Maybe a 3-4 foot drop off of the armrest of my couch and onto hardwood floor, (TineeOwl case shown at the end) - I always knew the new aluminum frame was fragile after what I’ve seen from the 17 Pro’s release, so I took the precaution of not using the Apple Cases and getting something decently protective.
Yeah, the aluminum corner still bent ever so slightly 😂, coming from a titanium 16 Pro Max I had no idea how to gauge the softness of this new material, but damn.
I personally don’t care as I was planning to use the phone caseless with AppleCare+ anyways, but I wanted to warn some of the OCD users on here, even with a case, the aluminum frame on these new builds can get damaged, just fyi.
It’s honestly unacceptable how soft the material for this phone is. Deformation with a case is absurd. Apple could have done better with their material choice and design.
If you work outside doing construction with your hands like a real man then you will feel the difference in heat between titanium and aluminum. My 16 pro would drain the battery, slow down, get fire hot and render the phone useless. My 18 pro does not do this and stays cool.
just out of curiosity sh/wouldn’t other brands who followed apple into Aluminum have the same problem (S26 Ultra, Xiaomi 18 Pro etc). Or you guys mean to say Apple is doing the worst job among the aluminum frame phones right now?
You really think OP is actually telling the truth? Bro probably dropped it way higher than that because my 17 pro max fell from the stairs and it was fine with no dents. The hate is forced and people love it to gain some clicks for this bait.
Not if the iPhone 17 Pro and 18 Pro have thicker aluminium, which it has compared to the thin asf models from the past, did you forget the iPhone 6 was bending? I don’t see a 17 Pro or 18 Pro bending… People forget how engineering works, softer doesn’t mean weaker if it’s thicker.
Being a soft metal has its advantages too. It absorbs energy by deformation and can e.g. in some cases help prevent a screen from cracking. It's also cheaper for Apple to manufacture. Some say, about $15 per phone cheaper than e.g. titanium would be.
Such cost cutting, or the use of cheaper memory in the higher tier iPhones pro only benefits Apple of course. Still, us consumers are the ones who decide to give them our money or not.
Makes me feel a bit better about getting a case that's more about looks than protection, figure it's fucked anyway may as well look cool and try not to drop it lol.
Uh I just keep getting messages about how sucky this phone is, like the battery is defective or the screen is junk or it breaks easily. Should I just get the 17 pro max? I’ve got a 12 rn
This is annoying. I have the iPhone Air and drop it all the time and it still looks new. The cameras seem like an appealing upgrade but I really don’t want worry about my phone denting. Wtf Apple…
In the same boat. My Air is truly indestructible, I’ve never needed to consider a case. I grabbed the burgundy Pro but I’m torn on whether I keep it or not because I never use a phone case. The color is so pretty and the battery is insane but at what cost?
Clear case or motive better a nice matching Burgundy case which I have seen when I was looking for a black 18pro case. Plus most of these cases have the full camera area open that shows the phone color unless you specifically but a precision type but the covers everything and it didn’t work for what I wanted. I saw pictures of a burgundy case with the burgundy phone. It looked really sharp, Just an idea. I just now googled burgundy iPhone 18 pro matching color case and a lot of choices came up. There are also Youtube videos on composting case types that match the phone color.
And horrible for turning the phones into a fire hot brick that would display this error message. The metal has to be functional as well. We buy the phones for them to work as optimally as advertised when we need them to. I’ve used Bullstrap leather cases on all of my phones and have never had a dented phone or cracked screen and I’ve dropped them.
I will admit they get hot but I had a 15PM that was a furnace so I changed to the 16P. Still gets hot but it’s nowhere near as bad as that 15P. The A17/M3 silicon ran hot.
When it comes to drops luck plays a big factor. I dropped mine on asphalt with an apple silicone case. The case was torn to hell and the phone didn’t have a single nick on it.
I dropped mine while I was bike riding, it fell and bounced in the middle of the road and there are absolutely no marks. I’m using apples sillicone case
People tend to lie to make the new design look bad, it’s going to last a while because it seems people are having a hard time coping. My 17 pro max fell from the stairs and didn’t have a single dent.
That’s actually not scuffing. It’s craze marks from the aluminum deforming. The lip actually bent out and there is now a gap between the screen and the frame.
I had the same happen to my 17 pro, it’s difficult to see it with just images, but this exact damage has been happening a bunch of times.
