For that last linked story above, I watched the video again, and the report is true, if not very well explained. The timecodes are fishy
at best. If you watch, he has a supposedly-pristine iPhone 6+ in his hand, and bends it in one little try, and then rotates the phone to show off the damage. As he rotates the phone in his hand, you can see the time and it is 2:26.
After that first one, he tries harder and bends it more. In these later sections, there are cuts in the video so you can't define a timeline, but that first "section" where he seems to bend it with reasonably little effort, appears to be seamless. This is an important detail. It goes from "in good shape" to "bent" with only a single "squeeze" from his hands.
But then, later in the video, he's holding the same bent iPhone and waiving it around. At one point, he is doing that same rotation gesture with the phone in his hand, and you can clearly see the timestamp.
My screenshots are of the low-res version, but if you watch the HD version, you can read both dates, and they're both Tuesday, September 23.
Hmmm... How is it that he "seamlessly shot" that first clip from pristine phone to bent in a few scant seconds, and then rotated the phone and it is 2:26, but then he is holding a bent phone in his hand a full 28 minutes earlier?
Unless he switched time zones in between shots, manually reset the clock to make himself look like he was faking it, or some crazy software thing happened (perhaps caused by the bending of the phone) then this doesn't look good. The latter possibility seems less likely as if you keep watching, you can see the clock count up from 1:58, to 1:59, and then up through 2:01 as he's doing his "wrap up". So, the clock appears to be working normally there, post-bend. There's also a spot,
just before he starts bending the phone, where his hands (which he'd been flipping around in an animated fashion mostly) where the action on screen freezes completely for an "unnaturally" long period and looks frozen. From a video editor's eye, it stands out as a frame chosen to swap between two different takes.
So,
perhaps those two things could be explained away, but the times shown on the phone (combined with the conveniently odd "edit spot" just before the bend) is pretty fishy. An alternative narrative, of course is:
1. He filmed the unbent phone.
2. He bent the phone using a vice grip, one of those cool bending machines they have, or at least a much different level of pressure than is depicted in the video.
3. He filmed the "OMG it bent" segment used at the end.
4. He bent it back as best he could, taking another 20 minutes or so to get it "right".
5. Cut to him "re-bending" it with his bare hands at just the right moment just before he starts trying, and... Voila.
Not saying they can't bend (because clearly any relatively thin slab of whatever will bend if you apply enough force). But I think this video was faked to exaggerate the "issue" and make it look like something you could do relatively easily.
