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Comment by matz1 | Hacker News Reader

What are you saying? If they make thicker phone then case is not needed?

Yeah I don't get his logic at all. I would have purchased a case either way. At least with a thinner phone, the case isn't as unwieldy.

Thinking on this, I don’t remember cases for the original Blackberry or Palm devices. I never cased a flip phone. Or one of my candy bar phones.

Apple gets really excited to say “thinnest iPhone ever” — but then we (or at least I) slap an Otterbox on it because I want the thing to last.

At the end of the day, it’s just for marketing purposes. No one wants to buy a Jitterbug phone. People want to buy sleek and sexy. And then they surround it in rubber bumpers.

It’s really pretty stupid all the way around. I don’t think Apple would sell as many phones if they shipped with a built-in bumper. Even to people like me who require that their pocket computers be protected...

I did managed to crack the screens on both my Palm IIIx and a Nokia N73, so despite their bulky plastic cases, they weren't impervious (since the smartphone era I've also cracked only two screens - iPhone 5S and 11 Pro Max, only the former was caseless)

That perhaps if we weren't focused on thinness above all, perhaps they could be made robust enough to survive without needing a case.

Wouldn’t that be equivalent to a case you can’t remove?

The honest answer to that is - I don't know. I don't know what the big manufacturers are capable of.

That is effectively what "ruggedised" phones look like, I'll agree.

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