It’s ridiculous that even with a case they are being scuffed. Coming from a 16 pro the titanium survived all sorts of abuse even without a case. I get that there are trade offs but it’s frustrating.
If you don’t need the extra thermal dissipation don’t buy the pro, I wouldn’t choose titanium in a million years, having your phone heat up like crazy when doing anything demanding is super annoying
Who says that tools can’t also look good? Your car is a tool, would you just shrug it off if someone sideswiped it and put a dent and scratches in it? I mean hey, it’s a tool, not jewelry, so you wouldn’t care, right?
Fr, I just took the case off, I have AppleCare+, the whole point of the case was to protect the phone but if the phone still dents might as well go caseless.
Out of curiosity sh/wouldn’t other brands who followed apple into Aluminum have the same problem (S26 Ultra, Xiaomi 18 Pro etc). Or you guys mean to say Apple is doing the worst job among the aluminum frame phones right now?
I'm sorry this happened :/. I will say though, that the case brand matters. I've never heard of TineeOwl. I've used Spigen and ESR; both are absolutely solid.
Experienced the identical problem with the 17 Pro Max and the Apple silicone case. It is genuinely disappointing when their own accessory fails to safeguard the phone. Attempting to claim a replacement device obviously did not succeed. lol
Trust me back then, aluminium iPhones dented just as easily as the 18 pro. People just forget because there is so much drama around the fact the stepped away from the boring reused jewelry design.
Bruh, my wife’s brand new 17pro with a $10 tpu case and a $7 Amazon screen protector survived flying off the roof of my car at 40mph and bouncing off the pavement several times. Not a scratch or dent or anything under that cheap case she has lol.
This is one of the main reasons why I got silver. I’m not going to humor anyone by pretending I ever considered Burgundy, but I took one look at it, and I know myself more than anyone else. One year of me and that phone, and that burgundy isn’t going to be looking so hot. When you drop something, and there’s a scratch, what color is that scratch commonly, when something is made of a metal? Exactly.
I can definitely recommend Torras cases. I’ve been using the exact same case for over a year now.
it was on my iPhone 17 Pro, and I’m using that same case on my 18 Pro now. It still hasn’t yellowed at all.
I’ve also dropped my phone from waist height onto hard concrete while out on the street, and it didn’t even get a dent. Definitely impressed with the durability.
Man idk how I’m gonna go 3 years with this phone after being locked in with a trade in credit. Having a dent or chips would drive me insane. Is apple care worth it and would they be able to replace the body if there was a severe dent in it?
You pay a deductible for a replacement which they would not do for blemishes. Yes, AppleCare is worth it, the cheapest and the best. AT&T advantage was a bad move on my part as I just needed a replacement for my 14 pro. The deductible for the phone where they can use any parts was around $100 more than Apple care. I was out $275 but at least I kept my claim open awhile and went back in and by that time they offered a refurbished 16 pro instead which is considered a working 16 pro by AT&T and they will give me the full upgrade credits for it. It is not certified by Apple like Apple would do and it’s not necessarily refurbished with Apple parts, I read the fine print. AppleCare is what I am getting going forward.
Edit:typos
Never really going to please anyone. It’s a challenge when trying to deal with the combination of balancing thickness, weight, durability, price, thermal properties and elegance.
It will never be good enough, this world has gone to shit and products need to be to people’s liking or they cry and whine about day in and day out. Apple brings perfect devices, people just need to learn a company doesn’t have to do what they want, people buy iPhone either way anyways.
If they do then I will glaze them so much and yes it is kinda innovation because no one else than Samsung has titanium. So there is no choice for someone like me I had to buy 16 pro max cuz last titanium model.
after the catastrophe that was the iPhone 17 Pro denting fiasco, I figured they would’ve went to a different material by now, or they would’ve figured something else out. I’m one of those that does drop their phones, and I am horrified that when I do, that it’s going to be bad. Yes, I have it in a case, yes, I have a screen protector one, but this just frustrates me.
the issue is the thermals were horrible on the ti, and thus we got this mess of a Al again phone. I am sure they are not internally loving the figures for refurbished phones as they need way more new total cases than ever before to make them look right. They know and they are caught between magsafe a money maker, and heat. So if you want a 15 watt chip in your hand you get Al edges with magsafe. The trade is no more mag safe and an al core center and Ti edges again. I for one would trade magsafe for this change, however it would cut into the MFI for magsafe and we all know how apple feels about a good MFI up charge. So here we are stuck in a physics issue where they cram in more power and more battery and brighter screens but the thermal trades are starting to show in case design hardcore. Before people say oh i personally never had issues with Ti, go look at the litany of posts on the hand over it was and how it cooked battery health. The issue was and is real and if it was not so real apple would still make phones of Ti.
