Apple’s now seemingly regular quality control issues have struck again with the tech giant being forced to offer a replacement program for iPhone 6 Plus users with faulty iSight cameras.

According to the official announcement, Apple says the defects occur only in an unspecified “small percentage” of iPhone 6 Plus devices, with the iSight camera having a component that may fail “causing your photos to look blurry.”

In perhaps good news for Apple, quality control on the line perhaps only failed for a fairly short period of time, with the defective Apple iPhone 6 Plus units covering a limited serial number range and sold primarily between September 2014 and January 2015.

“f your iPhone 6 Plus is producing blurry photos and falls into the eligible serial number range, Apple will replace your device’s iSight camera, free of charge,” the company claims, but makes no statement as to how long the repair will take, or whether affected owners will be given a replacement phone for the time their phone is being repaired.

To take up the offer of a replacement iSight, users must check that the serial number of their phone is covered by the recall by placing the number into the site to confirm its eligibility.

Presuming the phone is eligible for repair, users have multiple options in where they can get their phones fixed, including via Apple Authorized Service Provider, Apple Retail Store, or via Apple Technical Support, presumably with the latter having a mail in option.

iPhone 6 Plus users are reminded to backup their data to iTunes or iCloud before having their fault phone repair, and the company notes that any other damage such as a cracked screen which impairs the camera replacement needs to be “resolved prior to service,” and if not, Apple may charge the user for the additional repairs.

Burden of numbers

It’s easy to kick Apple given it was a company that once prided itself on the quality of its product that “just works” and yet in 2015 it doesn’t always work, and kicking Apple is still fair game given they still charge a big price premium across their entire range of offerings; the long and short of it is that consumers paying extra for products have a reasonable expectation that the quality of goods delivered will be higher than those of cheaper alternatives.

That said, Apple’s popularity has, and will perhaps continue to be its undoing in terms of brand reputation when it comes to quality and quality control due to the sheer burden of numbers the company is now (perhaps) failing to deal with.

The more products Apple manufactures, the more, seemingly, that can and is going wrong.

Apple needs to take a good hard look at itself and its quality control processes across the organization as it’s not impossible to improve quality control, it’s more that Apple isn’t currently scaling it properly as it grows.

Image credit: Apple