The Case For Cases

Gizmodo recently posted a plea for people to stop ruining their phones with a stupid case - and while I respect that opinion (and love their blog, as the source for almost half of my own posts!), I feel compelled to make the case for phone cases.  Reasonable people may disagree, but I think both sides deserve to be represented!  So, to address some of their points:

1. "It's unnatural. Your phone wasn't designed to be covered up." True enough, but your phone also wasn't designed to be invincible. It was design to look sexy, and to be as thin as possible. People are willing to blame themselves when they drop and shatter their phones - but the design shares some of the blame for enabling it.  A case makes up for an artificially de-prioritized design goal.

2. "It's not worth it."  They're talking about resale value, scratches, stuff like that - but I'm more concerned with the case protecting the phone against a catastrophic drop that kills the phone entirely.  In that case, $30 to protect a $600 total-replacement cost isn't a bad deal!

3. Consider the point of view.  Like I said, I love Gizmodo - but they're all tech writers.  Their whole lives involve getting and playing with all the newest electronics, so the value they place on any one device is probably much lower than those of us with one phone. They know they'll get the next one as soon as it comes out - and the early-upgrade cost is a business expense. We should all be so lucky - and live caseless and carefree.

As for me?  My iPhone 4S is in a case at the moment; it'll probably go naked once it's one year old, like my 3G did.  So people can come to their own conclusions - but in any case (ha), be sure to see both sides!