Some iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus Matte Black Users Complain of Chipped Paint

Many Apple iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus users are heading to the Apple Support forum to complain that the paint on their smartphones is chipping off just months after buying it. Users grumble that their Black (aka Matte Black) variant is chipping off paint on the edges and back, even though they have been shielded with a protective case.

The Black variant was reintroduced by Apple with the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, and by the looks of these early complaints, it isn't staying put on the iPhone 7 frame. Most of the complaints are from iPhone 7 Plus users, and the colour seems to chip off from the edges and the back. Just to disambiguate, there are two Black colour variants for the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus - Black and Jet Black, which is why the former is called Matte Black to help differentiate it from the latter.

One user claimed that he has been using his phone for just a month alongside a protective case and tempered glass, but that hasn't stopped his phone from shedding colour. "I have been using iPhone 7 Plus Matte Black for about one month with fully covered by a TPU casing and full screen tempered glass most of the time. I just open the casing once a week to wipe the dust off from the phone... [but it] seems that the black anodised paint had been chipped off from the phone body, a user wrote on the forum.

Another user infers that his iPhone 7 Plus is just three weeks old, and it has already started chipping colour from the edges where the speaker resides. While the problem seems to be only among a few users as of now, the complaints are growing in number by the day.

Apple has not yet responded to these complaints, and it would be interesting to see how Apple solves this matter if more and more users report of it. To recall, Apple iPhone 5 was plagued with a similar issue, and at that time VP Phil Schiller had said that aluminium products are prone to scratches and chips and that 'it is normal', and had cancelled out the issue there and then.