Silver is non-issue. Anything else like the Black Titanium and Blue Titanium phones. I've seen friends who regularly use cases have chips around the camera ring and specs of white on their frame where the coating has worn off
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iPhone 17 Pro Max I question the durability of the colored 17 Pros
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The coating wearing off is my main concern because this will be my first coated phone. Remember, I have always used silver phones in the past. No coating to be worn off like the colored phones.
Yes, it was. iPhone X onwards for the top/pro models were steel until the 15 Pro series switch to titanium.
The last “top” model aluminium phone was iPhone 7.
1. The 17 Pro is far from "beautiful", IMO. It's the ugliest phone Apple has ever designed, and putting it in a case actually improves its looks to me.
2. That said, I don't consider phones as art pieces, precious jewelry or status symbols, they're tools to be used. I don't sit around gazing at them and caressing them - they go in a case to protect them so they keep working, and then they do what they were designed to do. I don't really care what they look like without a case because the only time I'll see them that way is when I take them out of the box brand new to put them in a case, briefly when I occasionally take them out to wipe them down, and when I put them back in a box for trade-in.
3. I don't care about thicker or heavier (within reason), and ugly is subjective. I think phones look better in cases (some cases, anyway), and it allows me to not have to obsess over babying it. I do care just enough about looks that I don't want to carry around a caseless phone that looks like I dragged it down 5 miles of gravel road behind my pickup truck.
According to Google:
“When a polished titanium case is scratched, it often reveals the underlying, lighter "bare" titanium color, contrasting with the polished finish. While titanium is a tough and durable material, the polished finish on the casing is less resistant to scratches than the material itself.“
This aligns with my intuition and is why I chose the white iPhone Air this year, with silver/natural titanium rails.
It’s a head scratcher for sure. I’d love to see in the coming weeks that the black iPhone Air’s polished titanium edges is resistant to scratches for those who go caseless as I’d probably prefer that model.
I don’t know what they did with the X/XS steel edges but they were literally scratch proof in my experience but no other models before or since have had that effect unless they were the white/natural variants being case-less.
The aluminium pros in both orange and blue will suffer, without a doubt. But I fear the black Air will too.
I feel that there is very little risk now with going case-less and without a screen protector - the final boss is the metal edges, especially on the coloured/non-silver models.