Or make a device where the glass front doesn't go all the way out to the edge. Just a few millimeters of plastic, so you don't touch glass first, would absorb t

Or make a device where the glass front doesn't go all the way out to the edge. Just a few millimeters of plastic, so you don't touch glass first, would absorb the worst of energy already. The sheer weight of the iphone4 is probably a big factor also. I really don't know what apple engineers were thinking. Hmm let's make a phone harder and more solid than a wrench....because the most common way that phones are destroyed are by the users accidentally crushing them with their bare hands while they are holding them! I've dropped my htc, with fixed battery, several times into the ground from pocket height and the screen is unharmed, it's not something i would do comfortably like you could with an old school phone but it still feels more reliable than an iphone because it's lightweight and its landing-gear isn't made of glass. Iphone3 didn't have these issues either to the same extent, for these reasons.