Machining titanium is substantially more difficult and expensive than machining cast aluminum, so it's not quite as simple as comparing prices of raw materials. I'm also assuming the current chassis is machined cast aluminum, and could be strengthened by being replaced by Ti, but I've not taken an iPhone 6 apart to know.

You missed my point: I claimed only that their capabilities were proven - I didn't feel the need to say that it was evidenced by crappy phones that bend, and have a battery life of about half a day.

One of the many advantages of jailbreaking is that I have no temptation to upgrade until someone releases a jailbreak for the new version. I probably won't be updating to iOS 8 for months, at which time it will be only to a reasonably stable version.

Of course the buggier they are, the easier it is for the guys to find an exploitable vulnerability. Maybe I should install 8.0.1.

"Cortana, can you fix my buggy iPhone update?"

"You bought an iPhone. Oh, dear. There is a Microsoft store ten miles south of you. Would you like directions?"

I think ultrathin has indeed proven the engineering capabilities of Apple.

If nothing else, it's proof that if you let marketing drive engineering, you'll produce everything with the quality you would expect from such an effort.

This.

I want a phone that doesn't require me to carry a rechargeable battery in my backpack so I will be sure to have enough juice for the train ride home. And I don't want a walrus-sized case with integrated battery, because that stupidly adds four extra layers of thickness I wouldn't need if a thicker battery was simply built into the original device.

Alternately, I wouldn't mind a replaceable battery. I used to swap batteries in my RAZR, and had spare batteries and chargers at both work and home. Never had a power problem they couldn't solve. And way, way long ago, Nokia and Motorola phone batteries served as the back of the phone, allowing us to buy a battery as thick or thin as we chose. Had Apple gone that route with the iPhones and had a problem like this, they could simply swap battery-backs for ones that had more stiffness.

That may be their only option. "Here's our sleek iPhone 6 with our trademark shitty battery life, and a three-ounce steel cradle to carry it in. Enjoy, but be sure to hold it the right way."

Ordinary cotton denim is plenty strong enough to do this. Testing a much smaller sample than a pants leg (two 1" square gripping pads separated by 3" of fabric) showed that ordinary denim can withstand over 800 Newtons (176 pounds) before breaking. http://www.itc.polyu.edu.hk/Us... A piece of fabric the size of a phone, being pulled on by the force of the leg, is going to be able to easily transfer the weight of a human into a force that can pull the phone around their leg. Given the video showed a guy bending a phone by pressing with his thumbs, a pants leg could easily apply as much force.

I doubt that very much. I doubt they'll even acknowledge it.

If they say "oh, yeah, sorry, our phones bend", what can they do about it? They don't have a solution coming out of the factories. Since the problem is mechanical with the case and chassis being too thin to ever be reliably durable, that could mean a complete redesign of just about every component, including the circuit boards, glass, buttons, everything. (Although they might be able to replace the current aluminum chassis with titanium. That could make the phones strong enough, but way more expensive.) Next, they'll have to ramp up production of the new model and get a few million into the pipeline. That could take a year. Meanwhile, do you think they are going to pull the current phones off the shelves, so they have less to replace?

No, I would bet that the lawyers are advising them to silently let this go forever, hoping the bending problem doesn't catch on in the mainstream media, or picked up by the late night comedians. They'll wait for it to blow over like they did with the antenna problems on the iPhone 4, because ultimately that proved to be nothing to them.

Look to them to remain silent right up until some unlucky people bend them in the "wrong way" causing a short, burns, and or fires. That's when there will be a shitstorm of a recall.