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iPhone X easy to scratched
- Thread starter Shyn Hy
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I bugged out my steel impacts. However my screen gets easily light scratches which sucks.
I've had my naked phone since launch morning and my SS doesn't have any scratches.
That’s normal. The steel is easy to scratch. You can polish it out if it bothers you, but it’ll keep happening if you don’t use a case.
This is why I wish apple went with the matte aluminum. I get the flashiness, but christ for the people like me who have OCD, this sucks. I've heard all about the cape cod cloths you can get to buff them out but it is annoying.
Yeah but you should have seen how bad my aluminum series 0 Sport Watch looked after I dropped it. Ugh. I’ll take scratches on steel over nicked up aluminum any day. Once you get a nick or gouge in aluminum that’s it, it looks like crap. Steel polishes up nice and there’s kind of a cool retro look to steel, scratched or not. Like old vintage camera equipment.
There is a polishing cloth for stainless steel called a “Cape Cod cloth”. People use it to polish the Apple Watch, which scratches as well.
Be aware that you don’t want it to get on the glass, though.
You are correct. I have the 6+ right now (deciding when to upgrade), and while both scratch and aluminum being permanent, I feel that the matte finish hides it better. Could just be my eyes and my preference to matte finishes.
You don’t want to start trying to polish this early. Your iPhone still looks very nice. There are no huge ugly scratches that stand out and ruin the looks. Eventually you’re going to get that one huge ugly scratch that’s going to catch your eye and drive you nuts. And then you will want to polish it lightly to blend in better with the other scratches. The goal will be to make it fade and blend in with the rest of the lightly scratched finish. Trying to restore the steel to perfection and that shiny look probably won’t lead to the results you’re going to like. Some of the guys on this forum have worked some miracles but they’re pretty experienced working on old watches and other things they’ve polished over the years. My dad is really good at polishing old steel to look nice but he’s had decades of practice.
A lot of good information on polishing Apple steel cases was exchanged on the Apple Watch part of the forum around the time the first steel Apple watches were sold. You might want to take a look at the old posts there and see if you can find pictures of what some of the steel Apple Watch owners were able to accomplish with polishing cloths and some buffing tools.
Really, your phone looks amazing and beautiful. A little bit of wear on it like you’ve got gives it character and adds to the look. I love how my steel Apple Watch looks after the years of wear I’ve put on it. I have only a couple of scratches that look a bit too harsh that I’ll polish out someday. The rest of the micro scratches give the Watch a bit of history.
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My dad has a couple of old fashioned cigarette lighters that look like that. They look cool to me. He has polished them but leaves one side alone because it has a stamp or imprint of a map of Vietnam on it. He got the lighter while serving in the war there.
The rounded steel band around the iPhone isn’t going to look quite like that large flat steel surface. It’s going to look nicer than that as it ages.
Good points. Post was bit tongue-in-cheek.
I’m not a shiny things guy though.
Same here, well I got my phone delivered in the afternoon. I have no scratches on my phone. I do put it in my pocket but whichever pocket I put it in, I make sure I don’t put anything else in that pocket.
Sorry but the guys who are getting scratches on their iPhones just isn’t taking good care of it.
Lol, it was a funny picture!
I get a bit nostalgic when I see aged beat up steel gadgets. So much of my grandpa and dad’s stuff from the 30’s, 40’s, 50’s and 60’s was made of steel and chrome and brass and had this lovely patina to it. People were a bit different then and not so “OCD” or whatever it’s called so they didn’t expect things to stay new and perfect looking. But they did expect their things to look cared for. So they learned to do maintenance chores like polishing and mending. The metals never quite looked brand new again but they did look elegant and storied.
I've left a few comments in various threads about this.
Firstly if you're going to use a cape cod cloth, you really should go on you tube and look up polishing with a cape cod cloth.
You need gloves, a clean polishing cloth, tape, and of course the cape cod.
Honestly... and I stress this! This forum is going to be lit up in a few weeks when people who have no idea what they are doing order cape cod clothes from amazon and try polishing this phone. If that stuff gets into the speakers it's game over!!! If it gets on the screen, the vibrate switch, or dare I say into the phone where there's a micro opening you are going to wish you never tired doing this.
Anyway..if people are bold enough to roll with this, get educated and watch a few videos.
My short take is gets some gloves on, put tape carefully around the screen, and cut a small piece of the cloth and wrap it around a q tip and gently move around the stainless steel band rubbing back and fourth, not in a circle, back and fourth. Do one side at a time, and than use a clean polishing cloth (like a watch cloth) and carefully polish the silver to a nice finish.
I've done this on my stainless steel watches and the stuff does work, but seriously I've been polishing my watches for the better half of 15 years!
Happy polishing guys!
Firstly if you're going to use a cape cod cloth, you really should go on you tube and look up polishing with a cape cod cloth.
You need gloves, a clean polishing cloth, tape, and of course the cape cod.
Honestly... and I stress this! This forum is going to be lit up in a few weeks when people who have no idea what they are doing order cape cod clothes from amazon and try polishing this phone. If that stuff gets into the speakers it's game over!!! If it gets on the screen, the vibrate switch, or dare I say into the phone where there's a micro opening you are going to wish you never tired doing this.
Anyway..if people are bold enough to roll with this, get educated and watch a few videos.
My short take is gets some gloves on, put tape carefully around the screen, and cut a small piece of the cloth and wrap it around a q tip and gently move around the stainless steel band rubbing back and fourth, not in a circle, back and fourth. Do one side at a time, and than use a clean polishing cloth (like a watch cloth) and carefully polish the silver to a nice finish.
I've done this on my stainless steel watches and the stuff does work, but seriously I've been polishing my watches for the better half of 15 years!
Happy polishing guys!
Well, steel is prone to scratches. It’s the nature of the material and the scratches seen there in the original photo are from normal wear and not indicative of abuse. Steel is tough and strong and is meant to be used and not babied. You can baby it if you want to, that’s perfectly fine and you will see fewer deep scratches than most of the rest of us who aren’t as careful. But micro scratches are inevitable even with a case or clean pockets. It’s just the way it goes with steel.
I know polished stainless steel is prone to scratches, I own the Apple Watch stainless steel and it has a crap load of scratches. I’m not babying my iPhone X though, I just keep it in s pocket by itself and so far no scratches just by doing that.
Actually, it really doesn't matter when you start polishing with a Cape Cod cloth. Speaking from having a lot of experience with my 316 L stainless Apple Watches, I'm someone that's very particular that doesn't like to see any scratches, I polish my Apple Watch frequently to remove the finer scratches regularly. It has had zero effect on the stainless steel, no matter how many times I polished it. You just don't need to do any heavy rubbing and minor scratches are easily removed with very little effort From the cloth.
In the case of the stainless surgical steel used on the silver iPhone X bands, it's literally identical to the stainless steel Apple Watch.
The only thing I would caution you of using mothers wax on the stainless Apple Watch, is the past can become lodged inside the ports, which would be almost impossible to remove.
But the advantage with the stainless Apple Watch, is the Sapphire display, which I have not had any scratches with the help of the Sapphire.