What Is Hairgate? Is It Real Like The 'Bendgate', Or Just Another Way To Gain Publicity?

It actually refers to an issue wherein iPhone 6 users are apparently seeing strands of their hair being pulled out by the devices. Apparently, strands of hair or the beard are being caught in a small gap that exists between the iPhone 6’s frame and the rest of its body. There are photographs on the Internet that are trying to prove this, but it’s really hard to believe as they can be easily created from scratch.

Here’s the long and short of it: hairgate stems from a community post on popular Apple site 9to5Mac in which the poster claims his hair gets caught in “the seam between the glass and aluminium” and “when you try to free it out, it hurts.” The post has been picked up on social media and gone mad.

Much to our surprise, the iPhone 6 repeatedly pulled out Technology reporter Alex Hern’s beard hairs. The other phones failed to pull out any hairs on his head or beard despite several attempts. “I was surprised when I managed to pull out a beard hair with the iPhone 6, because it certainly has not come up in daily use,” said Hern.

theguardian.com

The iPhone 6 or any of the other phones failed to pull out any of reporter Hannah Jane Parkinson’s hair, despite rigorous rubbing. From our testing we can conclude that yes, in some circumstances hairs can get trapped and pulled out by the iPhone 6. Our advice: avoid rubbing it on your face. Or put it in a case.

theguardian.com

Having reviewed the iPhone 6 and currently being in possession of an iPhone 6 Plus for Forbes’ upcoming longer term review, I can report the gap between the front glass and aluminium does not exist (photo above). There is a bevel, but the glass front panel is actually fused to the aluminium and the tiny gap you do see is significantly narrower than a human hair.

Furthermore even if a significant gap did exist, hairgate would still make no sense. It has been pointed out that ‘Gapgate’ on the Galaxy Note 4 (where a tangible gap exists in the phablet’s seam) was also present in both the Note 2 and Note 3 designs and owners go by without widespread reports of hair trauma. The Note 3 alone sold 10 million units in 2 months, so that’s a pretty wide test base.

What hairgate does demonstrate though is the ongoing hyperbole that continues to surround every iPhone launch and the ongoing fanaticism that meets the latest iOS and Android handsets (even new BlackBerrys can still cause a stir) and the blindness to reason this can cause. Case in point: a number of the hairgate tweets being shared are clearly parodies by people without hair…

Yes, the iPhone 6 does have faults and there was some truth to the fact that bendgate was symptomatic of Apple’s obsession with thinness over the wider user preference for increased battery life. That said, of the things for which the new iPhones can be criticised, hairgate is not one of them.