Please, for the love of all that’s holy, stop saying ‘scratchgate. It makes it sound like the scratches and blemishes appearing around the unchamfered edge of the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max plateaus are some sort of cover-up, and it diminishes all ‘gates’ that come before it.
50 years ago, the US had ‘Watergate’, an actual political cover-up that toppled a US Presidency. Since then, we’ve had ‘Bridgegate’ (Jersey), Deflategate (football), and ‘Gamergate’ (gaming, duh). Apple has somehow collected a trio of gates itself, starting with ‘Antennagate’, which was about how holding the iPhone “the wrong way” would cut down cellular transmission, and ‘Bendgate’, which was about the iPhone 6 Plus’ propensity to bend and even break if you sat on it.
The newest gate, Scratchgate, is about barely noticeable scratches on an inert part of these very new phones. Give me a break.
To be fair to the gate-lovers among you, there is an issue here, and it is a direct result of a materials decision Apple made within the iPhone 17 lineup.
The realities of aluminum
As you might be aware, especially if you read my iPhone 17 Pro Max and iPhone 17 Pro reviews, the new flagship phones traded in Titanium Grade 5 for Aluminum 7000 series. The ultra-thin and bend-defying iPhone Air still has titanium (trust me, I tried).
Apple did this to make the entire phone cooler. Not necessarily cooler to look at, but cooler and more efficient in day-to-day function.
A vapor chamber wicks heat off the A19 Pro CPU, and the aluminum body does a far better job of spreading and dissipating heat than, say, the titanium of the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max might have done. This has clear benefits in performance and battery life.
It’s a good tradeoff.
Still, aluminum is undoubtedly the softer metal. The hardness measurements on the Rockwell Scale compare thusly: titanium 70-74 HRB and aluminum alloy 60-70 HRB (material grades can have an effect on these ratings)
I’ve always understood aluminum, though, as the softest and lightest metal. When I was a kid, my dad brought home and started using a metal lathe. He’d take a bolt of metal, fasten it into the machine, and spin it at high speed as he slowly pressed a blade into it to slice away metal shavings and turn it into things like chess pieces and boilers for tiny steam engines.
Steel was the hardest metal he used, and it was so slow and arduous that he was soon switching to copper, softer brass, and, sometimes, the softest and lightest of them all, aluminum. As a child, I used to get a kick out of hoisting a large 4-inch in diameter bolt over my head. It felt like nothing compared to a similarly sized piece of brass.
My dad never worked with an alloy, like Aluminum 7000, but my impression of the metal was cemented. This was some light and soft stuff.
We can live with this
Returning to these new iPhones, it’s clear that even with the toughest aluminum, it’ll be more susceptible to scratches, especially in spaces where Apple’s much harder Ceramic Shield covering is, well, not covering it.
It’s these edges where people are spotting these scratches. Apple probably couldn’t protect them with Ceramic Shield, thus leaving the edges exposed to your pants rivets, concrete steps, pockets full of change, and other rough surfaces.
My review units of the Deep Blue Phone 17 Pro and Cosmic Orange 17 Pro Max show no such wear and tear. This may be because I protected them with cases, though I also frequently removed the cases to take photos of the products or to show them off.
It may be no accident that the cases I have (made by Apple) and the ones I’ve seen have a raised lip around the plateau that clearly protects those edges.
A few weeks ago, Apple showed me how it drops its phones from all angles, examines the results, and then works to toughen the design up before dropping them again. I’m sure they saw some of this scratching and, perhaps, deemed it acceptable.
A small scratch on the plateaus’ edges will have zero impact on the iPhone 17 Pro or Pro Max’s operations; it won’t make the cameras less wonderful.
It doesn’t rise to ‘gate’ level. So please, stop saying ‘scratchgate’ because you sound ridiculous.
