iPhone protection

I have been an iPhone user for about two years now. For the first 18 months of usage, I had my iPhone in one of those little plastic protective cases. Then, rather abruptly, I decided it wasn’t worth it. The cases add bulkiness to the phone (mine: ~11.5mm vs. 9.3mm). Sure, 2mm doesn’t seem like a lot, but the difference feels significant. I figured, I haven’t really dropped the phone yet and the phone and the less bulky the better.

Then there were some accidents.

Accident the first:

We have a set of gymnastics rings in the garage (obviously). I came home from work one day, jumped up, grabbed the rings, and inverted myself. My pockets were 8-9 feet in the air when my phone slipped out and tumbled to the ground. Fortunately we have mats under the rings. Unfortunately the phone managed to completely miss the mats and land directly on the concrete floor. The phone landed flat on its back.

Accident the second:

I was using the flashlight feature of my phone to watch water as it poured down a semi-clogged drain as I tried to unclog the drain with an old toothbrush. With both my face and the phone virtually in the sink, I mistakenly put my phone under the running water. You’d think I would notice this right away right? wrong. It was in the faucet’s stream for a good 3-4 seconds before I realized what was going on.

Here’s the thing: my phone is fine. It survived the fall and it survived semi-immersion in a flowing stream of water. Now, I know there are all sorts of stories of people dropping phones and having the screens crack and shatter like a spiderweb… and likewise a ton of stories of phones that went dead after experiencing even the smallest amount of moisture. But I wonder if more depends on the circumstances surrounding the incidents than on what sort of protective cover you use. Am I gambling with fate? Perhaps. Still, I’d like to see data on how protective those cases really are.