Unlike Apple Nokia built their devices to resist breaking and be 100% serviceable down to the smallest parts.
Apple uses metal because it's significantly heavier than plastic and makes phones heavy enough to shatter glass screens and damage their internals when dropped.
Any iPhone could replace its metal housing with an equally strong polymer and become exponentially more difficult to break.
The 3210 era devices had easily replaceable polymer covers; they definitely did break and scratch, but these operated as disposable ablative shielding for the phone itself. Which also had a much smaller screen that was away from the corners of the device. So what people do nowadays on all of these devices is add third party cases to absorb the everyday wear .. but you can always take the case off for a "dress" phone, which like party or formalwear trades durability for looking good.
The Nokia 1040 (Windows, glass screen) was also pretty good at damage resistance. My wife stuck with hers until the Flash started wearing out round about five years in.
> Metal is of course more shatter resistant than polymer.
Yeah, but that doesn't help when the phone lands with the glass hitting something. And a heavier metal phone will have accumulated more kinetic energy during the fall than a lighter plastic one, so have a greater probability of shattering the glass.
Ah, the strong load bearing case and impact resistant glass are just a clever rouse! Their real purpose is to...break more easily! It makes so much more sense now.
Their real purpose is to look "premium". How else would you explain the use of glass on the back of the phone? It's certainly not ergonomics - there are materials that are both stronger and grippier. But it's certainly shiny.
iPhones are built with super tight tolerances. Using the same (or similar enough) materials on opposing sides means not having to deal with different thermal expansion properties. Glass is also radio transparent which makes the NFC radio and wireless charging much easier. It likely doesn't hurt with cellular and WiFi reception either. It's also not going to interfere with the MagSafe magnets.
Somehow Android phones manage to do NFC and wireless charging just fine without glass back panels. And tighter tolerances are exactly that - "premium look".
Tight tolerances are premium construction. Loose fitting parts are cheap and easy. They also lead to increased wear and decreased durability. Dismiss everything as "looks" if you want.
