Frankly, this is to be expected. Are Kotaku's corporate taskmasters not converting the site from a news/investigative portal to a generic stop for game guides?
Also quality overall has decreased a lot. Some months ago I started seeing news gathered from random reddit posts as in the worst journalism ever. That’s sad, apart from the site you linked, only a couple more (Aftermath comes to mind) seems to remain as good ones for gaming news.
AND they like to yellow at the speed of light. My brother got a nice, transparent cover for his phone “it’s going to look awful in a few months” and sure enough a few months later he had a different one precisely because of that.
I don't think yellowing is inherently an issue with translucent plastics, perhaps only certain types. At this moment I can look around my room and there are at least a dozen translucent plastic items, some of which are at least 10 - 20 years old, and none have any discernible yellowing to them.
I've given up concerning myself with what others think and went with a coral (pink) phone this go-around. While this probably won't pertain to your bro, it nicely sidesteps the issue.
My suspicion is that it is potentially a result of thinner shells. You look at something like Game Boy Color or Nintendo 64, and those things have quite thick shells with plenty of empty space inside, mitigating any potential structural loss due to transparency additives (ABS is not naturally transparent). Newer devices have thinner shells to reduce weight and maximize space for components, potentially leading to problems like this when using translucent plastic.
I wonder if it’s only because it’s more noticeable from being translucent. When it breaks light refraction changes and the difference is night and day.
It's a problem with all plastics. Holes are stress concentrations. With the plastic flowing around it, two plastic "fronts" meet in the middle and need to meld into one piece. That spot is usually around 70 -80% strength in there. Add in the stress riser I mentioned earlier, and cracking happens. Same thing on sharp angles.
Unsurprisingly, some of the posts about this have been removed by the subreddit moderators. That post also originally had a message from the automod that it was removed because it was in violation of rule 7 for posting "intentional misinformation" due to the "developing a very common issue" in the title, but they have since decided to remove that comment as well - didn't restore the post though.
I don't check the Deck subreddit very often since I left over the API charges, but the last time I did the subreddit was up in arms over moderation issues. Main complaint at the time looked to be that the mods weren't removing posts that were unrelated to the deck, so it's weird to now hear that they're removing stuff that is deck related.
Just checked my limited edition oled model and on the back left center screw there is a small about 2mm crack in the fashion of the photos, no signs anywhere else.