Griffin Clarifi iPhone Scratch Warning
I love my Griffin Clarifi, I’ve got about 8 iPhone cases and it’s by far my favorite one but I’ve recently acquired an inCase Power Slider so I removed my Clarifi for the first time in several months to put my iPhone into the Power Slider and I was disappointed to see that the Clarifi and given my iPhone a nice set of scratches.
You can see to the left of the lens in this picture (click for a bigger size) that the macro lens on the Clarifi sliding back and forth has put a nice set of scratches on my iPhone. I’m sure that the Clarifi on a clean phone is fine and doesn’t lead to scratches but after a bit of time in and out of your pocket/purse your phone picks up some dust. Since there is nothing between the sliding lens and the phone dust builds up in there and the sliding action plus the dust creates an ideal environment for scratches. I’d like to see a future iteration of the Clarifi put a plastic shield between the sliding lens and the phone body to prevent the lens from sliding on the phone body.
Below is a picture of the inside of the case where you can see the sliding lens back exposed to the phone body. As you move the lens back and forth that slides on or very near your iPhone body and small dust or dirt particles between it and your phone will create the scratches. As I said above a thin layer of plastic and push the lens out slightly further from the phone would solve this.
At any rate I still love my Clarifi and have and will continue to recommend it to many people with this one caveat.
UPDATE:
I got a response from Griffin via twitter which was a bit disappointing. My other 8 cases haven’t scratched my phone after using them for a few months. Anyway, I just wanted to include it here for reference sake.



my griffin case collects dirt which grinds away at my iphone
i would not recommend it
tim