Beyond vanity I would love to understand the dynamics of how plastic became synonymous with inferior case material? I have read review after review over the years and it is taken as an obvious statement of fact that any phone with a plastic back is cheap, inferior, not drool worthy. That one might be embarrassed to use such phone in public because it shows you cannot afford a flagship phone. That higher end phones must be metal or glass or any material other than plastic. All the while ignoring that glass is so fragile that one has to immediately put their brand new phone into a case or that metal interferes with radio signal propagation requiring extra engineering for the antennas. The way many owners speak of their phones, it as if they stroke them like their pet cat or put them on a pedestal for display.
If plastic was a modern material invented in this century instead of the last, I expect it would be getting a lot more appreciation and use. People would revel in its light weight, flexibility, shock absorption, radio signal transparency, ease of coloring, ease of modeling into different shapes, ease of adding texture to create different feels, etc. All of which are advantages for a mobile device in the real world. Providing a more premium build IMO, but obviously I am a in a very tiny minority.
If plastic was a modern material invented in this century instead of the last, I expect it would be getting a lot more appreciation and use. People would revel in its light weight, flexibility, shock absorption, radio signal transparency, ease of coloring, ease of modeling into different shapes, ease of adding texture to create different feels, etc. All of which are advantages for a mobile device in the real world. Providing a more premium build IMO, but obviously I am a in a very tiny minority.