Apple’s new, anodized aluminum iPhone 17 Pro phones have drawn attention for reportedly being easy to scratch around the camera “plateau,” and iFixit has investigated the issue in microscopic detail in its teardown video for the phones.

Here are some pictures showing just what those scratches look like under a digital microscope:

iFixit talked to David Niebuhr, an engineer and professor of mechanical engineering, who has an explanation for why scratches around the iPhone 17 Pro’s camera plateau stick out so much with spalling damage that didn’t appear in tests of other areas. According to Niebuhr, the problem is the sharp edge of the camera bump where the anodization process isn’t as even, as he says, “Apple could have prevented this by making a more gradual curve and avoiding a relative

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