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Samsung/Twitter/screenshot by Lance Whitney/CNET
Samsung is getting some mileage out of Apple’s “Bendgate” issue to promote one of its own intentionally curved smartphones.
A tweet posted by Samsung Mobile early Thursday displayed a photo of the company’s Galaxy Note Edge with the tagline “Curved. Not bent” followed by the hashtag #GALAXYNoteEdge. Slated to reach US consumers sometime later this year, the Note Edge will sport a 5.6-inch screen that’s curved at the right edge.
Samsung’s tweet takes advantage of the Apple iPhone snafu, humorously dubbed Bendgate. Ripe for ridicule by Apple rivals, Bendgate refers to the newly discovered flaw in the iPhone 6 in which the screen can bend at a certain point near the volume control buttons. The flaw appears to occur most commonly if you keep the phone in your pocket for too many hours. But a video posted on YouTube by Unbox Therapy shows that the same problem occurs if you intentionally apply enough pressure to bend the phone.
LG also served up a couple of tweets that got in a dig at Apple and touted its own curved phone at the same time. One tweet from LG Electronic’s UK division simply starts with the hashtag #Bendgate and then displays a photo of LG’s G Flex phone with a link to a YouTube video playing up the phone’s self-healing and durability skills. The second tweet employs the hashtag #bentgate and also displays a photo of the G Flex, clearly showing the phone’s curve.
Not to be outdone, even BlackBerry got into the act. Unveiling the company’s boxy-looking Passport phone Wednesday, BlackBerry CEO John Chen told the crowd: “I challenge you to bend the Passport.”
One wag also poked fun at Apple’s Bendgate problem by posting a fake Apple webpage promoting the bend as an intentional feature and not a bug. Dubbing the feature “Flex,” the page offered a tagline that said: “Apple’s revolutionary patent aluminum alloy lets users create a more enjoyable viewing experience by molding the iPhone.”
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Some have blamed the flaw on the iPhone’s thin, aluminum body as being more prone to bending. As such, the problem appears to affect the larger-screened iPhone 6 Plus more than its smaller sibling. Another YouTube video posted by Lewis Hilsenteger of Unbox Therapy showed him applying pressure to try to bend the iPhone 6 only to create a small dent, thereby finding the smaller-screened phone much less bendy than the 6 Plus.
And though all the Bendgate attention and complaints are right now focused on the iPhone 6, other phones apparently carry their own defects. Hilsenteger’s bend test also challenged the HTC One M8 and found that it actually cracked under pressure. The Nokia Lumia 1020 made some cracking noises during the test. Only Motorola’s Moto X seems to survive under the pressure.
