iPhone 4 Screen Scratching

That may be what they "said", but I'm not sure how does that bind them in terms of feature delivery.

Whenever I turn on the TV I hear them saying all the time that "Chevy this" or "Kia that" are soooo much better/faster/more reliable/more efficient than Honda Accord or Toyota Camry. However, you can't hold that against them once you take a test drive and look at "data sheet". If you could, we would end up suing them all because the Kia whatever that I bough is nowhere near as good as Accord/Civic...

I guess similar thing happened here. They said it's bulletproof and works in outer space, but all the specifications are saying about the glass is: Fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating on front and back. Not even scratch resistance. The mention of scratch resistance is only in marketing materials ("features") but not in hardware specifications... That's how I understand this... Oh, and I have Zagg 😉

FYI: False Advertising

The actual statute defines false advertising as a "means of advertisement other than labeling, which is misleading in a material respect; and in determining whether an advertisement is misleading, there shall be taken into account (among other things) not only *representations made or suggested by statement, word*, design, device, sound, or any combination thereof, but also the extent to which the advertisement fails to reveal facts material in the light of such representations or material with respect to consequences which may result from the use of the commodity to which the advertisement relates under the conditions prescribed in said advertisement, or under such conditions as are customary or usual."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falseadvertising#citeref-11

They don't need to define it in the technical specifications in order for it to be considered "misleading" information. Also with regards to the car ccommercials you reference all of the statements are very specific (i.e. this Kia model beat out that Honda Accord model in so and so's test) and contain fine print at the bottom of the screen with a disclaimer. Apple's promo video had no disclaimer saying (oh by the way when we say sapphire we're totally joking)

Very well then. The question is - why doesn't anyone do anything about this?

Even the article you cited mentioned that the aim of the anti-false advertising regulations is prevention rather than prosecution. If this was such a serious hardware flaw then why didn't the gadget media focus on the glass in addition to antenna and proximity sensor problems? None of the initial reviewers or disasseblers (for lack of better term) mentioned anything about easily-scuffable glass that was supposed to be hard as sapphire.

It is possible that initial batches had better quality glass. Also, there seems to be more 16Gb selling than 32Gb, so more chance that 32Gb models would be from "older" batches and therefore would have better glass than newer 16Gb models - is that the actual case?

Just trying to figure out a pattern and see if this is commonplace issue or just a fraction of users actually have scratches with majority enjoying armored performance. After all, "antennagate" became public fairly quickly, but I am yet to hear anything about hardness of the glass.

I would venture to guess that the reason there hasn't been an outcry is because the issue is less visible.

1. People generally expect their phones to scratch
2. Scratches are less annoying than dropped calls
3. Many people put screen protecters on their phone
4. The issue may not be uniform (i.e. only a subset of the glass used in producing these phones was faulty)

None of this changes the fact that the hardware on our phones is not behaving as advertised. Using a screen protector for the iPhone 4 is like using a screen saver for your LCD monitor. It may provide some marginal protection but it definitely shouldn't be neccesary.

Regardless of what type of glass it is, IT IS SCRATCHABLE!!!
Yes it may be SCRACH RESISTANT. However a screen protector will really save you headaches and money.

Woke up this morning and found a little gouge on the screen. I'm extremely careful (case, in pocket by itself, etc) Obviously, I had to scratch it somehow but not through anything that would not be considered careful handling. In my mind, one of the first iPhone 4's so maybe the screen wasn't top notch. I called Apple Care and escalated to a supervisor who was very cool but did say that I would have to bring it in. I was prepared to gently, but forcibly state my case for a replacement but the guy said it was obvious I took care of my phone and it was probably a defective screen. Replaced with no problem. He stated the standard "I can do it for you this one time" but then told me that it was not a hard and fast rule and that I could get another replacement if it happened again. This is a week 37 model so he said it is from a fairly recent shipment. My first one was a week 25.

A little more data for anyone caring to follow:

iFixit identified iPhone glass to be Gorilla Glass manufactured by Corning:
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPhone-4-Teardown/3130/3#s15351

Product page:
http://www.corning.com/gorillaglass/index.aspx

Material data sheet:
http://www.corning.com/assets/0/15/2233/2251/B5D106FB-F477-46E6-9D95-E9BACAADDE2 3.pdf

It has not been determined for sure that the glass is gorilla glass. This is their opinion. If someone can find a source then post a link. If Apple used gorilla glass, I would bet they would advertise as so. The Dell streak has it. See here.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/29/dell-streaks-gorilla-glass-screen-torture-tes ted-for-your-amus/

I thought that link said 'torture tested for your anus' when I first looked at it 🙂

I was originally going to use my iPhone 4 without any film over it, but having encountered so many scratched units belonging to others, I have given in and applied front and rear protectors on my 3-day old baby (no scratches).

