iPad Mini screen cracked by itself?


Recommended Posts

Merry Chrimbus Chaps!

My sister has had this iPad Mini (Non-retina) for about 2 months now, and she's just contacted me this evening saying that she left the room for about 20 seconds after using it only to come back to this:
 

Gbv4jALl.jpg

 

Hasn't been dropped, I think she only ever uses it on the sofa. Bizarre, anyone else had this happen before? I think she bought it from Amazon, do you think the guys at the Apple store would accept this as a faulty screen or simply accuse her of dropping it? The damage appears to be focussed around the sides of the home button... :/

 

She has no idea what to do, I've recommended taking it to the Apple store, but eugh- great time for this to happen eh?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sorry dude, I don't quite think she's telling the truth.

Zoom in on the red circle, you can see impact damage/dents in the plastic edging which line up perfectly with the cracks. Guys at the Apple store will 100% notice this, and will charge her for a replacement.

post-89580-0-73068100-1387932805.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sorry dude, I don't quite think she's telling the truth.

Zoom in on the red circle, you can see impact damage/dents in the plastic edging which line up perfectly with the cracks. Guys at the Apple store will 100% notice this, and will charge her for a replacement.

Nice work Poirot :D!

Definitely looks dropped to me as well. The cracks extend most of the way across one edge, very telling of a drop from height IMO.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What was the temperature like in the room? Glass can crack when exposed to rapid and large temperature swings...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What was the temperature like in the room? Glass can crack when exposed to rapid and large temperature swings...

That was one of the first questions I asked her, that and battery level (swelling etc?). It's been kept at a consistent room temperature, and hasn't left the living room (wooly carpeted!). Battery was at around 80% allegedly. I will be extremely embarrassed if she has been lying about this, but it does seem pretty unlikely given the circumstances. Guess this isn't a common issue after all then!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That was one of the first questions I asked her, that and battery level (swelling etc?). It's been kept at a consistent room temperature, and hasn't left the living room (wooly carpeted!). Battery was at around 80% allegedly. I will be extremely embarrassed if she has been lying about this, but it does seem pretty unlikely given the circumstances. Guess this isn't a common issue after all then!

Well I won't write off a drop just yet...

 

The fracture point is centered around the home button so it is quite possible the it was dropped in such a way that this was the point of impact. Glass fractures outward from the source of impact in a widening manner as shown here. If this were the case the home button wouldn't break and would appear intact, as shown here, due to its ability to be depressed allowing it to absorb some impact force.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

yeah id prolly say someat happened and she cracke the botom went up to the fingerprint scanner as a weakened point pressed on it then it cracked from there to, bit like how a small chip in your windscreen can crack into something major

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This EXACT same thing happened to my nephew! Yup, he said he put it on his bed and when he came back it was cracked and has NO idea what happened.... :) Sure nephew, Sure you don't. lol

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You wouldn't see evidence of concentric circles (the intermediate fractures that connect the radially projecting lines) if this were a thermal issue. There was pressure placed upon the point where cracks are most concentrated, either from an impact, or because the device was face down on a surface and pressed into something hard between the glass and the surface.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Take it to the apple store and be completely honest. Depending on who you get most will take care of you.

Apples customer service is all about honesty and depends on the person. I know people who work at the apple store and they treat each customer depending on the customer and situation. People have gotten iPads replaced for free. A lady just got a free 5c replaced cause it cracked from devris from a helicopter take off they were at. She was covering her sons face and had the phone facing the helicopter.

So each situation is different.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just like Zhangm says, there's a very clear pressure rupture point near the home button. If the iPad was face down on some hard stuff, a cat jumping down on it would have been largely enough

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A cat couldn't have caused it by just applying its paws. It'd take a pretty large amount of pressure in a very small area to crack in such a manner. I wouldn't fault her too much though since she obviously went into damage control mode and couldn't easily back out afterwards. Maybe it wasn't her who cracked it and she was covering up for someone? You never know. Dropping and cracking things happens all of the time, but people tend to treat such events as the end of the world.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Tempered glass can suddenly and catastrophically crack or shatter. The glass used on these while not directly temperd glass, is similar and share many of the same characteristics, including the ability to suddenly shatter from unseen flaws in the glass due to the inherent street in the glass.

