I have a 27-month-old Samsung Galaxy Note 8, my overall favourite mobile phone. It is the most expensive mobile I’ve ever bought, though perhaps correspondingly also the longest lasting. I still use it. The battery life is its only significant weak point.
On top of the initial expense of the phone, I have been through four cases, at least six protective screen stickers and I have more wrist straps than I will ever use. Now that I am braced for its end-of-life phase and having had to remove the last of my screen protectors due to excessive peeling and sand stuck inside the edges, I am contemplating enjoying it without a case. So I decided to research “going naked”.
In summary, the consensus is not to use a Note without a case. Quite a few people commented that if you spend that much money on a phone, you can justify spending quite a lot on a case in order to protect it. I would think that if you spend that much on a phone, it should come with a good quality case and protection so it actually resembles the phone you see, admire and purchase. But what do I know, it would seem.
Some people seem to have cases for occasions, accessories as it were, while keeping the phone naked at home where there is, in theory, less chance of dropping it with expensive or unsightly consequences. This would not work for me. I feel a need to thoroughly clean my phone when it comes out of or goes into a case. Changing cases regularly would increase the likelihood of my tipping over a fine line I’m already perilously close to breaching and becoming obsessive about cleaning it. I also don’t love my phone quite enough to increase my daily chores.
Another consensus seems to be that the phone is slippery and much easier to drop when it’s naked and the grease trails have built up. That kind of revolts me. No, not “kind of”; it revolts me. I say this in the midst of coronavirus cleaning paranoia, but I thought that long before.
I have had three smashed mobile screens, the first two being the same iPhone. Living with it is annoying. Dealing with it is expensive. The second smash came within a week of finally purchasing a new screen. That was very annoying. I disliked my iPhone though, I think it knew; it seemed to throw itself on the ground at every opportunity, twice finding a way to smash despite having an overpriced case, though, hmmm, no screen protector.
I have only had one smartphone that didn’t need a cover, a Samsung Pop, which I bought in South Korea and wasn’t entirely compatible with UK networks (the 4G or the extraordinary whippy aerial you could pull out). I really liked not needing a phone case or protective screen though.
Similarly, what is the point of having a screen with an attractive glass, ie grease-attracting, back (the front I can appreciate a bit more for the swipey smootheness), which I am fairly certain is purely for aesthetic reasons, only to hide it with a case? My case-less Pop had a removable plastic back and came with two batteries and an external charging dock. It may not have looked and felt, or quite frankly been, as fancy as my Note but, holding it to star in the photo below, I felt awash with nostalgia for simpler smartphones (ignoring the fact of update alerts in Korean that I couldn’t understand).
I concluded that, as someone who pretty much can’t transport a mobile that does not have a loop for attaching a wristband, my basic Ringke case (the slightly pinky browny one below) can protect the back and corners but I will have the front naked until it either drops and smashes, is scratched as much as the cover currently encasing my phone or the battery dies. I decided that. I felt good about that decision. I even started picking at the case to prize it open.
Then I read someone’s comment about how they used a case to increase the resale value of the phone. As I was planning to take advantage of what would amount to a discount on a new phone by reselling/recycling my current phone when it does need to retire, I’m now back to square one, which is the enormous all-encompassing, surely-there-will-be-no-damage-if-it’s-dropped case. This case is (A) so bulky it needs its own handbag (B) looks very bulky and uncool (C) neither of my headphone jacks are long and thin enough to reach through the case as far as is necessary for me to be able to use them or (D) now that I’ve cut my nails, though only slightly better prior to that, I can’t retrieve the stylus through the case without sharp, pokey assistance which is not always immediately available.
In the meantime, through informal and very limited quizzing of friends about their cases and screen protectors, one friend, only one, revealed his naked phone to me, gasp, with not a scratch in sight. And that was his second unscratched iPhone, albeit protected from bag and pocket scratches by a book-type case. It also turns out, quite a few friends (well, two) are using smartphones that are over four years old, making my case dilemma over a two-and-a-quarter-year-old phone seem a bit frivolous.
I can see that this post falls well and truly within the category of first world problems. But in a world where so much is going wrong (writing this in the uncertain and challenging world of coronavirus and Brexit), it’s mildly refreshing to be distracted by and fretting about mobile phone cases, something that, for me with my collection of cases and straps, requires no financial outlay.
What have I decided? The box case is still sealing my entire phone. On my next attempt to force a headphone jack through the thick case, which I know full well won’t work, I suspect the naked screen with minimal back-and-corners case will be trialled and, once the new regime is in force, I will probably scratch it and will thus be less precious about it and I’ll just use the Note 8 with a scratched screen until either it or the screen fails me. Despite wanting another Note for the stylus, the good camera and the dual SIM (which I do use a lot with overseas SIM cards), my fondling of the small, light Pop has reminded me that a cheaper, less accessory-laden phone with a headphone jack rather than requiring Bluetooth headphones could actually be the way forward. However, with coronavirus currently massively impacting my self-employed earnings, if a new phone is required imminently, perhaps I should re-visit my Pop and hope that 3g and below is better than I remember it being; not the way I expected this post to go.