Eek!

That's painful to look at.

I'm really happy that I bought a case after a week. Man they are ugly (and un-sellable) in that state! If more people have this than I'm really disappointed in Apple, they should have made something better than this.

To be fair, who ever owns that phone in the Gizmodo article musta been bouncing the thing off the wall. I have no doubt that the black iPhone 5 is pretty susceptible to scratches and scuffs but I've seen a few around and none have ever looked quite that bad. There's a huge amount of people in the comments on the article saying that this hasn't been their experience.
Raimond, do you own a black or white iPhone 5? Did you notice any scuffs or issues in the first week when you didn't have a cover? What cover are you using?

Ah, in the Netherlands there are not much iPhone 5s yet, so I couldn't compare it to something.

I have a white iPhone 5 and didn't find any issues in the first week. More interesting, I just compared mine to the iPhone 5 of my dad (both bought on launch day) which has no cover. And there were no scuffs and he hasn't noticed any issues.

Looks like the white one was a good choice after all :)

I'm the same. Bought a white and don't have it in a case and its holding up really well. Although, I do treat it very carefully. Almost all the black iPhones I have seen have very mild scuffing just at the very edges of the chamfer. To be fair, it usually requires pretty careful examination to find them.