching various devices. He recently tested the iPhone Air and was surprised by how much pressure it could withstand. He posted a video of the experiment titled, “iPhone Air Durability test — I AM SHOCKED.”
Putting the iPhone Air on its side, Nelson tried bending it from both directions. Bending from the back caused “freaking nothing,” he said. Bending from the front, Nelson found a bit of “curvature,” but the phone’s titanium build caused it to return to “straight as it was coming out of the box a few minutes ago.”
The iPhone Air has a titanium frame, like most of Apple’s phones since the iPhone 15. The iPhone 17 and 17 Pro, which dropped the same day as the iPhone Air, revert to aluminum frames.
“The iPhone Air has no business being this indestructible,” Nelson said. “Both my thumbs now hurt, along with my pride. The iPhone Air 100% passes my durability test.”
To quantify the pressure under which the iPhone Air would break, Nelson placed the phone underneath two bars and then pulled up with a device that measured force.
At 171 pounds of pressure, he heard a crack, but the screen stayed intact. At 216 pounds, the phone snapped, though the back glass stayed intact.
That’s a lot more force than the iPhone 6 could handle. Some users found they could bend it with human force, leading to the company’s BendGate controversy in 2014.
That 216 pounds of force that snapped the iPhone Air was applied to one point in the center of the phone, and not across the device’s surface area, Nelson said. So no, you probably won’t bend your iPhone Air by sitting on it.
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