Does toothpaste get the outside scratches off the cell phone?

If you are going to use toothpaste, you will strip any factory coatings that may be on your cell phone.

Many portable electronic devices have coatings on them, such as anti-scratch and anti-glare. The best way to repair them is to fill in and build up the scratches, layer-by-layer; using a repair kit that addresses coated plastics. Since coatings refract light differently (tint), results will be determined by the depth and width of the scratch and tint of the coating. Scratch Pro has a scratch filler, which fills in and protects against light abrasions/fuzzy marks. You can also do a search online using the plus symbol in front of fix and scratch and then add the item you want to fix. For example: +fix +scratch (item to be fixed). Or +LCD +scratch +repair etc.