The only time I ever see caseless phones is in the movies. Everyone I know protects their phone like it costs $1k to replace it. So I’m curious, is my circle unusual or the norm?
My phone is cheap and old as hell. I absolutely do not care of I drop it and it stops working. Actually it already did that, but unfortunately the disassembly and repair only took about an hour so it’s gonna remain usable for a while. It is also a tank. Cannot fathom people who take care of their phones. It’s so much easier to just not give a fuck.
Redmi 9T.
I would likely go case-less if it wasn’t for my dry hands, and the occasional need to have my phone sit on my leg (while I am driving) so I can go hands-free with it.
My problem is that any phone without a case (and about 99.999% of cases out there) has the phone being as slippery as an enraged hagfish. It literally leaps out of my hands with most operations, which is why I need a case – to grip it effectively.
And now with my iPhone 15 pro max, I have been in a desperate search for any case which is sticky enough. As in: with the phone in the case, place it face-up on your open palm without gripping it and tilt your palm 30-45°. If it slides off, the case is too slippery. I’ve had sticky cases before, but it seems that everyone suddenly stopped making them some time after the iPhone X.
Made the mistake of buying an iPhone 15, it’s so thin and boxy that it’s uncomfortable to hold without a case and the stupid camera array sticks out so much it does not lie flat on a surface when put down, even with a case
I refuse to use a case on principle. The idea that you need a case to protect a phone from everyday use is so ass-backwards it hurts my brain. (and was not always the situation!)
It would be so much more space, weight, and cost efficient to simply engineer in the durability provided by a case through the use of proper materials and construction. But apparently marketing thinks nobody would buy a phone that looks and feels out of the box the way a phone with a case feels. So we end up with these thin, elegant, glass and polished aluminum devices… that most of the population has to immediately hide inside a bulky plastic/rubber case to have a chance of surviving 6 months.
Imagine if a carmaker sold a premium vehicle with a polished metal and glass exterior that you had to protect under a vinyl wrap to keep it from rusting and chipping under normal use… they’d be a laughing stock!
Imagine if a carmaker sold a premium vehicle with a polished metal and glass exterior that you had to protect under a vinyl wrap to keep it from rusting and chipping under normal use… they’d be a laughing stock!
tesla cybertruck wanders into chat, spots comment, slinks quietly back out with a red face
In my experience iPhones (12 and 14 specifically, are the ones I have had) are plenty durable that you can use them without a case.
I do and only have some slight scratches in the screen. Nothing noticeable during normal usage.
Wait doesn’t the cyber truck had an issue where it was possible for it to rust? Not to mention the unreasonably large glass windshield that would be expensive to replace?
I tried to use my phone without a cover, but it’s so thin that I don’t like the feeling. So I went back to my cover only for the added thickness.
I used to use a case and protective screen, but never broke a phone from dropping or anything. So one day I just got tired of my phone feeling all huge and janky and stripped it down. Never went back.
I haven’t ever broken a phone when I’ve dropped it, so no case or cover. It goes in my pocket with keys sometimes but has no notable scratches after 2 years
When phones were made of plastic, yes
Like the Google Nexus 5X (with a vinyl on the back because they chose the shittiest rubbery coating that get sticky with permanent fingerprints)
God, I miss that phone.
I 3D printed my phone case. I had considered going without a case, but the Snap 4 Luxe, which I absolutely love, adheres better to cases than the bare phone. That could be my fault, maybe I didn’t clean the phone or adhesive properly, but if I have the phone on a magnet sometimes the Snap stays behind.
So I found a case design someone else made, brought it into Blender (because I don’t know CAD), thickened the back to the same distance as the Snap, then made a hole for the Snap and made sure to include a lip to cover over its curved bezel. I printed the first few layers in a tough 68D TPU, then switched to a 95A TPU for the rest. The tough layers and the lip keep the Snap held to the phone even when the adhesive fails, and the softer TPU makes the case easy to put on and remove.
(This is like, my seventh iteration of this case, and it sure seems flawless for the past few weeks.)
This lets me use the Snap with as little wireless charging distance as possible. I found that some cases added to the inherent 2.5mm of the Snap are just too much distance to reliably charge using weaker qi chargers. With this setup I can wirelessly charge much more reliably! And since I thickened the back of the case, the magnets on the Snap now sit flush with the rest of the back, making qi2-based external batteries more manageable.
Get the loctite glass glue and place a few dots around to help with adhesion but nott too much that it is permanent when you want to remove it.
I personally sprung for the ESR magsafe hololock ring because I wanted it to be as flush as possible on my Samsung S25 Ultra. Being slim but still help with attaching to magsafe products is nice, especially since I live in a place that gets hot, I bought a qi2 car charger that has a peltier cooling unit in it. Phone is ice cold when I slide it off the charger
Side note:
popping it perpendicular to the surface has shown me that without the loctite glass glue, the ESR magnet ring will stay on the charger. So I just make sure to slide it off horizontally.I did the perpendicular thing for a while, but two of the magnets I use with the phone (one a charger, one just a mount) are strong enough that removing the phone perpendicularly is difficult.
If I ever decide I don’t want my printed case, I’ll try the loctite solution! Thanks!
My sister has that snap 4 luxe type item from Amazon and it definitely has such a strong magnet that even attached to the case, it will stay stuck on the wireless charger haha, but I doubt the peltier cooling as effective at keeping it cool because the case is quite thick with snap 4 luxe increasing thickness too. While for my case less phone with only the slim magsafe ring, it is working really effectively at cooling the phone.
I tried those slim frameless cases that had a magsafe ring embedded, too. Unfortunately they were a complete failure. One issue is that they break on the corner that has the S-pen, and one case in particular would fail to stay attached on the phone properly. I wish they were made properly but they were epic fails.(The other case had a metal plate for the magsafe notch, fails at preventing product from twisting)
I looked at those frameless types but they are made of metal and would affect wireless performance. on top of that the design made me feel uneasy.
I use a case. And every phone I’ve owned over the last 15+ years has looked like new years after buying them.
Not only do they keep their value (if sold), but if given as a hand-me-down, they are “like new”.
Worth it, IMO.
I change it depending if i feel like it or not.
If something breaks its like at most a 90€ replacement partYep, I hate cases. Naked phone all the way 🤘
Not using one with my fairphone, it’s bulky enough already, the entire back is replaceable for cheap and the frame looks solid. I dropped it quite a lot, including on some hard surfaces, and it’s only made a few superficial marks, like it scraped the frame’s shiny coating in that spot, but that’s about it.
I do use screen protectors though. They’re cheap and are not as intrusive as cases. Just changed it after years of service actually, the thing was all fucked up with scratches and missing glass everywhere, and the actual screen under was absolutely spotless.
Exactly the same, just that I don’t use a screen protector either.
This thing has been dropped so much that I think it’s just undestroyable, the new Nokia 3310
Same, I’ve yeeted mine across the road and it’s still fine.
Work phone is not in a case because IDGAF. Personal phone, always Spigen or go home.
I’ve got a pixel 8 and it’s honestly way too thin and slippery without the case.