Nobody actually reported on this because nobody cares when Apple does something right and everybody likes to see big companies fail.
You can verify it yourself though. Just ask Apple to pull an out of warranty replacement and compare it to an old slate iPhone or their store models. If you looks closely you will see that the chamfer, the word "iPhone" and the Apple logo will not be black like the original but dark teal.
Essentially what Apple's problem was, was that they actually took a solid block of aluminium with two surface finishes, a polished finish and a matte finish then anodized the entire surface. The flaw was that the aluminium oxide (a material that is basically what most people know as "Ruby's" second in hardness to diamond) didn't bond very well with the polished surface. So what Apple did is they added an intermediate step where they actually created more of a satin finish on the entire device likely by glass blasting the entire phone before it was anodized.
If you look at a newer slate iPhone 5 in the light the Apple logo blends in more and has a worse contrast than the older ones, you can barley see the Apple logo on newer slate iPhones in most cases.
I didn't even read your post past where you said you had no reference. It was not reported on because it did not happen.
I had mine replaced last week and it's the exact same finish.