Remember the iPhone 6 'Bendgate' controversy? It's back

Did Apple know all along that the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus would be more likely to bend than prior iPhone models, a controversy dubbed in 2014 as “Bendgate?”  

According to recently unsealed court documents first reported by Motherboard, Apple’s own internal tests revealed that the iPhone 6 was 3.3 times more likely to bend than its immediate predecessor the iPhone 5s. And the 6 Plus was 7.2 times more likely. 

Never mind that Apple never fully owned up to any engineering problems.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh, who presided over a subsequent class action case over whether the iPhone 6 exhibited an apparently related flaw known as “touch disease”—as the name suggests it refers to touchscreen failures—revealed in the documents that Motherboard reviewed that a year and a half after the iPhone 6 models were released, Apple used an epoxy to reinforce the structure of the phones to combat touch disease.

Koh is the same judge who presided over the Apple-Samsung patent infringement damages trial that concluded Thursday with a jury decision that Samsung owns Apple nearly $539 million. 

Apple has never admitted fault when it came to Bendgate. In a statement released shortly after the phones went on sale in Sept. 2014, Apple said issues with bent iPhones were "extremely rare," adding at the time that the company performed “rigorous tests throughout the entire development cycle, including 3-point bending, pressure point cycling, sit, torsion, and user studies." The company also said that the "iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus meet or exceed all of our high-quality standards to endure everyday, real life use."

Apple did not respond to a USA TODAY request for comment on the latest revelation.

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