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Last week we reported on the widespread reports of touch-screen issues with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. AppleInsider reports that according to its own research into what it is calling “touch disease,” approximately 11% of an Apple Store’s daily iPhone service work involves this problem. This makes it a bigger repair issue than any other single repair issue that Apple retail employees are currently having to deal with.
AppleInsider says that it examined data from four high-traffic Apple stores over a 6-day period, encompassing 3 days before the first reports of the issue, and 3 days after the news broke.
AppleInsider found that in the 3 days prior, the stores had 2,804 customers coming in requiring help from specialists or geniuses with problems with their iPhones. Of that 2,804, 547 were there for their iPhone 6 and 965 were there for their iPhone 6 Plus.
After the news broke of the “touch disease,” there was an obvious surge in customers wanting help with the problem at those same four stores, according to AppleInsider.
“In our notes, we started calling it by a specific name we made up at our store because we all knew it,” one Apple specialist told AppleInsider. “Management said we had to refer to it as flickering.”
The specialist also told AppleInsider that Apple had taken 6 months to issue official instructions about how to deal with the issue, which was basically that the only way to deal with it was to replace the unit.
“It’s about time that the Apple press got a whiff of the problem,” an Apple Genius told AppleInsider. “I’m getting tired of pulling service stock out of the box, and seeing the exact same problem that the customer has on the replacement before I leave backstage.”
It seems that only the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus is affected by the issue, as there are no reports of the iPhone 6s or iPhone 6s Plus having any such problems.
Source: Sources: iPhone 6 series 'touch disease' now accounting for about 11% of Apple Store repairs