I won't debate whether using aluminum was a good choice for the phone, but here's what I do want to say.
I keep hearing the statement, apple "cheaped out" on materials and quality".
As I said, is aluminum a good choice for a thin phone, it's certainly debatable. BUT, you just cannot say apple cut corners, and built the phone "on the cheap", virtually every other smart phone is made primarily from cheap, easily processed plastic. The iPhone is anodized aluminum and glass, with polished chamfered edges.
Again, like the design or not, think its durable, or not, you just cannot say when apple alone made a fairly difficult to manufacture anodized aluminum and glass phone, to everyone else's truly inexpensive plastic, that they went "cheap".
Whatever type of aluminum they used, they still created a much higher end (more expensive to build) phone in a market where most phones are truly as cheap as possible to build.
Like the design or not, it's not a cheap design for a phone.
This said, I do think perhaps on a phone so tall and thin, aluminum might not have been the most durable choice.
