I personally use a case, but not a screen protector. Everyone will have their own preference. I'm still iffy about the case, because my past 2 phones have remained in nearly perfect shape after 2 years of use each, but the edge-to-edge glass on this one made me nervous, so I picked up the diztronic, which is a nice case. Who knows, I might ditch the case & go naked again sometime. I'm not personally concerned about micro-scratches that I'd have to look for to find, since protecting against them essentially means either putting up with a crap screen protector that ruins the feel (IMO), or shelling out quite a bit of money for a nice screen protector that likely won't last the life of the phone. On my previous 2 phones (both with gorilla glass - OG Droid & Droid Razr), I only had a couple small noticeable (without looking intensely) scratches on the Razr, and that was from my phone falling out of my pocket and wedging into a recliner's mechanism & going on several rides. Even those I barely noticed.