Rumors are beginning to suggest that the Samsung Galaxy S21 could use Samsung's Glasstic material for its back, not glass or ceramic as the latest entries in the line have. Glasstic, a term used in Samsung's marketing, is plastic designed to look and feel like glass. The company has never given any details about how Glasstic is made, so it's not entirely clear what distinguishes it from standard plastic. We here at TechRadar have generally been disappointed with Samsung's Glasstic, mainly due to its similarities to plastic. Plastic is a material that tends to be used in budget phones, due to its lower cost of production, and it can feel strange to hold an expensive phone encased in the material. Cutting costs isn't the only benefit of plastic-backed phones, as the material is tough and can be easier to grip. In our review of the Samsung Galaxy Note 20, we said, "Is it cheeky to try to sell us a $1,000 plastic phone?" Absolutely ". In our review of the Galaxy S10 Lite, we called it “Doesn't look too fancy,” and in our review of the Galaxy S20 Fan Edition, we called Glasstic “a questionable design choice for a phone that costs at most.” So, we're not necessarily fans. from Glasstic, at least not on expensive phones like these, but to get a better idea of the general sentiment on Glasstic phones, we asked TechRadar readers for their thoughts on the hardware.
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Does it matter to you that Samsung is using glass-like plastic, what it calls "Glasstic" technology, in expensive phones? pic.twitter.com/9dKttbr1IYN November 19, 2020 Using TechRadar's social media channels (Instagram, Twitter and Facebook), we reached out to you, our readers, to ask what you think of Samsung's Glasstic; we also posted an instagram story asking if they think ``Glasstic looked plastic at all. Every response to our Instagram post, at least at the time of writing, was against Glasstic; that's what we expected all responses to be. However, things were very different on Twitter, where the responses were much more positive. One user said they don't mind Samsung using Glasstic, another said they think it's suitable for a mid-range phone or flagship killer, but not a high-end device. It was on Facebook where there was a greater division of opinions, since of all the responses we would classify only a third as emphatically negative about the plastic material. Most of the other responses were ambivalent, positive, or simply did not express any opinion. It's also worth noting that we got a lot more responses on Facebook than we did on our other posts. Now, posting a question on social media is not the same as polling thousands of people, so our results cannot be interpreted as an accurate indication of Glasstic's popularity. However, the fact that it has such a variety of opinions shows that there is a diversity of appetite when it comes to hardware on the back of phones.