What's up, guys? Louie here back with another video and things are about to get scientific here on Unbox Therapy.

You might recall a previous video in which I showed you this

what is likely the backplate for the upcoming iPhone 6s

I just compared the dimensions in that video

I looked at this shell compared to the shell from the standard iPhone 6 I have over here.

But, the speculation was actually relating to the material in use and what the effect of that might have on the durability of the upcoming device.

Now, a lot of speculation is out there regarding this new phone and whether or not it will move to something called a 7000 series aluminum.

Most people out there probably don't know exactly what that means,

I certainly didn't

That's why I did some extensive research, and even some fairly elaborate testing.

Now before I get into that, you probably noticed this thing over here.

This is obviously some kind of monstrosity fabricated from the geniuses over at D-brand.

This is Skins. If you don't know who they are, you should go check them out.

What this is, a makeshift bang test machine.

which will essentially give us a readout of how much weight is necessary, or how much force, in a weight equivalent,

is necessary to actually bend these two shells.

Now, these aren't the complete phones.

Keep that in mind.

Potentially, it'll be an even more interesting test because

we can actually look at the aluminum attributes and how that affects the durability of a device and why Apple might be moving to a different material.

So eventually I realized that what I needed was something called an XRF analyzer.

This thing shoots X-rays into common alloys and tells you what their elemental makeup is.

Now before we get into the elemental makeup of each of these iPhone shells,

the 6 and the new 6s,

I want to give a shout out to Elemental Controls in Mississauga

I hit these guys up shortly after I found out about these XRF analyzers

They were like come on down, let's do the tests,

So here's the readout for the iPhone 6 shell.

Essentially what we ended up with is a common alloy

As you can see up here, the readout was 6063 from the 6000 series of aluminum.

This 6000 series alloy is probably the most commonly bought, sold, manufactured alloy on the planet.

Some speculate it represents somewhere in the neighborhood of 75 to 80 percent of all alloys in use.

It's fairly easily machineable so obviously it makes sense to use it in manufacturing

It also anodizes very easily and as you know

with iPhones and various other electronics that use aluminum, generally there's some kind of anodization that gives it its color.

Looking closer at the readout,

you can see the exact elemental make up of 6063.

It's mostly aluminum, 98.94 percent, with a tiny bit of iron, a little bit of silicon, and a little bit of magnesium.

Actually this is mostly the abundant element, aluminum.

Eventually 6063 aluminum is used in so many applications that you're probably familiar with.

windows, doors, automotive,

The only possible problem with this material is that it bends a little bit.

as you know, you've witnessed in previous videos

It's not the strongest type of aluminum.

Okay, so there's the reading on the iPhone 6,

the old shell, which we know, has been prone to bending

well let's go ahead and look at the report for the new one.

Now this is where things gets interesting.

First things first.

The alloy has a much thicker anodization.

Before taking our reading, we actually had to sand off that anodization to get a clear reading of the aluminum itself.

The same for the older shell.

Sanding this anodization off proved to be far more difficult, implying that it's a much thicker coating

Now under the X-ray, under the gun,

it's going to stand out, and what's important about this is

it's not the aluminum that's at 91.174 percent of the makeup, but the zinc.

Now we took a number of different readings on this component

and each one came out a little bit different

but essentially we always had the significant presence of zinc, which points to 7000 series aluminum.

The addition of zinc here improves the strength of the material

Okay. So why did Apple change?

Was this bendgate thing really as small of an impact as people were speculating?

Or maybe it affected more devices than we even know.

Bottom line is this.

They've selected 7000 series now and reinforced it in specific regions

and ultimately, the expectation would be that we're going to see less bends in the next version than we saw in the previous

But it does come at a cost

With the addition of zinc, we are also going to increase the likelihood of corrosion.

Nobody likes corrosion.

And that is what leads me to believe that they've gone with a different anodization process

They've increased the amount that's on the surface.

Now the next drawback of 7000 series aluminum: expense

This stuff is way more expensive for a number of reasons.

but it mostly has to do with the availability.

This is about to become a lot more common

but in the meantime, the likely effect is that the cost of production for an iPhone could go up.

This new material could cost as much as 5 times more

They think it's fairly safe to say

that this is going to be a little more labor intensive

to get it out in volume when compared to the 6000 series construction.

But the real question here is

how much stronger, is it all worth it?

So, beside me. I mentioned earlier, I have this crazy contraption which is going to measure the force applied to each of these units

and I'm going to go ahead and find out exactly how much stronger this component is

as it is the backbone for the upcoming iPhone.

Let's go ahead and start with the iPhone 6 shell in order to get our baseline

The reason you're already seeing a reading on the scale here is because

this top portion of our contraption is on top of the scale itself.

If I lift this up, you'll see it comes down to zero. Zero pounds, zero ounces

So when considering the total amount of force that's applied to the actual units,

we essentially need to start with the weight of this component itself.

So, the moment that I insert this shell, we're starting at a point of two pounds and in this case, ten ounces.

ten point two or three ounces.

So this is the old shell

and now adding the additional weight

the actual shell

Now let's go ahead and slowly apply some pressure to this

Keep an eye on that scale.

We're now approaching

closer to 20 pounds

19

24

Just under 30 pounds of force and we are completely bent there.

You can see here the volume button in that weak spot at about 30 pounds we are bent.

I'm going to go ahead and remove this really quickly

Both sides. Two obvious weak points as we've known previously

Near the power button as well as near the volume rocker

We have a weakness and we have a bent

The representation of not just the bendability of the material, but also the weak points that I mentioned in the previous videos

what happens if we increase the pressure even more

Okay, so we're right back at 30 pounds there

as you can see it's starting to bend

by 32 it's really having difficulty

By, I don't know, say by 35, I mean it's indistinguishable.

We have significant bending at 30 pounds of force and anything beyond that.

The shell just begins to crumble significantly

It's interesting in this particular case we have it bent right across those three points there

Now it's time for the 6s backplate

the thing we've identified as probably from the 7000 series of super strong aluminum used in aerospace

and now potentially used in your phone,

so let's go ahead and do the same thing.

there we go

of course the measurement hasn't changed much here.

because the shell doesn't weigh very much.

so, we're going to go ahead and start to tighten it down

Now, the magic number here

as you know, is 30. 30 pounds.

we want to see what happens

about 30

close

we are at 31 pounds, over 31 pounds and it's not significantly bent yet.

Keep going here

36.

Wow!

We are at 46 pounds now

53. This is getting tough to twist now.

60 pounds of force

70! The old phone. The entire phone bent at 70 pounds of force under the previous version.

80!

And here it bending now

80 pounds wow!

80 pounds was the number, guys. I'm going to go ahead and remove this now.

30 and 80.

That is a huge improvement

Wow. Did not expect it to be that much stronger.

of course they're both bent now.

And they're still bent in relatively the same locations

But you will notice here though that the power button

the power cut out on this one, untouched compared to the old device.

Right around the interior of the volume button is where there was that weak point.

not exactly where it bent. It bent below there, but not with as much aggressiveness as the old one.

And we were applying more than double the amount of force

This is pretty damn impressive, guys

Honestly, beyond what I expected to find

Not only do we have evidence here that this is made out of 7000 series aluminum

but now we understand the impact of that.

The impact of that is a phone that will be more than twice as strong as the previous version

It's a win for consumer reporting

When the bendgate video came out, I didn't really understand the magnitude of it

butwhat this looks like, is that everybody who picks up the next version of the iPhone is gonna get something that's extremely strong

and that video might have something to do with it.

So, there you have it.

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Shout out to the two companies who helped out with this.