Q: Significant light leakage, few light botches on sides/corners  - defective?

Looks like even after all this time Apple still does not get the message.

A friend of mine in Norway just bought an iPhone 5 (unlocked) -- cost him almost $1000 USD.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tf0odlnx11jg4li/iphone%205%20error.JPG

Also has multiple scratches on the aluminum case.

Wonder why the stock price is tanking?

They don't care about QC at all...they try to make people focus on the software *so* much that people don't notice the crap build quality or they are told to "just get over it" by bloggers and tech support, or that the scratches and light leak are "normal" --phil schiller saying scratches are normal even right out of the box:

http://www.macrumors.com/2012/09/25/phil-schiller-says-iphone-5-scratching-norma l-for-any-aluminum-product/

.  This in unacceptable and how much you want to bet this is going to continue to be a major problem for Apple as the years go by and for every single iDevice refresh --- they really need to do something about this.

Yes, even if most people don't notice or care about it -- it's there and it's not acceptable for a premium brand to produce devices such as this to make their way off the assembly line and pass QC and into an end users hands when they unbox it.  Completely unacceptable.  I guess they figure the demand is so high and if you are already locked into the apps / itunes system you really do have no alternative so you have to just deal with it...shame.