Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

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>These days you see the exact opposite behavior. Everyone has just become so precious about their goods. "It's really expensive so I need to protect it / use it sparingly / use great caution". Look at the entire ecosystem of protective cases for iPhones/Apple Watches/etc. On upscale cars you have the obsession with paint protection films, ceramic coatings, etc.

what the wha??? i see people give their toddlers their mobile devices who then gleefully whack it on whatever surface is convenient. i see people just toss their devices around. case or no case. so many people don't even think of it as an expensive device since it's just a part of their monthly fees. seemingly, only the people that buy the phone outright are familiar with the actual costs. with insurance plans and cheap replacements, people care less about the fragility of the thing and just think of it as a kitchen utensil. so i guess the circles you and i run in are quite drastically different in this regard.

I think you said it yourself - case or no case. Look at all the people who use cases on their phones, theres an entire ecosystem for it that never existed for startacs. I think its evolved over time but it seems like the majority of people have some sort of case on their phones.

Same for portable game systems like the Gameboy brick we all used naked vs all the cases on the switch, etc.

I only have a case so that the iPhone cameras don't stick out and I can lay it flat on the table without wobble.

I know other people who have it because they want better grip or they just want to customize the looks of their phone. Protection is not always the #1 reason.

Also apple seemingly keeps making the factory case worse. I use to never use anything on my phone with the old iphones that had the all metal cases. Would drop it all the time and never had an issue.

Now i drop my phone once and the back is shattered. Honestly getting pretty sick of the direction apple has gone with the iphone. I just want the iphone 7 with better battery life and some hardware upgrades.

Many manufacturers are headed that way. Why are we building things that are held, dropped, put into pockets, tossed, etc out of glass again? Even on the surfaces that don't need to be.

I agree with the disadvantages of glass, but there's also a huge design advantage in terms of radio reception, right?

They probably looked at the numbers and realized 98% of people put cases on their phones anyway so the disadvantages of glass weren't too bad.

No facts to back this up so would be interesting to hear from someone at apple but i feel they just do it because it’s pretty

I seem to recall Apple owns part of the company that manufactures the glass. It would be kind of dumb to not use it everywhere and anywhere at that point.

Yeah, I find the surface texture of my 2nd gen SE to be hard to hold without a case. Also the camera thing you mentioned.

On the other hand, I routinely keep phones 5 years, and putting the case omit greatly increases the odds of it making it that long.

On the third(?) hand, cases themselves are kind of a crapshoot for durability. I cracked the corners of an Otterbox case, glued them, cracked them again, and finally switched to an aluminum Ghostek case that's holding up ok.

Also became a fashion statement

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