Yes, the world’s just nuts about the iPhone 5 at this point in time, although that might just be the perception by media that wants us to believe that. One thing’s for sure, we do know that the iPhone 5 has achieved the fastest selling pre-order to date, and looks set to move plenty of units on launch day (today) itself as well. The thing is, the iPhone 5 does seem to be rather fragile, considering how Overclockers UK member “sharingan_sasuk” discovered that the anodized aluminum on the black and slate iPhone 5 is not too hot when it comes to durability. He took a Liquidmetal SIM card tray pin to his black iPhone 5′s aluminum back, using a set of keys to scruff the edges, realizing that it happens all too easily. I know that it is a no-brainer, where using keys is guaranteed to scratch even the “toughest” consumer class phone in the market, but the whole point of the exercise is to show off just how fragile the anodized aluminum case is.
The white and silver model should not be any tougher though, but since it is colored that way, any scratches would be far less noticeable. I guess this is similar to the issues that the previous generation of iPod nano and iPod classic devices faced, where coating on the anodized aluminum cases eventually wore off even if you took care of it really, really well. The “winner” from this? Third party manufacturers who roll out iPhone 5 cases.