Since I already posted a negative report about Samsung going with the cheaper plastic case I think it's fair I post this and truthfully it made me think a bit differently about this issue.
Another thing we have to think about is that there currently (to my knowledge) is NO premium smartphone with a metal case that has a removable battery or SD card slot. In other words nobody has successfully made a removable back metal case design. At this point if you want a metal body, you have to give up having a removable battery and an SD card slot. The moment I put on a protective case I think that's a bad trade off.
"Of course, Samsung could go for aluminium as frame but don?t forget Samsung shipped over hundreds million devices in 2012. Samsung couldn?t do this if the production isn?t easy to do. Samsung creates many devices with different shapes whereas a company as Apple has a couple of devices to do. Croyle, HTC?s design guru, said it takes roughly 200 minutes to cut and process the front and rear parts of each phone. This is the reason HTC One is facing delays even though the demand isn?t that high. This is purely the reason why Samsung doesn?t use Aluminium as it takes a lot of time to manufacture and with the high-demand that Samsung devices have, it can be a trouble to fulfil the orders. Our insider confirmed that Samsung did try all-aluminium design for the Galaxy S 4 but the production was a big issue."
Another thing we have to think about is that there currently (to my knowledge) is NO premium smartphone with a metal case that has a removable battery or SD card slot. In other words nobody has successfully made a removable back metal case design. At this point if you want a metal body, you have to give up having a removable battery and an SD card slot. The moment I put on a protective case I think that's a bad trade off.