iPhone 4 Screen Scratching

Mine is scratched after 2 days of getting it. I had it in my pocket with my work access card. The magnetic strip on the card is caused abrasion and caused many scratches on the lower right corner of the front screen. Going to get a screen protector today. Luckly work paid for the phone so im not too angry.

No scratches here...yet. It was naked until it got a free bumper put on last month, but it has its own designated pocket, and I'm always conscience of where I put it down. But, I know that someday it's going to get scratched, no amount of protection will prevent it. It's a reality, it will happen, so there's no point in blowing an artery over it when it happens.

G

I carried my 3GS in an Incase slider without a screen protector for a year without a single scratch on the screen. I've carried my 4 the same way. So far, the screen is pristine. I carry it in my pants pocket, and that's the only thing that goes in there. Maybe I've just been lucky, and maybe tomorrow I'll regret posting this, but I honestly don't see the need for a screen protector.

I am having the same problem.
This is very frustrating since I managed to keep my previous phone for almost a year with no major scratches and now in less than 2 months I am already seeing quite a few ugly scratches

I'm suffering the same issue. My 3G never had a scratch in 2 years with the same normal use.

Really, really dissapointing.

Hey boys,
The second level operator has analized my trouble and allowed me to change my iPhone 4. Yesterday i have changed the iPhone. Thanks Apple!

Hey.. For those with screen protectors trashing the rest of us...
Some of us don't want our house to look like Grandma's with the plastic all over the furniture to keep it new.... Who buy's nice new furniture and then covers it with plastic??
Some of us prefer to enjoy the product we purchased to the fullest, not try to save it till the year 2020 only to have end up in a junk drawer (with a perfectly unscratched screen).
Just sayin'. Stop imputing your life view on the rest of us.

I have a small 3mm x 5mm scratch smack dab in the middle of my display, needles to say it looks like crap. I called applecare told them basically the same thing as everyone on this thread said: " i baby my phone", " i have no idea how it got there" and "i was led to believe that the Gorilla Glass was suppose to be scratch proof".

Once again this is why i buy Apple products as they are sending me out a new 32GB iPhone 4. One thing me and my applecare rep and i discussed, you really should use a screen protector!

All and all just give applecare a call and ask them for a new IPhone 4, problem solved.

From the iPhone 4 Design webpage:

"All the breakthrough technology in iPhone 4 is situated between two glossy panels of aluminosilicate glass — the same type of glass used in the windshields of helicopters and high-speed trains. Chemically strengthened to be 20 times stiffer and 30 times harder than plastic, *the glass is ultradurable and more scratch resistant than ever*. It’s also recyclable.
"

The reason I didn't put a screen protector on this phone is because of this statement by Apple. Based on my experience with the previous iPhones I owned, I did not anticipate any issues with scratching since the glass is advertised to be more resistant than before.

Asking me to buy a optional accessory to ensure that this phone is as scratch resistant as previous models is like asking me to buy a spare battery to get 4 hours of talk time. Why shouldn't I expect the features and design of the phone to function as advertised?

prsdcs wrote:
Hey.. For those with screen protectors trashing the rest of us...
Some of us don't want our house to look like Grandma's with the plastic all over the furniture to keep it new.... Who buy's nice new furniture and then covers it with plastic??
Some of us prefer to enjoy the product we purchased to the fullest, not try to save it till the year 2020 only to have end up in a junk drawer (with a perfectly unscratched screen).
Just sayin'. Stop imputing your life view on the rest of us.

I'm sorry you feel that we're trashing you. That was most likely not the intention. All we're doing is pointing out that, just like your grandmother, you have a choice. You can either choose to protect your screen from scratches (wrap furniture in foil) to keep its pristine beauty, or you can leave it as is, enjoy, and live with scratches. But you can't have both. Too many people on this board sound like they don't want any protection, and yet they want to be protected. Sapphire glass is "almost" unscratchable. But this is not sapphire. And even the glass on helicopter and train windshields gets scratched by debris. Such is life. Sorry.

Again the problem with this explanation is that many of us are not carrying this phone any differently than our previous 3g/3gs models. Yet we are still seeing scratches.

I'm not expecting the phone to withstand extreme stress like debris blasts against a helicopter windshield. I do expect that it will not be scratched by things you encounter in daily life such as a magnetic strip.

*Make no mistake about it, this is a hardware issue!*

Imagine if the retina display was actually not high res.
Imagine if the camera didn't actually take 5 mega pixel pictures
Imagine if HD video recording didn't work

The fact that the "more durable scratch resistant" glass scratches is a functionality issue. A piece of hardware on the phone is not delivering as promised.

All the examples you quoted are easily measurable quantities. The "hardness" of the screen, or it's "scratch resistance" for that matter is not quantified at all in specifications or marketing materials. And believe me, "30x harder than plastic" is hardly a measurable quality - 30x harder than disposable PET bottle is still pretty soft.

Now, if you could get the specification of the official hardness index of the iphone glass on the Mohs scale, it would be easily testable. I doubt it's supposed to be as strong as synthetic sapphire (Mohs scale ~9.0), but if it's harder than glass then its index should be >7.

"Camera is 4 mpix when it should be 5 mpix) is an easily quantifiable property. "Scratches easier than it should" is not, and it's difficult to use that as an argument for hardware failure.

I was thinking about those and was wondering if they're any good or just junk. Are you happy with them?

Quantifiable?

Apple talked about the iPhone 4 face/back glass properties in their promo video:

“We developed a custom glass that’s comparable in strength to sapphire crystal but about 30 times harder than plastic. This glass is not only used on the front of the phone but on the back as well.”

Forgot to post the link to the video in my previous post:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHsgfHcbXuc

Go to 5:24 for the exact quote. So unless all of us are carrying precious gems in our pockets along with our phone there's really no excuse for the screeen scratching is there?