14 DAY TRIAL // You know what would be even more embarrassing than Bendgate? Colorgate. According to one user who attempted to clean his gold iPhone 6 Plus with a tissue, the gold paint used in the anodization process comes off easily.
Granted, we can’t put too much faith in this person’s words. He / she only shows a dirty tissue resting on a wooden surface with no iPhone in sight. It could well be cigarette smoke wiped off a piece of glass, by the looks of it.
The customer’s claim
So this person took to Reddit to complain about a problem which, if proven true, could spell another PR nightmare for Apple. Here’s what redditor aLunaaxxx has to say about his / her experience with a gold-colored iPhone 6 Plus.
“And so I wanted to clean the back of my Gold 6 Plus, and when I used tap water and a damp tissue to wipe the back of the phone, the tissue turned brown, and I assure you it isn't dirt. I've actually wiped the back of the phone a few times with a clean dry cloth. Anyone know why? Did I accidentally wipe off some coating on the back of the phone?”
Anodization and why the story shouldn’t stick
The image supplied with the post is available above for your viewing displeasure. A few Reddit users bothered to reply, telling this person that Apple actually doesn’t use normal paint to color its iDevices. Which is true.
The paint job isn’t even a coating, but rather a process called anodization, where the metal gets submerged in a special substance then gets bombarded with ions or something to cause it to rust in a controlled manner. The decay results in a bunch of nanotubes being created across the entire surface of the phone’s chassis. Apple puts the paint inside these tubes then seals it tight with another process. In all fairness, the anodization technique has probably been used particularly to avoid scenarios like the one described by our redditor here.
What if
Of course, no one would have believed that the iPhone 6 bends like jell-o hadn’t someone made it look that way. Yet millions today now believe that the iPhone 6 Plus bends as easily as marshmallows. So even if this thing isn’t true, it still has the potential to generate a few negative headlines.
We tested these claims on our own iPhone 6 test unit and we didn’t notice any gold coming off the chassis. Granted, it’s not a Plus but we can’t imagine Apple using different coloring techniques for the two phone models. Has anyone here tested this? What’s your take?