A few days ago, I tweeted the above photo of my iPhone X’s saddle brown leather case and asked friends how well their own cases had held up over time. I was surprised by the response.
The iPhone X has been on the market for about four months now, and the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus will enter their sixth month of sales later in March. I picked up my iPhone X on launch day back in November and have been using it with Apple’s leather case ever since.
Since Apple uses natural rather than synthetic leather, the color and finish of their iPhone case is known to significantly change over time. While some people enjoy the patina of aged leather, others like myself prefer a cleaner look. A fear of my case looking worn and dirty has driven me to buy only dark leather cases from Apple in the past, but for the iPhone X I decided to risk it and choose saddle brown.
Much to my surprise, my case still looks almost as good as it did on the day I pulled it out of the box. On Twitter, followers replied to my tweet with photos of their own leather cases looking significantly more worn after a similar or less amount of time. My colleague Zac even shared this photo of his old iPhone 6 Plus leather case showing the effects of several years of wear and tear:
