The iPhone 5 is only a couple of hours old, and while many are still waiting for theirs to be delivered (yours truly included), those that have them are revealing huge amounts about the hardware and its durability.
First, the good news! iFixit has done one of their much loved teardowns of the iPhone 5, and have dubbed it ”the most repairable iPhone we’ve seen in a while,” thanks to the easily accessed front screen.
Now, on to slightly darker topics. Here we have the first iPhone 5 drop and durability test. While it’s a brutal and harrowing thing to watch them beat it all to hell and back, the results are positive, and they call it “by far the most durable iPhone we have seen.”
The one real concern that has arisen is how easy it is to scratch the black version of the iPhone 5. We’re seeing reports over Twitter, and on discussions online that the black, anodized aluminum is very easy to scratch. The image above comes from a thread in Overclockers where someone intentionally scratched up the back with keys and a SIM card pin on an in-store demo unit. iFixIt delved briefly into this problem, saying:
Based on a reader request, we looked into the concerns about “Scuff Gate,” the fear that the black coating scuffs off too easily. We found that the side is pretty tough, but the chamfered edge can be susceptible to scuffing — making for a shiny streak on the side. Moral of this story: be careful, or get a case. Or be free like the wind and just don’t care.
So, how about those cases we have for sale? Sound like a good idea yet?
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I heavily debated black or white. Knowing that anodizing is easy to scratch I knew what to expect. I went with the black anyway. I dot know how you can call it scuff gate unless you were born yesterday. Anodizing scratches, period. It’s always been that way if you want the more durable phone then you should have gone with white.
Think of the dents and
scratches as parts of a fingerprint. You’ll easily be able to identify
your iPhone in a lineup. When you sell your iPhone 5 when the 5S comes
out, nobody’ll be able to tell that it was damaged out of the box.