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I agree with the message that most of it doesn’t matter since I’ll slap a thick case on my phone, but the sheer amount of broken unprotected screens you’ll see in the wild makes you think.
Makes Me think when are phone manufacturers going to focus less on a few more pixels on the camera and make a phone rugged enough that for routine daily use it doesn’t need a damn case? I’ve never liked cases but now so many phones have Cameras that stick out such that the only way to get them to even sit flat is to level them off with a case. Just make the battery a little bigger and thicken the backing of the actual phone! Also raise the titanium bezel just 1mm and the glass is much less likely to ever make direct impact.
But if the phones don’t break every 2 years then slightly fewer people will buy the latest phone! Won’t somebody please think of the shareholders?
Frankly, if people are shelling out for higher end phones that break that easily, that’s at least partly on them.
Like, I’ve been buying mid-tier Androids for about 10 years now, and I can’t recall the last time I’ve had one shatter, and I’m clumsy as all hell. I’ve accidentally punted this thing across the office once, not a scratch. And as I’m so routinely told by the iPhone and more elitist Android spaces, this thing is supposedly a cheap plastic piece of shit.
It’s so weird they settle for something more expensive but also more breakable. Makes sense if you’re buying glass wear or something, I guess, but a device you keep in your pocket or hand all day? Shouldn’t it be nigh indestructible at that price point?
True, I’ve been using the same mid-tier Samsung for 5 years now. It looks a bit rough but it still works just fine and I’ll continue to use it until it breaks
They tried that already with the samsung s7 active. It was a pretty rugged phone by itself but people still insisted on putting a case on it. They then complained about the phone being too big and it didn’t sell well.
Those still broke too easily. I tried out a couple models of the actives, and they would still break. One time I was sitting on the ground and my phone slipped out of my hoodie pocket and it shattered. It fell maybe 3-5 inches tops.
Thanks, I never knew.
Face-palm. We can’t have nice things.
I mean, phones are already designed to be obsolete pretty quickly to keep you buying more often. Longevity isn’t really a high priority in modern phone design.
Yeah but you could still screw with the software, limit updates, use cheap chips, and shame customers to make sure we all continue to throw our phones in the landfill every couple of years, but I would buy the phone that at least I won’t worry about breaking tomorrow. Phone case culture just seems so silly to me.
i’ve had my current phone for 3 years and it’s been getting maddeningly slow lately. 2 weeks ago i took the case off and it legitimately feels sleeker and newer and somehow faster? or at least i’m better able to put up with the slowness cause it feels new? it’s very odd and i’m frightened at the psychology
The only way to explain it’s faster could be because the case was making the phone overheat. The chipset is made to protect itself by lowering the clockspeed (calculations per second) to avoid damage by heat resulting in being slower at performing tasks.
So maybe the case was isolating the phone so much it overheated constantly and after removing the case it could breath again and keep its original speed.
If you had a chunky case then maybe a sleeker design could offer enough cooling and still some protection. Best of both worlds :)
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Lol, kinda dumb to use a heavily insulating material such as glass to slap on both sides of the phone.
Inductive charging doesn’t work very well (if at all) through metal.
And plastic is apparently a dirty word (one-time use plastic should be, mind you), even though most iPhone owners are also buying I plenty of Patagonia micro plastic fleeces.
I miss the times where plastic was used in phones. Glass cracks and feels clumsy and insulates. Metal transfers energy from impact to the components inside. Plastic just cracks but at least absorbs some of the energy. And is easily replaceable and feels way better.
How many people actually use wireless charging?
It doesn’t feel like a premium material and it accumulates scratches and imperfections faster. Glass is either fine… or completely broken. Not a good heat conductor either.
I’d disagree. My pixel 3a feels really nice, when I got it I honestly wasn’t sure for a moment whether it’s plastic. It did get a few nicks and scratches, but it looks pretty alright for beeing used every day for three years without case, and me dropping it twice. Can’t say the same about the screen glass
I bet if I stopped wearing my helmet at work people would assume I’m faster too, but they probably wouldn’t be as nice to me.
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Grandpa Nokia: “Pah, when I was young, we didn’t need any coat!”
“Did I ever tell the time when your uncle 6310 got dropped on a tile floor, and the floor broke?”
If only modern phones would made out of proper shock resistant plastic, instead of bendy metal and brittle glass, we wouldn’t need extra case.
I’ve heard the glass is also quite bendy, compared to normal glass.
Plastic is usually scratchy. Glass is much better about resisting scratches. I believe you’re, right, modem phone glass is pretty flexible. It’s also (usually) coated with something that prevents finger oils from building up easily.
modem
A good old keming issue in the wild!
Still, the choice of glass is clearly cosmetic (less prone to scratch, nicer look, premium feel), buy technically plastic presents more advantages, it is lighter, absorbes shocks, fairly durable, much cheaper. To make for the most reliable device it would be better, but we know that’s not a priority for any of the manufacturers, and propably also for many customers.
Eh, I would argue that having a scratched screen goes beyond a cosmetic issue. It tangibly downgrades your experience.
Plastic scratches much easier than glass cracks.
I have nothing against glass screen, but glass back-side I find rather stupid, and pretty standard nowdays.
Gimme a plastic screen and I’ll put a glass screen protector on it.
