Did you read the article? Extremetech seems to believe that it's a flaw in the adonizing process:

"Schiller must be referring to the fact that anodization simply isn’t strong enough to withstand everyday use. We know this isn’t the case, though, as anodized aluminium is very well understood and used in a massive gamut of applications — including military, where the anodized coating certainly doesn’t just scratch off."

Also, from another extremetech article it links to: "Usually another protective layer of sealant or lacquer is added to make the it more wear-resistant — but sadly it seems like the iPhone 5 lacks that extra protection."

The iPhone 5's adonization seems to be more fragile than other adonized devices. <strikethrough>They've been coloring the iPods for years and nobody has complained this much.</strikethrough>

The second generation anodized iPod nano scratched if you looked at it funny.

You are correct: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10149328-37.html

From personal experience, I have had an anodized aluminum computer case for over ten years, and in all my accessing and bumping into that case I have yet to scratch the coating.

"So what's left? What material would you suggest they could use?"

Type III Hard Anodized Aluminum, not the thinner, weaker Type II they apparently used. Also, a little more texture on the back would have disguised scratches better.

I carried this HA III flashlight on my keychain for years with surprising little wear, given that it's constantly scraping against keys, key rings, and other metal tools. http://www.arcflashlight.com/arc-aaa.shtml

Actually Apple are pretty bad at picking phone materials period.

Glass is probably the poorest material possible for the obvious reason. The fact that yours didn't yet break is irrelevant.

Aluminum is yet another bad choice. It is cold to the touch during winter, it's slippery and if you're wearing a ring it will scratch the back. Nokia made the same mistake with the N8 and the E7.

The answer is high quality plastic, like on the N9 or Lumia 800/900/920. This feels excellent in the hand and is also very tough. Another option might be rubberized plastic as seen on some Android models.

But making it out of plastic would lose some of the thinness/strength benefits from a unibody aluminum enclosure.

Apple uses a single block of aluminum: http://thetechblock.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/iphone5_t...

Could be. The Nokias I mentioned use one block of plastic (or polycarbonate as they call it), but they are indeed thicker.

As an anecdote my laptop (MBA) and phone (N8) have a full aluminum body. I prefer the high quality plastic of the Thinkpad & N9 though, it's "friendlier" to the touch than the cold slippery metal.

> Actually Apple are pretty bad at picking phone materials period.

Which is funny, because they filed a patent[1] over two years ago for a process to make scratch-resistant stainless steel.

[1] http://www.geek.com/articles/apple/apple-to-patent-process-f...

Stainless steel is a pretty interesting material, but probably not a good choice for this design. A new variant of stainless probably makes it an even poorer choice (because full characterization is a prerequisite):

- Some variants of stainless steel are ferromagnetic, which would mess with the compass.

- Steel has very poor RF transparency, which would impact performance even with glass windows.

- Steel is heavy.

- Steel is far more difficult to machine: with Al you can easily (quickly, with little resistance) mill the curves and cavities that Apple likes for unibody design. Meanwhile steel chips, heats, and provides much resistance to a mill. It requires more finishing and incurs more tool wear.

I agree there are drawbacks to stainless and that it would be difficult to design a cellphone or other RF device entirely or predominantly from it. However, the patent does show that they have gone so far as to research and patent a process for improving a material for use in their portable devices. This makes the apparent lack of care in choosing the anodized aluminum for the iPhone 5 surprising and disappointing.

> Glass is probably the poorest material possible for the obvious reason.

Yet the iPhone 4 that I own since about release day has fallen an impossible number of times from unsuspected heights, and both front and back panels survived the abuse. I'd buy another such "poor material" phone anytime.

The only shattered iPhone 4 panel I encountered was my boss's, and it fell from the kinetic equivalent of second floor onto concrete. He's still using it because only a corner is affected, and a replacement front panel costs too much (I bet he'll get an iP5)

Ok, but what does that prove really? The bottom line is that while virtually all phones can crack their screen, i4(s) is the only phone that can just as easily crack its back.

The most important property of glass is transparency, while the big disadvantage is that it breaks catastrophically. You get no benefits and all of the downsides when using it for the opaque back plate. It does look nice, but there are other nice looking materials available.

And George Burns smoked several cigars every day for 70 years and never got lung or mouth cancer. Many, many, many other people were not so lucky.

Anecdote: My 4s fell from pocket height onto concrete. Screen was shattered, but the phone was still usable.

And, for "just" $200, Apple replaced it with a new one.

A small-ish point:

While the glass Apple chose does have issues with very hard impacts (the stuff that lead to catastrophic failure), it has really impressive resilience to minor wear and tear. It's difficult to scratch with metals and doesn't chip or dent. Yes, sand/silicates will scratch it, but not softer materials.

