Growing Number of iPhone 6 and 6 Plus Devices Affected by Insidious 'Touch Disease'

Touch Disease – Apple Aware but Unwilling to Resolve

Users of iPhone 6 and 6 Plus have been facing a manufacturing problem in the form of a grey flickering bar towards the top of the screen and considering the problem, iFixit had described a scenario where the grey lines had appeared and had become glitch or unresponsive or less responsive touchscreen. Known as `touch disease’, it tends to be a obstinate issue which Apple is completely aware of though not willing to do anything regarding the same.

Though it has been detailed by some third party repair specialist, such as iFixit together with a dozen of complaints on its own support forum the issue tends to continue. The issue has come from the faulty controller chip soldered to the logic board by the phone. According to rumours this could also be the same design fault which had caused the `bendgate’ controversy during the release of the phone.

When the user twists or applies pressure gently to the device, the gray bar tends to disappear though temporarily. Finally it reappears and the issue tends to continue to get worse till the touch functionality seems to stop working completely.

Out of Luck if Phone out of Warranty

Those who had been affected and had sought the help at the Apple Store, were told that Apple does not seem to recognize it as an issue and that they were out of luck if the phone was out of warranty. However, the issue tends to be prevalent for iPhone 6 and 6 Plus users and the only recourse, if the phone is said to be out of warranty, at that time would be to get help at a third party repair facility.

This does not seem to be perfect but as per iFixit, the only option to halt the problem would be to replace the phone, the logic board or the Touch ICs on the logic board, though none seem to be a good choice. Failure of touchscreens is not accurately rare but what seems rare is that the issue would be likely to come up more recurrently of late and seems to be affecting iPhone 6 and 6 Plus users only.

Result of Two Touchscreen Controller Chip

This issue seems to be different. But the investigation of iFixit states that the problem does not seem to be a function of the iPhone display but is the result of two touchscreen controller chip which has been located on the logic board. Jessa Jones from iPad Rehab, a third party Apple device repair shop, has explained that in the case of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, the Touch IC chip tends to link to the logic board through an array of tiny solder balls like a plate resting on marbles and later on one would notice that the screen tends to be unresponsive though it is quick to come back with a hard reset.

The owner of STS Telecom a board repair shop in Missouri, Jason Villmer, had commented that this problem seems to be widespread adequately and he feels like almost every iPhone 6/6 Plus tends to have a trace of it and seems like ticking bombs just waiting to activate.