Adrian Kingsley-Hughes for ZDNet:
Don’t let anyone tell you that putting your smartphone in a case is a dumb idea. Smartphones are expensive, they are an integral part of our lives, and they are fragile and a headache to replace.
“I’m above the possibility of damaging my phone, and if I do, no big deal because I can shell out for a new screen,” consumer psychologist Kit Yarrow told Vox.
Even if you’re in a financial and social position where you can effortlessly replace a broken smartphone, the process of setting it up and reconfiguring things takes time and effort. I don’t see smartphone cases and screen protectors as something for poor people. They’re a smart – and low-cost – way to protect a valuable object.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote last week, we don’t see a naked iPhone as an indicator of greater means, we just don’t want to cover Jony Ive & Co.’s largely impeccable industrial design (not counting the notch, which is an inelegant kludge).
If you take care of your iPhone instead of throwing it around and being careless with it, you’ll never have a cracked screen. We’ve owned every single flagship iPhone from Day One and have never had a cracked display, no cases ever – because we treat them as a handheld computer packed full of technology (and glass), not like a frisbee.
Apple’s meticulously-designed iPhones aren’t meant to be hidden; naked iPhones only for us. — MacDailyNews, July 10, 2017
I have never had a case and have purchased a new iPhone every year. My old iPhones look like brand new. I pass them down to my grandkids. The fact that the iPhone surface is slippery is an advantage because it makes you more aware. I put my iPhone in my right pants pocket that contains nothing else. A case would make this difficult.
Had cases on all my iPhones for 10 years. Slim ones to take the edge off of any drops, I’m damn careful but they do happen once or twice a year.
They do not in any way make it harder to put into my front pants pocket, or getting it out again. Maybe if I wore form-hugging leather pants, sure, but even my tighter jeans are fine.
I’m not sure why the author turned the decision of whether to purchase a case into an issue about social class. Many people like myself don’t buy cases because we don’t need them, and we like the way the phone looks without them. I found that about 90% of the time I dropped my phone, it was during gym workouts. I now use a cellular Apple Watch at the gym and leave my phone at home. I never avoided cases in an effort to appear superior.
“If you take care of your iPhone instead of throwing it around and being careless with it, you’ll never have a cracked screen.”
Get real. iPhones have been slippery af since the 6.
Sadly not everyone is as rich as the editors of MDN. I’ve dropped an iPhone a zillion times, always by complete accident, and I am by no means a klutz, but the case (a Tech 21 case) has ALWAYS protected me.
I did have a case once for my iPhone 3GS, but it didn’t have a ‘lip’ around the case to protect the screen, and the phone screen smashed. It’s the only one I’ve ever broken, and in that case, a case didn’t help.
Now, it is possible to make the case for no case on a case by case basis, but I think that if you make that case, that you’re a head case.
Get a damn case, thin one if needed, as well as screen protector (plastic, not glass which usually breaks), and be protected.
Using an iPhone without a case is like getting in a car and not putting on the seatbelt. I just can’t do it – feels wrong (because it is!).
So… use a case, people. Don’t be dumb. You can never be too rich to have a case, indeed, real rich people are smart and buy cases, they don’t skimp.