After playing around with the housing for the past month or so, we've finally found a way to plate on the polycarbonate Apple used for the iPhone 3G.  This required quite a bit more material and labor than usual and is a big pain to plate them (as opposed to the old iPhones). So if Steve Jobs is listening, which I doubt, please use a platable grade of polycarbonate/ABS! We'd have much more fun with these things if the raw materials were something of quality.

Before everyone starts emailing us, this landed on my desk just this morning.  We still want to see what kind of degraded reception we get once the entire phone is together so we're not finished testing yet.  Since these housings are plastic so we can subject them to our laser engraver (beforehand) to possibly open up areas for better reception.  It also allows for custom designed housings (logos, names, patterns, etc) before you have yours plated.  Since you can cut right through the plastic, it really opens up the phone to a wide variety of customizations (including jewelry).  Stay tuned for more...