Do the new iPhone colors (specifically the space gray) indicate that Apple has dropped the Anodized coating we saw on the first Black iPhone 5? I really hope so because after a year I've found that unless you put that phone in a museum under glass, its next to impossible to not end up with a scratch here or there.
I bought a slate iPhone 5 on launch day, and I treated it like
ABSOLUTE DIRT. I literally threw the phone across the floor on a weekly basis and I dropped it at least twice a day onto hard surfaces like tile and rough concrete on the curb of a busy street. I kept the phone in pocket with keys that you could
HEAR making obvious scratching noises on the bare metal as I walked. I have ZERO, ZERO signs of marks at all on my Slate iPhone 5. Zero.
Why? Because I used a bumper.
This is my iPhons 4S, which I also got on launch day:
Look at the lock button, the headphone jack/mic & the vibrate toggle. Those aren't black shadows or fingerprints. That phone was so weak that it couldn't even handle being touched by fingernails day in and day out or rubber coated buttons and got scratched to hell around any exposed or moving metal surface, and that's WITH the Apple bumper.
I used these phones in the exact same way, except the iPhone 4S had a thick front and BACK screen protector. My iPhone 5 was bare exposed aluminium with zero protection yet my iPhone 4S was scuffed to hell, and my iPhone 5 looked brand new on every surface.
The iPhone 5 (in both slate and silver) is the most durable iPhone Apple has ever made in terms of being able to shrug off damage completely. The surface scratch resistance is second only to diamond, which is why my iPhone 5 screen protector has huge gouges but the back looks new. The iPhone 5, is almost impervious to scratches. What actually damages it is once you start to break the actual metal down and ding and scrape the device then the phone shows damage. more obviously.