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Comment by rambambram | Hacker News Reader

Back when smartphones were not a thing yet, I had some new Nokia model that I kept in a little fabric 'bag' that I got with my Minidisc-player. I remember being laughed at by some friends. Years later everybody uses some kind of case for their smartphone, and I go by some personal policy to keep the bare smartphone in my pocket. I don't know why I tell this, maybe because I sometimes feel like a trendsetter.

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My memory of Nokia is phones so strong, you didn’t a case, just maybe a screen protector. I dropped my N900 from a meter height many, many times and it never cracked. It’s still such a handsome piece of hardware in my drawer that I wish I could still take it out and use it.

I also used to have a bare phone policy, but I had to change it after everybody decided to start making the damn things out of fragile glass. Yeah plastic screens are uglier but they don't crack

Whoa there pardner, my first 'smartphone' victim was a Nokia NGage - hey, it ran Symbian and I got it for not that much - which I had in my front coat pocket while working in the forest. One relatively gentle collision with a branch sticking out from a tree and the plastic screen was cracked. As was the LCD underneath it. It was then I switched to the next big thing, a Qtek S200 (better known as HTC Prophet). It was cheap 'cause it was used in some experiment by the Swedish railways which seems to have failed. The thing was new, more or less, for 1/10th of the price. It had a plastic touch screen cover which I replaced twice 'cause it started to resemble frosted glass from use.

I have been planning on paying for AppleCare and not using a case for my main phone or an incredibly thin discrete/minimal case. Modern phones look so sleek without cases.

They look sleek but feel like slippery garbage ergonomically.

Yes!

Mine slipped not once, but twice in a cab... In the span of a week...

As much as I loved how it looks and works without a case, they are a slippery nightmare

I agree for the later models, but the 4S and SE were perfect with the square corners. Also because they were smaller and usable with one hand while cycling.

Yeah even the 13 mini feels like garbage because it has both hard edges and is super slippery, despite the good size.

I think the last phone that felt good to use without a case was the Nexus 5.

Exactly! People buy a beautiful iPhone, just to put it inside a nasty rubbery case that gets yellowish after three days of use.

You need to buy cases made of better materials, in that case (heh). I've been using RhinoShield's bumpers for more than a decade now, and I've never had one discolour on me.

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