Some of you who claim that your previous generation iPhones never had scratches might simply have failed to perceive them. Unless you examine the glass very closely under direct sunlight or bright florescent bulbs, it is usually very tough to discern extremely light marks, especially if your screen is smudged.

Gorilla glass can definitely be scratched. Don't let the Dell Streak and Samsung Galaxy S torture test videos on YouTube fool you. Although the two new Galaxy S models that I had were scratch free (had them both for 2 weeks each, no film protectors on their screens, just a sleeve when in pocket), several weeks ago, I purchased a used AT&T Captivate that was advertised as in "new condition." Indeed, seeing any marks on it was difficult at first...until I put the glass under bright sunlight --then the DOZEN or so fine and straight scratches on the Gorilla glass panel became quite apparent.

I myself have never scratched Gorilla glass or the iPhone 4's glass (whatever material it might be, though I suspect that it's roughly equivalent to Gorilla), but I am not taking any chances. I absolutely abhor the idea of putting cheap plastic film over the beautiful and smooth glass surfaces, but we seem to have no choice...until a major company produces a phone with synthetic sapphire panels (see Ulysse Nardin's Chairman Android phone).

For those of you who have scratches from very gentle usage, I suspect that you might have incurred some of the blemishes when you were wiping/cleaning your screen. I don't trust anything to brush strenuously against my iPhone 4/MacBook Pro except my Radtech microfiber wiper. The tiniest grains of sand and other debris can easily scratch hardened glass when you wipe it against the surface! Some dirt and grime could be hidden inside the fibers of your cleaning cloth too.

Interestingly, Sony's Xperia X10 (a terrible phone in most respects, I had it a few times because they were cheap on Craigslist) purportedly has mineral glass, yet Sony still pre-applies a screen protector on the phone right out of the factory. Mineral glass might be harder to scratch than Gorilla glass, or are they comparable?

I do have one theory: could some of these light scratches on the iPhone 4 (I speak not about the deeper scratches) be on the coating used over the display? I know that this wouldn't explain back glass scratches though.

I used my iPhone 3G for 2 years w/o a screen protector and had no noticeable scratches or other marks. I used my iPhone 4G for 2 days and have multiple noticeable marks on the screen - I'm no sure if the glass itself has scratched or rather some protective coating on the glass. Either way, great quality Apple... keep up the good work...

I've had for the last several years HTC phones (TYTN2, Touch Pro 2) with plastic screens that are prone to scratching. I've never had a screen scratch on those, mainly due to the phone handling practices I have (phone travels in pocket or case with nothing else in the pocket, screen towards my leg or chest, etc)

My new iPhone4 is less than a month old, has been in a Belkin bumper case since it came out of the box. It's been treated with care - as I said, I'm used to looking after more damage prone HTC phones. It's not had a screen protector on it as, according to the Apple marketing materials and experience with earlier Apple phones, the screen is a hardened glass. I thought that the bumper protection to guard against screen edge impact would be sufficient...

Yesterday I noticed a 1-2mm, very fine defect in the screen, not on the edge but in the lower right hand side of the front screen. My initial thought was that this was a scratch and that I'd somehow damaged the phone. However, by lunchtime it was 2cm long hairline crack BELOW THE TOUGHENED GLASS SURFACE. It isn't a scratch, but a crack. You can see the hairline crack under a strong light, but it's not detectable by feel on the phone surface aside from a very small portion of it which has reached the surface - the defect I first noticed.

Again, my first inclination was that I'd scratched the phone on something, however the part you can feel on the phone surface is so fine that you'd have needed a scalpel, needle point or something similarly fine and hard to effect the damage - certainly nothing as blunt as keys or anything else that might be contained in a pocket - things which I don't carry with my phones in any case.

This is a phone that's marketed as being strong (steel frame, toughened glass that's "like sapphire"), and has been treated well, protected with a bumper case and not subjected to anything more than normal use.

