Apple confirmed to The Verge that its 2018 iPad Pros are shipped with a bend in them. The company says the fault is in the way the iPad Pro is manufactured. Apple said the fault is in the aluminum chassis, but the bend won’t worsen with time or affect performance.
The Silicon Valley tech giant doesn’t consider this to be a fault. Apple added the bending occurs during the manufacturing process, due to a result of a cooling process involving the iPad Pro’s metal and plastic parts.
The issue persists in both the 11-inch and 12.9-inch variant of iPad Pro. Apple responded after several customers complained about the devices developed a small curve or bend without any external force being applied to the metal casing or any mishandling.
The bending occurred after a normal day of use or while users took the iPad Pro with them in a backpack. Some users complained that their iPad Pro came with a bend right out of the box. It’s true that some people got their replacement models, after informing Apple about the bend.
Users still received models that had a slight bend in the metal chassis. The issue is more noticeable on the LTE version of the iPad Pro. The bend appears where the LTE Bands meet. Apple said the issue isn’t only in the cellular version of iPad Pro. The WiFi version of iPad Pro also has a bend in it.
Customers shouldn’t have any trouble returning their iPads because of the two-week return policy Apple offers. There are also incidents where Apple sales representatives said the bend came under accidental damage.
In reality, this shouldn’t be the case for a small bend such as this. Apple reassured users that it did not observe a higher-than-normal return rate for the 2018 iPad Pro so far.
This controversy came after a viral video from JerryRigEverything showed how easy it was for him to bend the iPad Pro. Most people considered this a stunt to get attention and views from users. But the point is a thin device such as the iPad Pro could bend if someone intended to bend it.
And it is not just the iPad Pro that can fall victim to this bending phenomenon; other tablets could easily bend as well if someone exerted enough force. The 11-inch version of the iPad Pro is less than one pound in weight. And in reality, no one can bend the iPad Pro to such an extent unless they put all their strength into destroying the poor thing.
It’s still a cause for concern that Apple who is usually so particular about its products and hardware perfection managed to let this flaw slip by so easily. The company stands by its product. It seems this bending issue isn’t as bad as the iPhone 6 Plus bend gate that took place a few years back.
The iPhone 6 Plus bending issue was most likely a factor which made the touchscreens unresponsive and caused the phone to fail miserably. Let’s hope the company doesn’t have to face similar problems with the iPad Pro.
Jazib Zaman
Rizwan Anwar
