Foxconn fined by Apple for 20% iPhone defect rate

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Anubis

No Lifer
Aug 31, 2001
78,712
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tbqhwy.com
How many of you guys work with core metrics of a manufacturing line? First pass yield? Pareto of failures, etc? I feel like news articles don't really know wtf they're talking about anyway.
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i do and yes 90% of news articles have no idea WTF they are talking about in this arena

20% is bad even at QA but with no knowledge of why they fail its hard to say if its just foxcon fing up or if they are given broken parts to assemble and so on
 

3chordcharlie

Diamond Member
Mar 30, 2004
9,859
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20% is brutal, but as long as this is pre-consumer, it's just a 'cost'. As far as I can tell, Apple quality 'at retail' is not noticeably good or bad compared to the industry.
 

jiffylube1024

Diamond Member
Feb 17, 2002
7,430
0
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Wow. Just thinking of the sheer number of defective iPhone 5's is staggering, 5-8 million shiny, new, defective iPhones potentially in a landfill somewhere. Yikes!
 

Mopetar

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
8,463
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My question is, if it was Foxconn's fault, why was the iPhone 5 the only outlying device to have such terrible quality issues recently? Conspiracy at Foxconn?

Could be any number of reasons. First, Apple could have higher quality standards or ones that are more unusual. For example, there were a lot of rumors when the white iPhone first came out that it was delayed because they couldn't quite get the shade of white that they wanted. Second, the iPhone 5 could just be more difficult to manufacture for various reasons, in which case they'll have more failures. Third, it could be due to a batch of bad parts from a supplier or equipment troubles on a particular line at the factory. Every now and again there will be recalls for batteries, hard drives, etc.

Wow. Just thinking of the sheer number of defective iPhone 5's is staggering, 5-8 million shiny, new, defective iPhones potentially in a landfill somewhere. Yikes!

I doubt that they end up in the landfill. If anything, they get sent back and harvested for functional parts that just get put back on the assembly line. Without knowing what's wrong with them, it's hard to say more, but it's unlikely that they'd simply toss out an entire phone over what could be a minor defect.