[beenBoutIT]

Unlike Apple Nokia built their devices to resist breaking and be 100% serviceable down to the smallest parts. Apple uses metal because it's significantly heavier than plastic and makes phones heavy enough to shatter glass screens and damage their internals when dropped.

Any iPhone could replace its metal housing with an equally strong polymer and become exponentially more difficult to break.

[pjc50]

The scratchproof "gorilla glass" (a Dow Corning invention) is extremely shatter resistant. Metal is of course more shatter resistant than polymer.

There was a tragic brief era when we might have had synthetic sapphire / "transparent aluminium" screens: https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/3/18528920/sec-charges-apple... (sapphire is aluminium oxide)

The 3210 era devices had easily replaceable polymer covers; they definitely did break and scratch, but these operated as disposable ablative shielding for the phone itself. Which also had a much smaller screen that was away from the corners of the device. So what people do nowadays on all of these devices is add third party cases to absorb the everyday wear .. but you can always take the case off for a "dress" phone, which like party or formalwear trades durability for looking good.

The Nokia 1040 (Windows, glass screen) was also pretty good at damage resistance. My wife stuck with hers until the Flash started wearing out round about five years in.

[CRConrad]

> Metal is of course more shatter resistant than polymer.

Yeah, but that doesn't help when the phone lands with the glass hitting something. And a heavier metal phone will have accumulated more kinetic energy during the fall than a lighter plastic one, so have a greater probability of shattering the glass.

[rappr]

They tried that a few years ago with the iPhone 5C. We saw no difference in repair rates at the time.

[giantrobot]

Ah, the strong load bearing case and impact resistant glass are just a clever rouse! Their real purpose is to...break more easily! It makes so much more sense now.

[int_19h]

Their real purpose is to look "premium". How else would you explain the use of glass on the back of the phone? It's certainly not ergonomics - there are materials that are both stronger and grippier. But it's certainly shiny.