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Has your sapphire screen scratched yet?

  • Yes

    Votes: 16 15.5%
  • No

    Votes: 87 84.5%

  • Total voters
    103
No, It's like buying a great looking expensive car and getting a clear-bra front end protection installed to keep the front end from getting chipped up. You can barely see it and you can barely see the screen protector. No need to be a drama queen about it. Live and let live.

Love my clear bra and screen protectors.
 
I am still confused about this. I have seen videos on youtube where a guy takes a Stanley knife and a drill to a sapphire watch and there was no damage at all. So if there is coating on top of the sapphire display, how come that a knife and a drill didn't cut through the coating.

Maybe they removed the coating? Or if it was just the glass and not an assembled watch they might have gotten it pre-treatment, so no coating. Either way, it's useful to know if you get a scratch on the apple watch (non sport), it's possible that if you just remove the coating you will remove the scratch!
 
There is a coating to help with fingerprints. There was a thread over at the Apple support forum where someone was advised to literally scrap off the coating. He described the way he did it and there were no scratches on the actual Sapphire glass itself.
I remain skeptical. I have seen nothing in this thread, links provided therein, or through web searches that confirm the presence of one coating or the other. It is a touch device, it makes no sense to coat a harder substance with a weaker film just to have that mar and become a support headache for Apple. Coatings on phones, shoved up against oily hair and skin, make sense. AR coatings on watches that are looked and and not touched, OK. A coating on a. small device that has a very high density of touch area by fingers that can easily have silica residue embedded (will scratch coatings) just doesn't add up. I don't believe the web videos that tried unsuccessfully to scratch the sapphire used treated or gold sample units. And I have a REAL hard time that Apple is recommending in their support forums that end users scour coatings off their new hot item as a viable solution (unless it is a placebo and they are just getting folks to simply get very hard gunk off the display by vigorous scour). So where are the genuine links to hard spec sheets? I would really like to answer this question in my own mind and would appreciate those links. Thanks in advance!
 
It could be residue stuck to the display. Like when your bumper rubs on something.

Consumer reports tested the screen and they were unable to scratch it.

If it is a scratch I'd replace it for a new one. You're still in the 1st 14 days and this would be a defect.
 
This happens to watches that cost thousands as well. Anti reflective coatings, oleophobic coatings they will scratch before the sapphire scratches. Glad Apple is taking care of you.
 
People keep forgetting that even though only diamond can scratch sapphire but diamonds are mined from the ground not made in a lab and thus there are microscopic diamonds _everywhere_ in nature.

Ahh, yes - free radical diamonds are everywhere.

But, seriously, I expect you are correct. There are probably more things we come in contact with that could scratch our sapphire screens than we realize. However, having said that... I have a couple other watches with sapphire that have no scratches after years of daily use. I expect the sapphire screens on our Apple watches will perform equally well.
 
This happens to watches that cost thousands as well. Anti reflective coatings, oleophobic coatings they will scratch before the sapphire scratches.
Those watches are not touch devices. Various tests show the watch face NOT being scratched by tools of know hardness. Links that Apple is using such coatings?
 
Those watches are not touch devices. Various tests show the watch face NOT being scratched by tools of know hardness. Links that Apple is using such coatings?

The Apple Watch users guide says there is an oleophobic coating, as we discussed at length earlier in the thread. I don't know why other attempts to scratch the screen (like by Consumer Reports) didn't result in any scratches on the coating, however.

https://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/1000/MA1708/en_US/apple_watch_user_guide.pdf
 
People keep forgetting that even though only diamond can scratch sapphire but diamonds are mined from the ground not made in a lab and thus there are microscopic diamonds _everywhere_ in nature.
Actually not true. Synthetic diamonds for gem and industrial purposes are nothing new. There are even diamond coating techniques to make moving parts more durable. Your chances of running into wild diamond depends on where you live. But yes, out in the wild there is always to posibblity of encountering some small very hard particulate. The probability that they are harder than 9 AND they are encountered in such a way to grind it into the watch face to cause a scratch are very small, IMO. Under casual usage scenarios, of course. Take you watch to work in a tool and die shop and all bets are off ;)
 
It could be residue stuck to the display. Like when your bumper rubs on something.

Consumer reports tested the screen and they were unable to scratch it.

If it is a scratch I'd replace it for a new one. You're still in the 1st 14 days and this would be a defect.

