4 months durability for an $800 phone!

https://lemmy.world/post/15431732

4 months durability for an $800 phone! - Lemmy.World

My old $250 Motorola G9 Power phone lasted almost 4 years with only very minor scratches. Obviously in that period I have dropped it a few times, especially getting out of the car, where the phone sometimes work itself out of my pant pocket while I drive. But no problem, despite cheap plastic back and Panda glass front. Then I bought my $800 glass back Xiaomi 13T Pro in January, and I loved the phone for the camera and good specs. But alas after only 4 months, and single drop of just 30 cm while sitting on the porch, the glass back immediately cracked! The back now looks like an ugly mess, and the high water resistance is very likely gone too. For sure the last time I buy a phone with a glass back!!! I wonder why it’s so popular, and I curse the media for reviewing the Samsung Galaxy 2 as “feeling a bit cheap”, because the back was synthetic, and drop tests showed it was 10 times as durable as the iPhone with its glass back. Samsung did it right in the beginning, glass backs are a curse. PS: I don’t use condoms for my phones, if they need that for daily use, it’s an obvious design flaw!!!

Another thing is that now they make “vegan leather” as the new “premium feel”, which of course won’t break like glass, but it still doesn’t have nearly the durability of a decent synthetic/plastic back, which IMO feels great to hold and makes the phone lighter and despite being better it’s cheaper.

With the glass you get extra weight, and with a cover, you get extra bulk and weight on top of that.
It’s drives me nuts how insane this design decision to use glass is! Vegan Leather isn’t that much better, I had the LG G4 with leather back, and it got pretty ugly after a couple of years. But at least that could be easily changed/swapped by the user. And according to every source I can find, vegan leather has lower durability than real leather.

Vegan leather is such crap and I say that as a vegan. I DO always put my phone into a full vegan leather wallet case, but I absolutely will go through a case or 3 before I chuck the phone.
I wish they could come up with a more honest term for it than “vegan leather”. Call it “upholstery vinyl” or something. Frustrating how there’s no good standard quality grades for that stuff too. Like, the seats in my Prius don’t wear the way my belt and my boots do, and they’re all made of pleather vinyl.
It’s called vegan because it’s made from mushrooms or plants. The vegan option for my Xiaomi 13T pro is allegedly based on apple peel.