Breaking News: Pencils vs. the iPhone 6

By now you’re probably familiar with the mass panic caused by the reported fragility of the iPhone 6. While the folks at OtterBox must be dancing a jig right about now, owners of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are clearly struggling to deal with the fact that the piece of shiny new technology they just dropped an exorbitant amount of money on could snap at any moment. So, how valid are their concerns? And what does any of this have to do with pencils?

Consumer Reports did some testing to see just how fragile the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are compared to other phones. They reported that Apple uses 55 pounds of pressure to stress-test iPhones, and contextualized this number by saying it is the amount of force needed to break three pencils at the same time. The Consumer Reports test found that it took 70lbs of pressure to bend the iPhone 6, and 100lbs to break it. It took 90lbs of pressure to bend the iPhone 6 Plus, and 110lbs to break it. 70-90lbs of pressure is roughly the amount needed to break four pencils.

The thing is, Consumer Reports used a machine to do their testing. While very scientific, it doesn’t translate well to helping consumers understand how much of a beating their phone can withstand. The average Joe can’t afford to test an iPhone 6 in his pocket, but he probably can afford some pencils. Enter Tim Ellis of GeekWire.com, whose experiments with pencils are much more useful for consumers.

I highly recommend you read the whole article and watch the video, but if you have an iPhone 6 and somewhere to be, the most important takeaway is this: you are very unlikely to bend your phone in your front pocket, but extremely likely to bend it in your back pocket. Oh, and ladies, if you’re keeping your phone in your purse, just do yourself a favor and buy a case just to be safe – or do a pencil test first!