Does Your iPhone Have “Touch Disease”?
Has your iPhone’s touchscreen been slow and unresponsive lately? Well, you might have “touch disease”.
The design flaw has emerged in the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus where the screen begins to flicker and is slow to respond to touch commands. Despite that Apple has not yet responded to the complaints.
iFixit, an iPhone repairs service, highlighted the issue this week. It claimed that the “disease” is caused by two chips coming detached from the logic board over time. These are the chips that recognize touch and swipe commands on the screen.
iFixit claimed that the problem is “incredibly common”. The company’s blog post on the defect quotes other repair shops claiming the same. “This issue is widespread enough that I feel like almost every iPhone 6/6+ has a touch of it (no pun intended) and are like ticking bombs just waiting to act up,” according to Jason Villmer, Missouri’s of STS Telecom. However there are no hard figures on how many people are experiencing this problem beyond some complaints on Apple’s support forums.
The blog post details a few DIY methods of fixing the phone like applying pressure to the screen and twisting the phone to make the chips slip back in place but this is only a temporary fix. For something more concrete, iPhone 6 or 6 Plus users will need to get the chip soldered back on and if you’re warranty is out, it may be more sensible to just buy a new phone. Both options aren’t exactly ideal, especially for a brand of phone that’s only two years old.
Affected users have claimed that when they raised the issue with Apple, the company did not recognize the defect.
“If the issue is as widespread as repair pros suspect, then Apple should start offering customers solutions instead of excuses. And they need to do it soon,” said iFixit.
Apple has yet to comment though the much-rumored iPhone 7 is expected to be revealed soon, which may divert some attention from iPhone 6 problems.