[danmg]

They're both major issues. The Samsung one is a safety issue. The Apple is a quality and reliability one.

The Ford Pinto and the Yugo GV were both bad cars. The Pinto would kill you. The Yugo was made poorly with substandard materials. Splitting hairs over which was the biggest failure is something for a top ten list. They were both bad for consumers who spent their money on them and were stuck with a product that they couldn't continue to use.

[eridius]

If bendgate prevented you from using your phone then you’d have a point. But it didn’t. For nearly everybody it was purely a (rather subtle) aesthetic issue.

[danmg]

Until it bent to the point where it didn't work. Electrical components are not designed to deform plastically or have residual stresses.

The Ford Pinto and the Samsung both suffered from fuel/power problems that caused them to be dangerous. (Although, the Pinto was worse because they knew about it beforehand and calculated the monetary loses from deaths.)

The Yugo and Apple both suffer from problems with structural stability and reliability, yet one is a joke to a punchline and the other one is Yugo.

None of these scenarios are good for consumers and none of them should be excused as biased or unfair. Bad products should get bad press coverage. In this case, people should have fair warning that the premium that they paid for a prestige brand doesn't mean they're getting prestige level materials.