Environmentally are they all equal too? Or is it easier to recycle glass and aluminum?
It depends on the type of plastic. Some take as little as 10% of the energy to recycle than aluminum, some take more.
This is my pet peeve regarding Apple at the moment. Why don't they just make the best smartphone they can make and not hold back features. The same applies to the mac side of their business. Give the customer what they want, which at this moment in time would be a new iphone with the usual iconic Apple design with the internals of the Galaxy S3.
I could not agree more, if Apple were to pull out all the stops, I truly think they are capable of a Super Smartphone... one so outstanding, I would seriously think about carrying just the iPhone alone. Apple has the talent and expertise, I sure wish they would use it all in one iPhone.
That said, some might argue there'd be nothing left for the following year, to which I say bleh.... I have been an Apple customer too long, know many of their top people, and know what Apple is capable of. The following year would really surprise people.
Besides the bottom line is if Apple built a SuperPhone... the sales would be explosive. They'd make so much money, it would make current sales of iPhones seem modest. A fact I'm ever so sure of. A perfect example of competing fairly by releasing a product that could not be equaled
Instead of suing Google, Apple could blow them out of the water with a Super iPhone... I KNOW it.
I don't think I've bashed plastic in this thread so that's probably another poster. But to give my two cents. I have mixed feelings of use plastic. On one hand plastic can be very durable as numerous Nokia phones have proven, and you can build high quality device out of cheap feeling material - Samsung is a good example of this. They use some of cheapest feeling material for their flagship phones but they do a very good job in fit and finish whereas HTC tends to use nice feeling products but fall short in fit and finish in comparison.
Regardless I personally want my device to feel really nice in hand and look pretty too. Otherwise I'll just buy a waterproof phone everytime no matter how ugly it is. But then again plastic is usually much more practical than other material for a phone. I guess this is where liquid metal was supposed to fill the gap?
I do understand your points, but it's a matter of personal preference. Again, I'm NOT advocating for Samsung, but every top of the line model (the only phones I buy from any manufacturer) I've had has been quite good. Fit and finish excellent, and hand feel quite suitable. I do like the textured plastic of my HTC One X better, but there is no perfect phone.