Same thing happened to me! Dropped the phone with an apple case on it, scratched the burgundy paint off the corner of the phone. Coming from a 14pro which I dropped several times and severe had an issue. Oh well
Waiting on mine to arrive. So I haven’t used an iPhone since 14. Always was a no case but screen protector user. Looks like I might need to change that soon 😅
Well Apple was never known to understand how to design a sturdy phone. But it’s a shame how incompetent they have been with the latest 17 and 18 iterations.
My 15 PM has fallen a couple times and has no visible scratches. Shame Apple lowered their material quality standards…
Still Im tempted to get the 18 Pro Max Black cause the big battery interests me a lot
Seeing these posts is making me so close to cancelling my pre-order. Coming from a 15 Pro and how sturdy Titanium is, I think I’d rather sit this one out. I’m very OCD about my devices.
5ft drop with Mous limitless case no damage whatsoever. We all know how brittle aluminum is so please just stop cutting corners spend a bit more and invest in a quality case. It's worth it to protect a $1,300+ smartphone.
I would certainly hope that for the price of those cases, your phone could survive a 5 ft drop with one. I’m all for good protection, but to a point. Also those cases leave the camera area completely unprotected, save for a ridge. That’s an awful lot of money to be spending for that amount of unprotected space.
Spending anything over say $50 for a phone case is kind of mental. Some drops are going to result in damage, even with a cover and whatever else. I’ve seen a phone in 10 pounds of OtterBox Ultimate Extreme Impenetrable insert whatever other extreme marketing name here, shatter because when it got dropped, it fell corner first onto the sharp edge of a rock that blew through everything as it bounced. Looked spotless from an impact standpoint, but the screen had shattered and damage inside had occurred. Fluky as hell for sure, but physics are undeniably tricky sometimes.
What screen protector are you guys using that sticks on fully? On my 18pro, the ESR screen protector is not sticking on the edges. I’ve never had this happen with my 8,11, and 14 pro
I have 17PM in Orange which is mostly kept in an Apple Silicone case. Been dropped a few times from the arm of the recliner onto carpet and bounced onto wood floor. No damage. I don’t understand.
I put my sim in using the stick thing that comes in the box and just by pulling it out it’s bent the SIM card insert outwards so wen I run my fingers across my phone it’s kinda sticking out
Get used to it. I have a 17 Pro and although it’s always been in a case and I’ve never once dropped it, the frame has a ton of scratches. It’s just too soft of a material for a phone.
Anyone who hasn’t noticed apples quality decline in recent years is to far up apples ass. We used to have aluminum phones that didn’t do this.
Also, their partnership with Klarna is very strange for Apple and makes them kind of seem desperate? Maybe Apple is on the decline?
I’m really excited to get the new phone but these posts are scaring me. I drop my phone ALL the time! My 12 pro max is very sturdy and even after using it for 5 years and dropping countless times, it still looks brand new! I really need to upgrade now but i’m so scared of getting this fragile phone!
That’s not from a drop off the couch my dude, total cap. My 17 pro max fell from the stairs and it had no dents or scratches. You’re just another dude trying to boycot aluminium because your beloved pro doesn’t look like some jewelry piece no more. The fact that he mentions he doesn’t really give a shit says enough.
I have no way of proving it, I can take a photo of the inside of the case where the corner scuffed showing where the impact was, it fell from the armrest of the couch directly onto that corner, on hardwood floor.
That said, I upgrade every year or every other year, I’m not worried about my phone being pristine or “beloved jewelry” like you say.
This post wasn’t even a complaint really, more so an observation and a testament to the posts I’ve seen on the 17 pro sub last year, I didn’t say “Aluminum sucks I’m returning this phone!” - I’m still using the phone in the picture.
Thank extra big vapour chamber and ppl who said my ultra premium metal gets too hot…. The titanium material only covered 10-15% of the phone the rest was made out of aluminium including the ur phone spine. Now imagine if the 16pm had 17p-18p vapour chambers now thats what u you would call ultra premium shit. Not that 16pm gets abnormally hot barely hit high temperatures over the 2 years of use.
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u/wolfram6 17d ago
It’s honestly unacceptable how soft the material for this phone is. Deformation with a case is absurd. Apple could have done better with their material choice and design.