anecdotally there are two kinds of people, the people who break their phone twice a year and the people who break one maybe every 10 years. It'd be really interesting to see a probability distribution function of failure rates.
Yup. I got my first smartphone in 2010. In those 12 years, I've only cracked a single one, and there were extenuating circumstances.
It was my Droid Turbo, which was known for having a shatter-proof screen. One of the things that helped achieve its durability was that the bezel actually had a lip around the screen, so if it got dropped, then the screen glass never took the impact.
That changed once the battery had reached nearly 4 years of age and had started to swell, pushing the screen outside the bezel. Dropped it onto concrete and it got one crack across it.
I replaced it with a Pixel 3, and then later a Pixel 6 Pro. I put cases on them, but they're thin TPU, and I use them mostly for being able to have a better grip, since the trend for phones now is a slick glass back which offers zero grip in your hand.
I might just opt for a pop-socket on my next phone. To be honest, I rolled my eyes at them at first, but I realized it was just cynicism for hating popular things. They're actually quite nice for using your phone one-handed, and almost a must-have considering how big phones have gotten.
That's really not a fair comparison. There are plenty of people who are elderly or dealing with disc injuries where they are prone to losing their grip or slipping a phone when moving about, picking it out of their pocket, etc.
While you may be in good health, it's important to remember not everyone is the same and some people are dealing with a variety of issues.
Parent comment seems more focused on the probability/distribution than in the reasons why.
The anecdote seems true from my experience as well; people tend to either break their phones often or very rarely/not at all. Of course it could be that you are far more likely to take notice of someone breaking their phone if it happens often.
I got my first smartphone in 2011. I got my first iPhone in 2016. I bought an iPhone XR in the fall of 2019, and got a glass screen protector with it, mainly because by then Apple had those nice jigs that let the staff put it on in about three minutes perfectly. In January 2021, my phone fell about a foot from my pocket, landed screen-down on the driveway. A chip in the glass screen protector eventually (about three months) turned into a crack. I went to Apple and had another screen protector turned on.
That's the only time I've come close to damaging a smartphone or tablet screen.
Anecdote - my wife went through 3 iPhone screens in the course of 18 months due to dropped phones (6, 8, 8) but then she got a plus-sized iPhone and an otter box case and hasn't broken one in years.
yup I think the "uses a case vs doesn't use a case" is a strong factor here. I've always used otterbox cases and never broken a phone - I've actually broken one of the otterbox cases, but never the phone itself.
And the one ipad I've broken, I broke one time when I took it out of a case for a bit and ended up taking a few weeks to put it back in...
Yes, this. I have two kids and am always juggling different things. I have dry hands that are crusted from manual labor. They don't have the same kind of grip that they used to have. Between those two factors, I drop my phone at least once a week.
The glass back of my phone was smashed by a grocery store turnstile without ever leaving my pocket. Assigning user error all the time is a mistake - sometimes the product is just fragile.
