The caseless argument is that a multi-thousand dollar device shouldn't be so fragile that you MUST wrap it in plastic to be in any way functional.

A $1k phone SHOULD NOT be a frictionless glass prism. It should not skate away from you ob smooth surfaces. It should not be destroyed by falling 3 inches onto a hard surface. It should have some durability inherent to it.

But instead apple spends billions of dollars making phones even more fragile and it's everyone's problem. We now have to spin up factories processing plastic into custom cases, and throw out all the old plastic cases and the older, more functional phones.

The argument is that phones could (and should) be inherently more robust and durable all on their own. It should not be a hard requirement for you to go out and buy your own case just for the phone to survive any level of daily use.

If they made phones out of plastic instead of glass, this wouldn't be an issue. Plastic backed phones almost always have a texture and when they don't even smooth plastic offers more friction. Plastic phones don't slide away like they're on ice. They don't shatter like my Note 10 did when it slid out of my pocket two inches to the ground. They also don't usually self destruct when you repair them.

The caseless argument isn't that cases suck, it's that we MUST use cases because phones intentionally suck. A phone is not a functional object, it's artistic ego masturbation.

But didn't I just make a case (heh) that it's not only about drop fragility?

It's a cheap sacrificial shell that adds utility. My examples were non-slip and grime from a public table. Maybe add scratches and impact damage in there too because every material is susceptible to that, and avoiding them helps me resell it.

There's no way to build that into a phone. I don't want rubber non-slip bumpers on my phone or a built-in clawed up plastic shell when I can have them in a swappable shell.