It feels like smartphone manufacturers are doing everything but making phones more durable

One of my biggest hobbies these days is electric unicycles. Riding one is safer than you might think, so long as you stay at e-bike speeds, but some models are so powerful that they inevitably attract speed demons. Sure enough, someone in my local EUC group was pushing the limits of his wheel the other day and ate it on a rural trail. Don’t worry — he wasn’t hurt that badly, and even the wheel just had a damaged trolley handle. But his Galaxy S24 Ultra was toast, and that’s harsh enough given that it cost $1,300 or more new.

I’m not exactly sure what Samsung could do to make a phone stunt-proof, but this anecdote did remind me that you can spend a fortune on a smartphone and have it fail the most basic of tests — survivability. Even under conventional circumstances, it seems like most smartphone makers are prioritizing everything except toughness, despite claims to the contrary. It’s a toss-up whether long-term trends will force things in a better direction.

Smartphone durability past and present

Better than it was, but still on the wrong path

In the early days of smartphones — meaning the 2000s — you had to be pretty careful, treating them much in the way you would a laptop. You couldn’t count on them having any sort of dust or water resistance, and dropping something like the Nokia N95 from chest height was a potential death sentence. Even the iPhone didn’t get an official IP rating until 2016’s iPhone 7.

The 2007 iPhone did introduce Corning Gorilla Glass, which was better for touchscreens than plastic while retaining some durability. It’s safe to say that for many years after, however, people were still reasonably afraid that smartphone screens would crack in a single drop. Thus the case and screen protector industries were born. I don’t use screen protectors myself — but to this day, I always insist on putting a new phone in a rugged case with a raised edge. I’d rather deal with extra bulk and a slightly uglier look than worry about costly screen replacements.

To the industry’s credit, durability has improved substantially in some areas. Flimsy plastic shells are a thing of the past, replaced by aluminum or titanium, or at least much thicker plastic. Gorilla Glass has evolved to the point that with high-end smartphones, it often takes a particularly hard impact to do damage — even my wife’s four-year-old iPhone 13 Pro Max recently survived a slam against hardwood.

As dust and water resistance go, it’s common for phones to carry an IP68 rating these days, meaning they’re (effectively) waterproof if you accidentally drop one in the bath or spill your drink. At the vanguard are IP69 devices like the OnePlus 13, which you can hypothetically take in the shower or spray down with a hose — but I’m not about to test those claims scientifically.

All this belies some flawed design choices, though. For one, most smartphone screens are now edge-to-edge, with barely any bezel to speak of. They’re attractive, and keep the overall size of devices in check, but render even titanium useless for preventing screen damage. Meanwhile, the backs of our phones are in a way more vulnerable than ever. They’re unlikely to dent or pop off, but they’re often covered in Gorilla Glass, despite being liable to bear the full brunt of a drop. As camera bumps continue to grow, it’s increasingly likely that lenses will get scratched or broken. A case is all but mandatory unless you have an extended accident warranty like AppleCare+.

Foldables are taking us another step backward, at least in their current state. The Galaxy Z Fold7, for instance, has an IP48 rating, meaning it can’t block solid particles under 1mm in size. You might ruin your phone by dropping it on the beach sand. Some other models have no dust rating to speak of. All foldables have soft inner screens prone to nicks, and hinges that can potentially break or wear out, however unlikely that is in normal usage.

This wouldn’t matter so much if smartphone prices weren’t climbing into the thousands of dollars on a regular basis. We’re paying a premium for looks that don’t matter, processor power we can’t use, AI features we don’t care about, and camera tech that’s simultaneously overkill and still falling short. It may be impractical to build a phone that can survive a 30mph crash, but if I’m expected to spend $1,000 or more on a device I carry everywhere I go, it’s time that phone makers spend more time on practical issues, durability being just one of them.

What are the prospects for tougher phones in the future?

Good news and bad news

Sadly, durability trends don’t seem likely to change in a major way anytime soon. Any current or rumored phone you can think of checks most or all of the hazard boxes. Indeed, there’s a risk that once Apple joins the foldable fray in 2026, backsliding could actually intensify for a while. Where Apple goes, rivals follow — if it doesn’t set a new bar for toughness, the specs of something like the Z Fold7 could be taken for granted, rather than as an acceptable gamble for the wealthiest buyers.

There is some better news here. Gorilla Glass continues to advance, so while edge-to-edge displays aren’t going away, there is a recognition that fragility still needs to be dealt with. And I’m predicting that IP69 water resistance will spread, since it doesn’t seem that challenging to implement in 2025, and it’s in the best interests of phone makers. Fewer complaints and service appointments should mean less money spent on parts, replacement units, and tech support staff — though I suppose you could argue that for other kinds of damage as well.

Will phones with built-in ruggedness ever become standard? Not until many years from now, I’d wager, when ultra-durable material becomes so cheap that it’s trivial to implement. And by then, we may have moved on to other form factors like AR glasses, rendering the question pointless. On a business level, it seems like it’s far too easy to make and sell phones based on their sexiness and spec sheets than anything else.