There's some bad news for owners of the iPhone 6 and especially the larger iPhone 6 Plus. Your device could be on borrowed time.
Third party iPhone repair specialists in the United States are reporting an increasing incidence of malfunctioning iPhone 6 and 6 Plus models featuring the same grey flickering bars at the top of the screen and an unresponsive or intermittently responsive touch screen.
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The condition is "incredibly common", according to iFixit, a respected US-based repair advocacy group. One repair expert contacted by the organisation went as far to say that "chances are pretty high" that every iPhone 6 Plus could eventually succumb.
The problem is so prevalent that iFixit have even given this condition a name: "touch disease".
The malfunction is also being widely reported on Apple's own support forums.
"This has been creeping up on us," iFixit co-founder Kyle Wiens told Fairfax Media. "I first saw it a year ago but as these phones get older it's getting more and more common."
Shaun Moffatt, the owner of the Sydney mobile phone repairer Fone Fix, says he saw the same problem on an iPhone 6 Plus that was presented for repair at one of his shops just a few days ago. Although he adds that it was the only one he has seen to date.
The problem stems from what Wiens calls "design anorexia" — the imperative to make smartphones ever thinner and lighter.
It relates to the 2014 "bend-gate" incident, when some iPhone 6 Plus owners found that their devices had been bent out of shape after carrying them in their back pockets.
After first denying it was a big issue, Apple subsequently upgraded the quality of the aluminium used for the casing on the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus in what was seen as a tacit admission that the material used in the earlier model was flawed.
Jessa Jones, another US-based independent iPhone repair specialist, says the "Touch Disease" problem lies with the placement of the two touch screen controller chips and the method used to attach these touch IC chips to the phone's logic board.
Fone Fix's Shaun Moffatt says repair of the chips is an "extremely difficult" task and something he would not normally carry out unless the iPhone is a goner and the task is just data recovery. For a repair job, he would normally refer customers to the Apple Store.
But iFixit reports that Apple is not willing to repair these faulty phones and will only offer the standard out of warranty replacement service which involves swapping your damaged iPhone for a refurbished one at at cost of $469 for an iPhone 6 and $519 for the 6 Plus.
And because Apple's replacement iPhone 6 or 6 Plus is a refurbished model with the same design flaw, Burdett says the "new" phone will eventually succumb to the same malfunction.
The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were launched in 2014. Unless customers purchased an extended warranty, most would now be out of warranty. Apple's new iPhone 7 models are expected to be launched next month.
iFixit's Wiens says some independent repairers in the US using specialised microscope and soldering equipment are charging about $US200 to fix the problem.
The problem has already sparked calls for a mass product recall and even a class action suit.
"The Xbox had a major reliability problem called the Red Ring of Death. Microsoft extended the warranty on it at the cost of about a billion dollars," said Wiens. "Should Apple do the same? Perhaps."
Apple has been approached for comment.