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You told us: Here’s how your Pixel 5 is looking after accidental drops
August 03, 2025
TheGoogle Pixel 5bucked the trend of glass-backed phones earlier this year, featuring a “bio-resin” (plastic) material atop metal for the rear cover. It’s a rather interesting approach to smartphone design, with Google also cutting a hole in the metal layer to enable wireless charging.
Our own Eric Zeman felt confident enough to use the Pixel 5 without a case, but he recently noticed that a fall on gravel resulted in the phone having tiny gouges in the plastic material. But how has the phone’s plastic back fared in your experience? That’swhat he askedlast week. Here’s how you voted.
How has your Pixel 5’s plastic skin fared in drops?
Over 4,300 votes were tallied in our poll as of writing, giving us a great sample size to work with. And almost 47% of respondents say their Pixel 5’s plastic back is looking just fine after drops.
Meanwhile, just over 41% of polled readers say they use a case on their smartphone. So there shouldn’t be damage to the plastic-clad rear cover in the event of an accidental drop.
More Google coverage:Everything you need to know about Google hardware
Finally, 11.6% of respondents say their Pixel 5’s plastic back is slightly chipped or damaged after dropping the phone. We’re not quite sure if that’s a big number compared to other devices, but many people would probably prefer a slightly chipped plastic back cover to a glass back with a spiderweb crack.
It’s also interesting to note that several users have reported damaged screens as a result of drops rather than rear cover damage. If anything, this suggests that the plastic back is more resilient in these situations.
That’s it for our latest poll results article, thanks for voting and for leaving a comment! What do you make of these results?
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