Apple responds to complaints of bent iPhones 6; see photo

Social media channels have overflowed this week with commentary on whether Apple‘s new iPhone 6 Plus bends under pressure, particularly in a pants pocket.

Turns out actual complaints to the company, at least so far, are much less prevalent.

“With normal use a bend in iPhone is extremely rare and through our first six days of sale, a total of nine customers have contacted Apple with a bent iPhone 6 Plus,” Trudy Muller, an Apple spokeswoman, said in a statement. “IPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus meet or exceed all of our high quality standards to endure everyday, real life use.”

The statement comes after some early adopters complained that the new iPhone 6 Plus, which is significantly larger than previous generations of the iPhone, was permanently bending from simply being carried in a pocket for long periods of time.

After one new iPhone 6 Plus owner on Tuesday complained that his phone warped after sitting in his front pants pocket during a long drive, the story was quickly picked up by technology blogs and news outlets.

Lewis Hilsenteger, who runs Unbox Therapy, a YouTube channel dedicated to showcasing the latest tech hardware, filmed himself straining to bend an iPhone 6 Plus with his bare hands. The video has been viewed more than 25 million times in less than two days.

Apple performs “rigorous tests throughout the entire development cycle including three-point bending, pressure-point cycling, sit, torsion and user studies,” according to Ms. Muller. “IPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus meet or exceed all of our high quality standards to endure everyday, real life use.”

As Apple has grown bigger and more successful, it has also become a bigger target for criticism. The company says it sold more than 10 million iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus smartphones over the first three days of release, a new record for the company.

Some of the attention is self-inflicted, however. In 2010, early buyers of the iPhone 4 reported problems with the device’s cellular antenna, which caused dropped calls due to the design of the phone. An Apple executive responsible for the project left the company over the incident.

And this week, Apple released a software update to the iPhone that was supposed to fix some early bugs in an updated version of its mobile operating system, iOS 8. The update made some users’ phones unable to make or receive calls, and also rendered the touch identification technology software useless, according to reports. Apple quickly withdrew the software update, and has said it planned to release a new software patch in short order.