why all phone drop tests aren't worth shit

I've had this phone with Gorilla Glass 4 on it for a little over 2 years now.  I've never had a case on it because I wanted to "see how it went" (having never had a case on any phone I've ever had).

Its been dropped multiple times (like from the first week) as happens despite care, and never had more than a kind of scrape in the glass (you may call it a scratch, but that's a bit finer). These have resulted in something hard (like granite pebbles thrown onto foot paths in Finland for grip) leaving their marks in the glass.

Its fallen onto concrete face first, edge first, corner first and the plastic has done a great job of absorbing the impact without transferring the energy straight to the glass (and it smashing).

Yesterday it tumbled out of my pocket while I was sitting cross legged on the ground and fell like 20cm to the ground. I reached over to pick it up, expecting to just dust it off, and found this fracture:

I was stunned ... totally fucked it in the most insignificant of tumbles.

Looking at that edge (where the shatters radiate out from) one sees this:

The crack radiates out from a point on the edge

so the strike would seem to be right on that rolled edge, so that would seem to be the critical danger point ...  I'm expecting that (as it was dropped onto plain ground) that there was a small stone right there on that roll.

Perfect ...

This would seem to make all the "drop tests" completely pointless because (being brutally honest) it all just depends on how it lands. The luck of the draw so to speak,

This new design is interesting because all the narcissistic personality disorder selfie generation want the new bezel-less phones which pretty much ensure that any drop that hits and edge is going to shatter that screen (and generate new income for the phone maker (or the spare parts maker).

Eg:

maximizing the exposure to this critical place.

Of course you could always put the phone into a protector case ... which makes it bigger and uglier. But the NPD among us will "imagine" their phone as it was on the corporate advertising, not as it is in their hand.

Corning has progressively enhanced their glass to be stronger and to withstand impacts, but it would seem that the fashion set has fallen for making phones even harder to protect from drops.