Have you ever done any engineering design for manufacturing and made decisions on what is an acceptable level of failure rates? It is obvious you have NOT from your breathless and hyperbolic claims of what is a "design flaw."
A design flaw would impact for more than fewer than 0.0625% of the production of a product that was sold 110,000,000 units that starts developing the problem after 18 to 24 months of continuous use without a problem.
If it were a design flaw, it would have appeared as soon as it was on the market, not 18 months later. Use your head for something other than keeping your ears apart, Okie. Since the problem did not appear as soon as it was released into the market, instead only appearing with use, and perhaps abuse, it is NOT a design flaw no matter what iFixit or you hold your breath and turn blue claiming.
Could the iPhone 6 plus have been designed better to avoid the problem for ALL such models? Sure. Would it have been designed better? I doubt it because it COULD NOT HAVE BEEN FOR SEEN AS A PROBLEM and was not seen in extensive testing.
Was the iPhone 6s Plus designed differently? Some have argued that because Apple designed the 6s Plus differently, it was because they knew the iPhone 6 Plus had a design flaw that required a major change in design. Yes, the 6s Play was designed differently, but it was not designed differently because of this "Touch Disease" issue as the design for the iPhone 6s Plus was already on the market for over six months before these "Touch Disease" problems in the iPhone 6 Plus model were even starting to appear.
Apple's unrelated stronger design of the iPhone 6s Plus and the overall layout of the 6s Plus was entirely different, with the offending ICs in a completely different location and orientation which was established much earlier in the design process and was dictated by the use of the A9 processor instead of the A8 used in the 6 plus with the design process starting BEFORE the iPhone 6 and 6 plus went on the market. In fact, the iPhone 6s plus was already being sent to manufacturing ONE YEAR before the first "Touch Disease" problem phones were being reported.
A design flaw is a phone in which a large percentage of the units made will burst into flames in the first year on the market. . . say a phone in which the incidences occur at 6,000 times the accepted rate for such battery failure in the phone industry in general and that failure appears from the very first few weeks the phone in question is on the market, say something like the Samsung Galaxy Note 7. Now THAT is a design flaw.
It is not something that appears after the phone has already been replaced by a superseding model. . .
What a ridiculous thing to say. I only read the first sentence and realized you don’t have a clue what you are talking about. Your degree must be in copy and paste.