I managed to bend an iPad trying to pull it out of a case, can confirm it’s got some flex to it
The metal is okay, it’s the glass that’s the problem.
Ah, the good old days, when only the screen was glass.
Depends on alloy, some are more brittle or prone to deformation than others
I want a nice solid core of 1/4" plate steel for my phone’s structural skeleton. Wouldn’t that be cool?
Wrap the rest of the phone in shock proof plastic and glass screen.
Thanks to apple and it’s fanbase we don’t have that luxury
Honestly, modern phones are pretty durable and screen replacements are pretty cheap.
My complaint is that the glass backs are slippery as fuck. My iPhone was constantly sliding off of tables and shit until I bit the bullet and got a case for it.
I do not agree, owned like 3 phones all of them ending up in cracks, yes I am a clumsy person but I also work in a hangar where at one point my phone screen cracked due to carrying something.
Repairable phones are where it’s at.
Gotta get that time machine
I’m loving the fairphone.
The good thing about the glass backs is it’s quite sticky on your fingers, which is nice. I’d still take plastic or something else instead, but hopefully also sticky. I’d rather not drop my phone at all, but if I do I don’t want it to crack.
I can’t put my arms down!
You’ll crack your screen, kid!
One of friends back in the day would lecture me on having a phone case. “why don’t you just not drop it?” I was like, dude, accidents happen. “I’ve never dropped my phone he’d say.” I swear, like a month after that happened, his friend stepped on his phone and a month after that he dropped his phone when taking it out of his pocket outside a burger joint.
I didn’t have a go about it. He’s not one of those that takes those types of jabs well.
Some people have to learn about best practices the hard way.
The scary thing, then, is lessons like “Look both ways before crossing the street”. You fail that sort of lesson the hard way, and you don’t get a chance to learn anything.
All people
Humans are unique in their ability to learn from the mistakes of others and their blanket refusal to do so.
Yeah. I know people who say stuff like that. I know someone who wanted a convertible car (they were 18). Someone mentioned the greater danger of they flip, and this person said “well I’m not going to flip a car”. We all gave them a hard time about whether they thought everyone who flipped a car did it on purpose. The next year, this same person flipped their car several times (and walked away OK somehow).
Some people can’t comprehend that bad stuff would happen to them.
It is unlikely that an average person flips their car. You have to weigh the pros and cons of it. We take risks all the time, but if we think it’s more beneficial we take them. Just driving a car is pretty dangerous alone. Personally, I don’t think a convertible is worth the risk or the cost, but I won’t say no one should get one.
Yeah, only the people who don’t flip their car should get one.
I have zero problems with owning one, and have owned them in the past. We knew this person was a crazy driver and that it was a bad idea.
I am 25 and I have one of those boomer cases on my phone. (a flipcase) I’ve bought it in August 2019 and it still doesn’t even have a scratch on the screen. Don’t care if I look like a boomer, that thing did cost me about 1000€ and I ain’t gonna replace it just for being careless.
Looks down at unprotected phone
Tis only a matter of time you poor bastard.
I took my phone out of the case after a while, but the stupid screen goes all the way to the edge, so I keep accidentally tapping things just by holding the phone.
I took mine out of the case recently and it’s almost unusable. The screen goes to the edge like you mentioned. It’s paper thin so my hand doesn’t fit around it nicely for my thumb to swipe around. Lastly it’s slippery as fuck.
My phone case isn’t for protection. It’s for making the phone usable.
History repeats itself: the Titanium version of the PowerBook G4 was also prone to basically falling apart, now the iPhone 15 Pro does the same thing
Yep. Thin bits of titanium are brittle. Apple should spend more time in knife communities so they can get learned.
knife communities
like London?
The main reason I dgaf about phone aesthetics. That baby’s going into a thick af case asap.
Also, unintentionally appropriate user name?
Yep, fun coincidence I guess 😄
I had a coworker who was constantly buying new phones. I didn’t know why until I realized that he didn’t use a case. He didn’t like how the phones looked with a case on them.
Man I have a $25 phone clear case and I’ve dropped my phone on concrete, hardwood floors etc… Not a scratch.
Same. I suggested that to him, but nope. Phones also seem slipperier than they used to be, so I feel like the case lets you hang onto it better, keeping you from dropping it in the first place.
Doesn’t help that they’re so much bigger now
I don’t understand why phone makers don’t design the phone with the cover in mind. Make the cover a part of the phone. Nokia had interchangeable covers and it was awesome! There were whole stores with different covers to choose from. I had 2 or 3 different ones and would swap depending on my outfit.
I know this has something to do with iPhones because they use titanium? But I don’t get it
Because how fragile the new titanium body is. Like fragile enough to be able to break the glass back with no tools (you just have to press a little hard with your thumb).
I love that the two replies contradict each other. Are the new titanium phones more fragile or more resistant to damage?
There are many kinds of damage, and being more fragile makes only one of them more likely.
(And yet, “fragile” is the wrong word there, because the problem is that it’s flexible, what’s the opposite of fragile.)
New iPhone has a titanium body to make it more resistant to damage. People gonna put it in a case anyway.
I drop my phone all the time without a case and it’s never cracked
Nice try Tim…
It’s true though lol. I even browse lemmy in the shower and it’s not completely watertight. Still fine.
Pics or it didn’t happen ;)
Me too, until that one time it did.
