This is probably antithetical to the 2-year upgrade cycle, but how about designing a phone that wears in well? Think about a Zippo lighter. It looks clean and shiny when you first get it, but picks up little dents and scratches and wears IN, not OUT. It acquires the marks and signs of daily use, and that's not a bad thing. Putting a thin coat of anodization that shows scratches doesn't accomplish this. Nor does a glass back that will shatter upon fairly modest impacts. The original iPhone had a matte aluminum finish on the back. Not super flashy maybe, but definitely hides scratches better than the iPhone 5.
What we have now is this very unrealistic view that you're going to carry around this object every day, juggling it with whatever else you're holding, pulling it out probably dozens of times a day, putting it down on different surfaces — and somehow it's going to remain as this untouchably pure product, like the photos in the Apple ads. To that end, people mummify their phones in layers of protection so that somewhere underneath, even if they never see it, they know their phone is "perfect". Does this not seem absurd?
Sure, a Zippo is an imperfect analogy because it doesn't really have new features added to it constantly, but we will eventually get to the point where it's just not environmentally or socially sustainable to throw away all our expensive gadgets every 2-3 years so we can have millions of people mining, machining and assembling new ones.
