How Tough Is the iPhone?
PC World manhandles the new Apple phone to see how much abuse it can take. — Recommend this story? — It would be a shame—after waiting hours in line and spending $500 to $600 on an iPhone—to lose it to a minor mishap. To see how well Apple's phone …
Context & Ripple Effects
The iPhone hit store shelves on June 29, 2007, capping nearly six months of feverish press attention that began with Apple's January 9 announcement — a run in which the device dominated online technology coverage at a pitch the corpus itself calls unprecedented. Launch-weekend reporting was already splitting along two lines: early buyer reviews describing crowds lining up and a device that lived up to its hype, against the critical scorecard arguing Apple's 'revolutionary' marketing oversold what is, on some readings, an incremental product.
PC World's abuse test slots into a specific anxiety of launch day: customers paid $500 to $600 and queued for hours, so a minor mishap destroying the phone is a real financial risk. It follows directly on odds being given on iPhone failure five days earlier, and runs alongside syndicated pickup showing how wide the launch story travelled — AppleInsider's teardown finding better-than-iPod construction, and Engadget noting Apple had posted the user manual.
First-order effects
- Launch-day buyers weighing a $500-$600 all-touchscreen purchase get their first independent read on whether the device survives drops and everyday abuse — a variable no spec sheet or hands-on preview had answered.
- The test gives Apple immediate third-party evidence either way on build quality, arriving the same news cycle as a teardown crediting the phone with better-than-iPod construction.
Second-order effects
- Rival handsets now face a new review axis: once a mainstream outlet normalizes manhandling a flagship phone, every premium device gets judged on survival as much as features, raising the bar for incumbents' own hardware claims.
- Activation friction — scattered, still-unconfirmed reports of iTunes activation failures — compounds the stakes, since a phone that both costs $500-$600 and may not activate cleanly leaves owners doubly exposed.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, durability testing becomes a standard stage of major device launches rather than an afterthought: as phones turn into expensive glass-faced computers, accidental-damage resilience shifts from a footnote in reviews to a purchasing criterion that shapes which designs carriers and manufacturers can charge premium prices for.
The trend: Consumer-electronics journalism is turning physical stress-testing into a standard verdict on premium devices, with each flagship launch raising what buyers expect a $500-plus gadget to survive.