This fracture doesn't extend from the edge but focuses on the hole for the home button, suggesting she might actually be right, it could very well be a flaw in the glass or a microfracture created the the hole was cut, or a combination of a flaw and the cut, causing catastrophic failure due to inherent stress after some time.

Without time travel and an eye witness you'll never know though, but yes, the glass can fail by itself. On one production run on iPhones it was even a recognized issue due to manufacturing fault putting extra stress on the glass.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Also in the last image of the extra images listed, you can see the actual failure point is a extremely tiny pinpoint area a little bit to the right of the home button, just between the middle and bottom of the button in height. To small to happen naturally unless she stabbed it with a knife.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Tempered glass can suddenly and catastrophically crack or shatter. The glass used on these while not directly temperd glass, is similar and share many of the same characteristics, including the ability to suddenly shatter from unseen flaws in the glass due to the inherent street in the glass.

This fracture doesn't extend from the edge but focuses on the hole for the home button, suggesting she might actually be right, it could very well be a flaw in the glass or a microfracture created the the hole was cut, or a combination of a flaw and the cut, causing catastrophic failure due to inherent stress after some time.

Without time travel and an eye witness you'll never know though, but yes, the glass can fail by itself. On one production run on iPhones it was even a recognized issue due to manufacturing fault putting extra stress on the glass.

 

You are talking about is toughened/tempered glass installed in housing as windows or in some other environment with high temperature fluctuations. The glass spontaneously breaks because it was damaged during installation or defective, and then large temperature fluctuation overtime cause repeat cycles of expansion/contraction in the material leading to a high stress and eventual cracking. This is hardly scenario where you'd see this.

 

Heat related glass damage doesn't actually look like impact damage anyway: http://chicagowindowexpert.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/stress601.jpg. It just cracks throughout without any noticeable impact area or focused damage*. The fact the damage on the ipad is primarily located in a small area and lessens as it moves outwards would almost definitely suggest impact damage. You see similar damage patterns in controlled testing: http://www.zollotech.com/2012/11/02/ipad-mini-nexus-7-dropped-and-dunked-in-damaging-comparisons/; with damage leading out from the impact site and lessening as it is further away.

 

*Note: if it is tempered glass it will shatter throughout into very small pieces due to the nature of the material. It's also going to be harder to identify an impact point because of that unless the glass hasn't itself fallen to pieces.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Tempered spyglass is rarely used in buildings due to its instability, used in cookers tops and shower doors though...

Yeah, catastrophic failure of normal tempered glass will shatter the whole glass. But this isn't normal tempered glass, but the type of glass used in phones and tablets do share characteristics of tempered glass. And it to can fracture from production faults, abnormal installation stress and similar.

And as I said, the pin point fracture point you see here indicates it was a failure from a production fault in the glass, tiny probably invisible flaw in the glass there. The only other way to get it would as I said, have been to stab it with a very hard and very sharp and pointy knife, not a common household knife, those are rarely that pointy, and people usually don't go stabbing them into tablets. More so, if she had cause

D the fracture by stabbing, she would have had to use enough force that it would have chipped off a larger piece at the impact point, whereas this failure has nothing missing at the impact point.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

...

And as I said, the pin point fracture point you see here indicates it was a failure from a production fault in the glass, tiny probably invisible flaw in the glass there. The only other way to get it would as I said, have been to stab it with a very hard and very sharp and pointy knife, not a common household knife, those are rarely that pointy, and people usually don't go stabbing them into tablets. More so, if she had cause

D the fracture by stabbing, she would have had to use enough force that it would have chipped off a larger piece at the impact point, whereas this failure has nothing missing at the impact point.

 

I'm not making the argument that it is tempered glass. What I am saying is that regardless of whether it is or not, spontaneous glass damage will cause wide cracking and the pattern of damage will not look anything like impact damage (the picture I linked shows what it looks like for untempered glass). The type of damage here is inconsistent with what spontaneous glass damage looks like. It just looks like damage consistent with impact.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.