The number of people I've seen wandering around with cracked phone screens from drops is quite high, and is the reason I put a case which covers the front on every phone I buy.
So having no phone case here just means you get the usual after market screen protectors and risk of cracked glass that most other phones suffer from.
It doesn't cover the front, it just extends a few mm in front of the screen to prevent "flat front" impact. It's still susceptible to smashing the screen on a corner, but how often does someone really drop their phone screen-first on the corner of a stair?
How do you know that?
The universe doesn't necessarily obey my intuition, of course, but since it differs quite dramatically from yours I thought I'd mention that there's an alternative model of the problem which supports the actions Essential Products is taking.
Toughening the corners doesn't seem to help that.
There's a reason why cracks almost always seem to start at the edges. In the most severe cases of direct impact of the face on a sharp/hard protrusion, you get a radial crack pattern, but by my estimation those are a tiny minority.
Any drop which damages the glass of a phone is a problem. A phone with a cracked screen is at the very least damaged and potentially entirely unusuable.
My point was that they're addressing something which isn't the weak point in the system. Aluminium might scuff, but that's generally just a cosmetic issue. If a phone manufacturer wants a phone which doesn't require a case, they need to address the glass problem.
There are good rugged phones that don't need a case. Caterpillar (yes, the bulldozer maker) has a phone brand.[1] Kyocera and Samsung make rugged phones, as do some smaller players. Also, the web site for this new phone doesn't mention MIL-STD-810G testing, which is the usual standard for rugged portable devices. (For that, it's OK if the case gets scuffed, but the thing has to work after the drop testing. The parent article seems more concerned with the appearance than the functionality.)
Is there a reason Android phones don't shatter as easily? Is it the elasticity of the plastic frame that causes this?
My data is entirely anecdotal, but they seem about the same to me.
Fwiw, this is called "the spider app" among the younger.
Breaking your screen is called "installing" (the spider app)
Apart from major damage I care much less about damage to the shell than I care about damage to the glass
But their drop test conveniently misses that
Drop it face down and we'll talk