Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Glassgate

While out taking photos of the Dublin City Marathon yesterday I was listening to my backlog of podcasts and the always informative MacBreak Weekly. One of the episodes discussed the latest problem to hit the iPhone 4, "glassgate". Silly name but the idea is that the glass back of the iPhone 4 is more prone to cracking if you use a slip on case. Dirt and grit gets trapped behind the cover and can scratch the glass. The phone then cracks alone those scratches.

As the presenters pointed out they haven't seen any actual proof of this problem and most of the posts confirming this problem involved the user dropping the phone. I wont disagree with them, but I will say there might be a slight problem with slip on cases since today I took off my case and found two scratches on the back. Inspecting the case I found a bit of grit at the spot where the scratches are. The new iPhone is a thing of beauty but perhaps it is just going to be one of those devices that scratch. Everything scratches so there is no point complaining about it and that is not the intention of this post but if those scratches get deep enough to cause a crack in the glass then there would be a problem.

Now I dont know if I'll keep the case on or not. I want something to protect the phone from drops so perhaps the easiest solution is to take the cover off every so often and clean behind it? A drop is more likely to break the glass than a piece of dirt so some protection is required. Maybe Apple are the smart ones and their bumper cases really are the best ones on the market?

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