A quick google search shows that more than a few people have issues with iPhone4 screen scratches and defects, though these are often caused by a drop - which I have little doubt would count as mistreatment. However, plenty of people are reporting that the phone seems more scratch/crack prone than the previous models.

Consumer law here is such that a product has to be fit for purpose and of acceptable quality. I think that a MOBILE phone (i.e. one which people are expected to carry in, for example, a pocket...) that develops a screen crack within normal (and particularly careful) use, especially when marketed as having a "more scratch resistent than ever" hardened screen, will most likely fall foul of our consumer laws.

I've taken the phone in for warranty replacement, but here in NZ they send it away for evaluation, leaving you without a phone for a week. Experience with my clients phone repairs is that everything from a failed battery to bad USB cables seem to be cited by repairers as "impact damage". I hope they don't suggest this in my case as I'll be arguing this point quite strongly...

Hopefully Apples warranty service is better than some others and I won't need to pursue other avenues.

Just as an aside, phone insurance here has been available on every phone I've ever owned, and I've always taken insurance just in case. The local phone insurance company WILL NOT cover the iPhone4. Wonder what they know that we don't?

Nick.

thelvyn123 wrote:
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?

Ahhh, and there it is. Like you, I was wondering how these screens could possibly be scratching if it's a material comparable to sapphire.

But there was always one nagging thought in my mind about their claim: How could Apple be using a plastic, or even a glass material that's as scratch resistant as sapphire? Such a material has not even been invented/created, and if it was it would be a huge development and boom for many applications outside of phone! (for example, supermarket scanners must use sapphire glass for their windows as anything else becomes destroyed by scratches in no time - very expensive!)
Yet, Apple is no chemical company. How could only they have such a material? The answer came when I heard that quote you linked above. 😟

The quote: +"...Developed a custom glass that's comparable in strength to sapphire crystal, but about thirty times harder then plastic."+

So, first, the screen is as strong as sapphire. This is nothing really special - sapphire is NOT a terribly strong material! Now sapphire's strength is anisotropic and very much dependent on loading conditions, but we can generalize to 50 KSI Tensile Strength. There are a few plastics that can be this strong, but not many clear plastics. 50 KSI is actually pretty strong for a plastic. Also, we can easily rule out glass as the material now as it's useful strength is only really less then 10 KSI or so for fracture happy tempered glass. That and the bending test they show in the marketing video also precludes glass. 🙂 For a frame of reference steel can be made anywhere from 50 KSI (and lower...) all the way to over 300 KSI.

*But strength has nothing to do with scratch resistance. Only hardness...*

Second, the screen is "about thirty" times harder then plastic. Casting aside how silly it is to say how many "times" harder one material is then another, we will have to look at the next best subjective measure to examine their claim: stiffness... which can correlate loosely with hardness on ceramics, plastics.

The stiffest and hardest plastics you will find are the well known PVC and newer and slightly more exotic polyamide-imide. Both can be made at up to and including 800 KSI if processed correctly. But neither of them are clear... Styrene-acrylonitrile is one of the best choices for a clear stiff plastic (500 KSI), but only up to around 10 KSI strength.
+(note for the laymen: dont compare the #'s given for stiffness and strength, they are the same units but mean something very different)+
Basically, the fact that the plastic used is so "strong" (for a plastic) and clear limits our choices. Honestly I have no idea what material Apple is using but if it's around 50 KSI tensile strength, clear, and taking into account the bending test shown in the video, I think the fairest and highest guesstimate would be about 300 KSI (and I think this is really stretching it...).

Sapphire has a stiffness of around 400 GPa, which is about 58,000 KSI. That's 200 times stiffer then the stiffest the iPhone 4's screen could possibly be. In reality it's probably 400 times or more.

*So basically the iPhone 4's screen is hundreds of times "less hard" then sapphire.* That sounds *a lot* worse then saying "30 times harder then plastic" or "as strong as sapphire," now, doesn't it? 😉

I hate to say it, but it seems clear that their choice of words was a bit misleading, intending to reflect on the consumer/listener that the screen may be as scratch resistant as sapphire, when in reality they're just using a really good plastic, which is not even nearly as scratch resistant as glass, let alone sapphire.

Paper products are a lot more abrasive than most people think.

Whatever you get to replace it will scratch too.

Keeping it in your pocket is not going to great lengths.

Stronger doesn't mean scratch proof. Stainless steel is a lot stronger than steel but it will still scratch.