Further, ceramics and glass have excellent RF transparency, especially relative to metals. As you can imagine, this is incredibly important in smartphones. This has been a pretty big design challenge for Apple in the past: the Titanium Powerbooks has horrendous wireless performance, and generations of iPads and iPod touches have had to have glass or plastic windows in their backs. The iPhone 5 has two glass windows in the back for this reason. Note that stainless steel has poorer transparency than Al, and some types are ferromagnetic.

I definitely like the polycarb that Nokia is using in the Lumia line. That said, the feel that Apple has created by its material choices in the iPhone line is very nice, and that this complaint over scuffing is minor. Wear and tear happens, whether to plastic or steel.

This seem pretty subjective ... I love the various aluminum ipod-mini/nano models, for instance. In my experience, they're almost perfect.

Apple's mistake with the earlier metal ipod seems to have been not that it's made of metal, but that it's made of highly polished metal (which will of course be subject to scratching, fingerprints, is more slippery, etc).

"High-quality plastic" can easily suffer from the same issues if it's glossy; I own phone made from very glossy plastic, and while it's beautiful and extremely well made, it's also very slippery and very prone to picking up fingerprints.

So using a metal back with a less finicky finish, as they did with the iphone 5, seems a pretty reasonable move.

Nitpick: There are tons of high-durability glasses that you'd have to try pretty hard to chip or break.

The casing of the Nexus One has none of those problems AFAIK.

The macbook pros are quite durable to scratches and scuffs, so perhaps they could have used the same material/processes. Not sure about the iPhone 5 since I haven't handled one in person yet.

> "The macbook pros are quite durable to scratches and scuffs, so perhaps they could have used the same material/processes."

They do. On the white/silver iphone5. And it, by all accounts, handles wear just like the unibody macbooks. The issue only relates to the black/graphite iPhone5, due the coating used to make it appear black/graphite.

The iPhone had a metal back that exposed a black sub-surface with wear - and people complained. The iPhone 3G/3GS had a plastic back that scratched, chipped, cracked and was known to develop discolored stress marks - and people complained. The iPhone 4/4S had a glass back that chipped, scratched and shattered - and people complained.

I'm not sure about the Nexus One, having never seen one. But I am fairly certain that no matter what Apple makes a phone with, they can not ship anything that's literally perfect. And they will ship millions, with the initial sales tilted toward obsessives and perfectionists. These people have always found things to complain about and they will always find things to complain about.

Further, the press knows Apple articles are an eyeball gold mine, particularly Apple articles about a controversy, so they will always make as big a deal out of anything that they can.

See also: the 'yellow' screen glue issues; 'antennagate'; the possibility that repeated application and removal of cases to an iPhone4/4S might cause cracks; the stress cracks on the 3G; wear on the silver face band around the 3G/3GS; wear on the original iPhone back; dead pixels on the 4; etc.

Anecdotal counterargument ho.

I've owned a unibody MBP for only a year or so and it has several visible scratches, especially on the underside. It doesn't bother me, at least not as much as a case would, but based on my own experience I definitely wouldn't say "quite durable." I also wouldn't prefer any other material.

Nexus One owner here. My device has a lot of scratches and scuffs, it has been magically lifting itself out of my pocket on a few occasions including riding a bike at full speed. Needless to say, when it hit the ground it not only totally disassembled itself, it also received a few more scratches here and there. My MacBook Pro is different by the way, no scratches after lots and lots of usage.

The verdict: I couldn't care less. It's a phone and after putting the battery back in and the cover on, it never ceased to work, it didn't even change my user experience in any way (broken glass, buttons etc.)

I would not buy a phone that requires me to put in in an ugly case, but I would also not care much about a few scratches here and there as long as the phone doesn't break.

So if you buy a phone partially for it's supposedly amazing design and then hide it inside those ugly rubber casings or whine about small scratches, well, than you lost me along the way.

> so far, neither the front nor the back broke

careful there, coworker told me exactly the same thing and the next day his glass cracked :)

Laminated wood like you find in high-end automobiles. Possibly with an inner plastic or aluminum reinforcement to give it strength. It would be both beautiful and in keeping with Apple's high-end appeal.

Plus the Apple logo could be etched, burned or inlaid in.

http://www.samuraijapan.co.jp/forauction/Alim/ebay/smartphon...

Wood would be very beautiful and nice to touch, but it seems difficult to make it thin enough without having horrible durability problems.

"What material would you suggest they could use?"

There are plenty of plastics out there that don't break or scratch easily. And when they do scratch, it's a solid color so the scratch isn't readily visible. Most other phone companies use one of those.

Yes. They tried that with the iPhone 3G. People didn't like the cheap "plasticy" feeling.

Because it was a cheap, plasticy plastic :) The premium kind in the Lumia series beats any iPhone up to 4S. Haven't tried the 5 yet, though I think metal is a particularly poor choice.

> What material would you suggest they could use?

Bamboo would drive Greenpeace mad.

Actually, I think bamboo is supposed to be much more renewable than traditional wood, since it grows so darn fast.