On my first smartphone, I dropped it and it got dinged and nicked. Ever since then, with a couple of exceptions, I have had a case. The exceptions occurred because the case came out after the smartphone. I have had a smartphone with a Defender almost a decade ago drop down two flights of concrete stairs and survived unscathed. When I sell my old ones, people can't believe how pristine that they look. Given that my GS8 is my first curved display device and the first one not subsidized on a two year contract price, I wasn't taking a chance of damaging it.