Years after buying my first iPod in 2023, I started carrying it around without a case and marvelled how slim it sat in my pocket and how beautiful its industrial design was. (I still have this gen3 iPod in my desk drawer, but it stopped powering on many years ago.) I realised at that time that there was no point in keeping this perfect object hidden away for its entire lifetime to be only used as a functional object.

Nonetheless, in the decades since (!!) I have generally used cases on my iPhone. I was very fond of the bi-fold wallet style case through the XS era, but phased it out because of the annoying way that a completely unfolded phone case obscured the cameras. (I still wonder — especially with the Pro Max sizes — why no-one makes a half height bifold wallet case which keeps the cameras clear at all times.)

Towards the end of my iPhone XS lifetime I once more started carrying it caseless, and it wasn’t too long before one of the children dropped it on tiles and smashed the back. This ruined the prospects of a battery replacement and by 2023 it was time for an upgrade.

With the iPhone 15 Pro Max, I’ve been very happy with the Apple MagSafe wallet. Except for the occasions that I leave it at home because it’s not permanently attached to my phone! By the end of the year our trains will take phone payments so no need for a separate metrocard, and I’ll be down to a single work ID card. My plan then is just to stick it to the back of the case somehow so it’s super slim.

But the iPhones are so expensive now — and justifiably so as they do last a long time — that I couldn’t live with the risk of a caseless $2000 slippery glass object in my grasp. I do occasionally drop my phone, after all. So I’ve been using an attractive Bellroy case for the last two years.

Recently the iPhone air was released and I picked up a model in store. I mean, physically. I didn’t buy one. It’s a very impressive phone, and it made the phone in my pocket seem awfully chunky with its case on. I think that experience flipped a switch in my head, as I’m now convinced that this phone — titanium edges and glossy white back — deserves to be appreciated for the industrial design work of art that it is.

So two years in, I’m now caseless. Will I drop my phone and desperately regret this decision? I hope not.