True, that would then find other potential weakspots. There are many tests you could postulate that would be better than the one they did.

I'm an aerospace engineer and I have designed and run plenty of tests for certification of aircraft parts. This test is fine as far as it goes but it is not testing the real issue, the FAA would have thrown me out of the room if I'd shown them this.

What the test shows is that most phones will resist a reasonable amount of bending when the load is applied uniformly at the centre. They all do pretty well. That's great.

The issue with the iPhone 6 Plus is that it has a weak corner, if you watch the 'bendgate' video you can clearly see that the bend line is not straight across the phone, but at an angle near to the weak spot.

A properly designed test would have clamped each phone flat with a corner sticking out unsupported and force applied until it suffered plastic deformation (stays bent). Each phone could have all four corners tested and the weakest result is the 'winner'. In such a test the iPhone 6 Plus would clearly fail at its weak point much more readily than any of the others.

Bad science.

I admit the anti-Apple trolling in my first post. Sorry about that. It was late and I'd had a drink or two...

I didn't say I haven't used obj-C, just not much, not recently and really only to experiment to see if it would be a good choice to use for my particular Python/Fortran based project. It was the Python bindings that made me take a look and I particularly liked how I could use dynamic typing and garbage collection, making it a good 'fit'. I was amazed by the quality of the Apple developer tools too.

The point I should have made was partly made by others later, namely that obj-C is well established and integrated in the toolchain and since all the frameworks are written in it it makes sense to choose it as his first language. Not to say that he should ignore Swift, but to leave it until he's got obj-C nailed.

Yes, a little, but I admit not for GUIs. I liked it precicely because of the low-level control. It was quite an adventure for a naive Python/Fortran coder...

I ask in ignorance, why would I design the GUI in obj-C when I have X-tools/interface builder to do all that for me? I just connect the dots, right? +1 for Python, btw: I write science code in Python/Fortran. nasty messy stuff, but puts food on the table...

I grew up with Fortran, C was a revelation and obj-C was an epiphany. C++ was, of course, a heresy...

I was very tempted by Xamarin but put off by the $$$. Is it as good as claimed?

True in any modern language; the basic syntax is straightforward but learning the available library ecosystem takes the time

Crumbs. Swift does look pretty sweet. I think I'll go tend my lawn...

The one really good thing that has come out of the Apple fashion parade is objective C. Jobs' legacy isn't all the shiny fashion crap, it is this powerful and really rather beautiful language. This is from someone usually branded a Microsoft shill. If you want to write iOS/OSX take advantage of the native tools.

Without the Developer Preview you are still tied to carrier and manufacturer whim, this is true. I wasn't aware that even the Preview updates were stopped for some phones, like the HTCs but I stand corrected. I've only had Nokia devices and these have all worked well with the Preview OS, even a 520. Certainly once the firmware is updated to matrch the OS the battery life and performance does improve, but I would not say that running on earlier firmware made a dramatic difference.

With Microsoft now owning the Nokia phones, they can potentially have the same control over firmware updates as Apple, which leaves HTC and the others at a disadvantage whichever OS they use.

This is true, but 7.x was built on the CE kernel and there were a lot of good reasons to change to the NT kernel. Now that 8.x is on the same kernel as all other Windows products there is no longer a good reason to make another big break.

It won't be popular here, but you could choose any Windows Phone 8 device, register for the Developer Preview and get the latest OS running very nicely on even the oldest, slowest models.

You can pick up a Nokia 520 for less than that. It may not be as pretty as the high end stuff but it runs the latest winphone, for all its benefits and/or drawbacks and has a 128GB compatible SD slot.

Killing off legacy support early is both a strength and a weakness for Apple. It makes for less bloated software and slick hardware. It is the antithesis of the Windows approach, where support for ancient software and hardware is still provided by current versions at the expense of hidden horrors in the OS and anachronisms like PS/2 mouse ports on hardware.