Apple is not going to give him a new watch for a scratch he caused on the screen. It is not a defect in the production of the watch. #
 
https://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/1000/MA1708/en_US/apple_watch_user_guide.pdf

Ah yes, right there on page 85. Thank you for the link, I did look through the thread earlier and did not see it. The next question in my mind is the nature of the coating. Is it more like a clear coat on a car or is it more of a wax? The former has some rigidity that can be abraded the latter has some fluidity that can be smeared. Given the user guide says that it will wear over time, like a wax, I'd tend towards the latter. One way or the other, without knowing more of the details, I am seriously disappointed in Apple touting two separate materials yet coating them with some third ill defined substance. What's the big difference, Apple? That sapphire users will have greater scratch resistance at some point down the road when some unspecified substance finally wears off the face? Or, is this coating an amorphous smear of wax that is a marketing check box and has no long term benefit? Pick one and go with it already.
 
The bezzel.

If the watch had a bezzel, like so many popular high end watches; perhaps we would avoid these mishaps in the wild.

My 10+ year old watch is scratch less on its sapphire, but I am certain that the bezzle has taken most of the direct hits over the years to help protect the glass.

Obviously, you can't put a bezzle on the watch it it's current form, but it is certain to take the main abuse on the daily bumps and smacks.
 
Apple is not going to give him a new watch for a scratch he caused on the screen. It is not a defect in the production of the watch. #

That makes perfect sense! my gosh if they did that they would open up the flood gates for the thousands of scratched up Sport models to have to be replaced!
 
Silicon Carbide and Boron?:p I think we can agree that for all intents and purposes, the only thing we need to worry about scratching our sapphire watches is a diamond, unless you happen to be ceramic armor salesman or high end industrial engineer.

Tungsten carbide. Tools, sandpaper, dust. These things may also include diamond. Not all that uncommon. Concrete and asphalt can have just about anything mixed in them and we are near those every day.
 
Tungsten carbide. Tools, sandpaper, dust. These things may also include diamond. Not all that uncommon. Concrete and asphalt can have just about anything mixed in them and we are near those every day.

interesting...

I have a Movado Valor (Tungsten Carbide) watch. I could rub it hardly on anyones watch if they would like!

:p
 
Sorry, but I'm not buying it. You can't scratch a sapphire crystal with sandpaper, which can easily scratch regular glass, and your'e telling me you can scratch sapphire with regular glass?

Google diamond sandpaper or silicon carbide sandpaper.
 
There's one place where I can imagine an Apple Watch being exposed to a LOT of things harder than 9 on the moh scale - the factory where they're made! Among other things, DLC coatings (I.e. Space Black watch) use silicon carbide or tungsten carbide which could conceivable scratch sapphire or mar the oleophobic layer. In any case, it's not inconceivable that the OP's watch was scratched before packaging and that it snuck through QA.

Glad that it's getting sorted out, and that I learned from this thread not to pretend that I'm Wolverine when I finally receive my Apple Watch! ;)
 
Tungsten carbide. Tools, sandpaper, dust. These things may also include diamond. Not all that uncommon. Concrete and asphalt can have just about anything mixed in them and we are near those every day.

But you'll pretty much know when you are around them. I've worn watches with sapphire crystals and ones with glass crystals. I've never had a scratch on the sapphire crystals and have scratches on the glass crystals.
 
But you'll pretty much know when you are around them. I've worn watches with sapphire crystals and ones with glass crystals. I've never had a scratch on the sapphire crystals and have scratches on the glass crystals.

Pretty much but another comment I quoted says sandpaper can't scratch sapphire. There are posts all over this forum saying only a diamond can scratch sapphire. These are clearly false and can be proven with a simple search but the statements continue. Saying sapphire won't scratch is starting to sound like an iPhone shouldn't bend in a pocket.
 
There is a coating to help with fingerprints. There was a thread over at the Apple support forum where someone was advised to literally scrap off the coating. He described the way he did it and there were no scratches on the actual Sapphire glass itself.

Cheers , did not know that
 
I wonder if your watch was assembled incorrectly. Perhaps you don't actually have sapphire on your watch.

Must be one of the many diamond rings the workers from foxconn are wearing which scratched it.

----------

Google diamond sandpaper or silicon carbide sandpaper.

I thought only Jay Z could afford this :).

But I think there is a hint somewhere: diamond sandpaper
 
I've had scratches on my other sapphire watches, one of them has the scratch mark just like yours. The world is way too complicated, I don't even try to explain where the scratches come from.
 
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