While some people love the idea of a metal phone casing design, others have their reservations about them and prefer to have a poly carbonate or soft touch plastic as the outer shell for their handsets. One thing is for sure though, at least one executive at LG(Chul Bae Lee) thinks that metal isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. He did state that LG would be looking into metal phone casings in the future, and that they already have plans in the works for such devices to accommodate those who like the design, but not before taking a couple shots at competing manufacturers like Apple and HTC regarding their choices for metal phones.
During his interview with a Russian Blog, Lee was asked why LG isn’t looking more into the metal design for smartphones, and Lee replied with a simple question. “If metal is such a great design, than why isn’t HTC number one in the market?” While Lee might have a point here, most people who have owned and use the HTC One have praised the phone because of it’s metal body design, and not in spite of it. If anything it made the phone more popular and something about metal just has the feel of a premium build quality. Next Lee had some words to say regarding Apple’s design of the iPhone and it’s metal rim that outlines the device. He mentions the reception issues of course, and says that “everyone knows that Apple has bad signal reception”. He also comments that metal or thin metal body designs like those used on Huawei devices would cause users of Android phones to have to charge their phones more constantly. He states this is because Android uses more energy than iOS.
After making it perfectly clear where LG stands on the use of metal phone’s, Lee gave opinions that he thinks smartphones will go back to having a more minimalistic look, which wouldn’t be limited to the physical design of the phone but would also include the UI within the software. Minimalistic doesn’t sound like such a bad thing at all. Although if a phone has the opposite of a minimalistic UI and you prefer to have one, you can simply change the design by swapping out Home Launchers, of which there are many choices. What do you think about phone body designs? Do you prefer the soft touch plastic or poly carbonate? Or do you like a premium feel coming from those designed with metal or glass body designs?