There are reports on Reddit of the cosmic orange version of the iPhone 17 Pro turning pink. As PCMag’s Eric Zeman noted, it’s likely that the phone came into contact with cleaning substances that affected the finish, turning it from vibrant orange to an equally outrageous pink. I love pink phones and the idea of a hot pink iPhone 17 Pro filled me with joy so I wanted to see if I could test the theory and see just what cleaning with the wrong products can do to your phone.
It’s important to note here that the iPhone 17 Pro I used was bought by CNET for the purposes of testing. Had I paid over $1,000 of my own money I wouldn’t be so reckless in smearing it with chemicals that could harm it. And you shouldn’t either. If you need to clean your phone, do it safely. Disclaimer aside, let’s dive in.
Smearing on the chemicals with a cloth.
With the phone well and truly doused in chemicals that have no business being anywhere near a phone, I left it to sit and think about what it had done for 30 minutes — after which time I wiped it dry and took a close inspection. Disappointingly, my phone was still factory orange, rather than “what the hell have you done to your phone” pink. Time to move on.
Bleach blast
I opened the bleach and trying hard not to think about my days as a middle school cleaner, applied a liberal blob of the stuff to a cloth and smeared it over the defenceless phone, concentrating again on the metal areas. I definitely should have worn protective gloves for all of this so please make sure you take better care of yourself than I do if you do anything with bleach.
Again, I gave it a 30-minute settling in period before cleaning it off and inspecting the results.
The phone remained as orange as ever, looking as box fresh as it was the day before when it was, indeed, box fresh. The orange color hadn’t changed and now almost 24 hours later there’s still no sign of discoloration of any kind.
