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Just a couple of weeks before the iPhone launched, Apple announced that it had pulled a switcheroo with the screen covering from the clear plastic used on most iPods to a scratch-resistant glass. While viewed largely as a marketing move that was planned all along (Apple could not have made such a decision so close to launch time without severely pushing back production), the announcement did serve to soothe the nerves of many geeks who were worried about having to wrap their iPhones in silk-stitched bubble wrap in order to protect them from the world. But still, the questions kept coming in: "How durable will it be? Will it be able to survive the crap that I put my phones through?"
And so here you have it. You may have seen a few other reviews that attempted to "test" the durability of the iPhone, but none really went so far as to answer the questions that our readers had.
First, let us preface this by saying that, as many of you know, one of the official Ars Technica iPhones was put through a wedding during the weekend immediately after purchase. This involved at least two full days of jostling the device around, naked with no protection, in various bags and purses with things like keys, cameras, laptops, other phones, jewelry, pins, and more. And of course, lots and lots of showing off. During this time, it was dropped from standing height onto linoleum flooring twice during the reception, both by Clint and by another member of the wedding party. Neither of those drops caused any harm to the iPhone whatsoever, and the device came out from the weekend as if it were still brand new.
Throughout the week, we continued to be not-so-careful whatsoever with our iPhone. We sat down with the iPhone in various pockets (including the back pocket) with absolutely nothing to report afterwards. It was crammed into tight-fitting pockets with keys and other knickknacks, laptop bags with other electronic equipment and tools, purses with cameras and change and various metal objects... and we could not get the screen to scratch. We were beginning to lose hope that the screen could be scratched at all; good news for you all, but bad news for us.
We had to step it up a notch when we entered our formal testing phase, and so we placed the iPhone into a plastic bag with two sets of keys, a pocket knife, and a handful of rocks. Ten minutes of shaking, rubbing, and overall mashing resulted in almost nothing. Almost. One tiny scratch showed up in a somewhat inconspicuous place on the glass. In fact, it was very hard to photograph.
We wanted to see whether we could get it to scratch up a bit more, and so we threw it twice down the length of a sidewalk, face down. Surely skidding on the sidewalk would scratch the screen up at least a little bit, right? Sort of. We were able to generate a few very light scratches after skidding it down the sidewalk twice, none of which were visible while the LCD was on, and most of which looked more like streaks that could be wiped off than actual scratches.
We did, however, manage to create a tiny crack in the lower, right-hand corner of the glass next to the home button (out of the way of the screen itself) upon the second throw.
We then proceeded to drop the iPhone onto the concrete sidewalk three times. This essentially brought the iPhone drops from this height to about five times if you include the two drops at the wedding. None of these three subsequent drops caused any further damage to the iPhone's screen or glass covering, although it did begin to rough up the sides a bit.
Naturally, if you drop an iPhone anywhere in public—on the street, in an office, etc.—you run the risk of someone stepping on the phone. We've received numerous reader e-mails saying that their phones, iPods, and other gadgets had been stepped on with varying degrees of survivability. This happens enough that we decided to add it to the tests, so we placed the iPhone face down on the sidewalk and had a 225-pound man (Mr. Clint Ecker) step on it while walking by.
We heard a crack, but we weren't sure what had happened until we checked out the damage. A large spider crack had appeared in the lower right of the glass, close to the Safari button on the home screen. However, while ugly, the crack was in the glass and not the LCD screen itself, so it therefore did not impede our use of the iPhone at all. We could still make and receive calls, make and receive SMSes, send and receive e-mail, and listen to songs on the iPod.
The crack was much more noticeable in outdoor light compared to indoors:
...and less noticeable when the screen was on.
Since the iPhone had fared so well with other drop tests, we were curious as to how it would fare when knocked off of a third-floor balcony. When we did this test on the second-generation iPod shuffle, it practically floated down and landed on the ground like a leaf; such would not be the case with the iPhone.
The drop from the third-floor balcony, surprisingly, did not yield any further physical damage to the glass or the screen that we could see. However, it did kill the iPhone's touchscreen, rendering it mostly useless. At least it still has that pretty rose background, right?
But we said "mostly" useless. Despite being put through a world of hurt and now with a completely nonfunctional touchscreen, the iPhone was still able to receive phone calls. How were we able to answer the calls if you can't touch anything on the screen to answer them, you ask? Via those annoying-yet-handy iPhone headphones with the clicky switch, that's how. Call quality when answering a phone call after this much abuse suffered, however. It was very tinny-sounding (this was not the case when we tested phone calls with the headphones before), and we thought it sounded like the caller might have had us on speakerphone (he did not). Also surprisingly, we were able to listen to a random selection of music on the iPhone through the use of the headphones' clicky button, and the now non-touchscreen LCD happily displayed the album art for it. Even the volume control buttons on the side of the iPhone still worked. So if you've always wanted the equivalent of a heavy iPod shuffle with a giant screen to display album art and the ability to receive phone calls, the iPhone still served its purpose.
We knew that the iPhone was coming to the end of the road, and so we performed the most-requested and most-sure-to-kill-the-iPhone test of all: the toilet test. If we had a dime for every single story we've heard over the years about people who have somehow managed to drop their phones into the toilet, we wouldn't be writing this review right now. If you don't believe this, just ask around among your friends and coworkers; there is sure to be at least a few stories of people's phones coming to an untimely meeting with our dear friend H2O.
But not everyone's phones get fried when they get dropped into the toilet (or some other body of water). Because of the ability to take out the battery on most cell phones, some people (not all) have been able to save their phones from certain death by removing it from the water, taking out the battery immediately, and letting everything dry for several days. This was the case with a good friend of ours who was pushed into a fountain with his cell phone, a Motorola SLVR, just a few weeks ago (long story). He thought the phone was dead, but he let it dry out for several days with the battery out and found that he was still able to make and receive calls on it.
We put on whatever random song that the iPhone chose for us (something by good old Justin Timberlake) and said what we believed to be our last goodbyes to the iPhone. Then it went in the toilet.
About seven seconds later, the screen started flickering. Nine seconds after that, the music stopped playing. We took the iPhone out, let the excess water drain, did not remove the battery (since the battery is not user-removable) and set it out on the back porch to dry out. But just as we suspected, the iPhone was fried; there was no reviving it.
Some will argue that if we had removed the phone from the water earlier, it might have survived. That may have been true temporarily, but due to the battery being non-removable, we believe it would have died regardless. Water was able to seep into every crevice of the iPhone and would have made its way to the battery eventually, even if we had removed it from the water earlier.
If you're interested in seeing live video of the stress-testing process, check out our short film with a very touching ending.
We conclude that the iPhone is, for nearly all everyday uses, pretty darn durable and practically impossible to scratch. However, as with most electronics—particularly those with large screens—you should at least keep an eye out for hitting the screen at funny angles onto things like table corners and the like. Although even if you did that, the LCD itself would likely not crack, and you would not lose any real functionality, but nobody wants ugly spider cracks in their otherwise-beautiful glass, right?
Source: http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/iphone-review.ars/13
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