To me the fragility of the iPhone is it's biggest failure. Beautiful things belong in a museum, in the real world I don't have time to focus all my energy on babying a cell phone to make sure it doesn't get a few drops of rain on it, or shatter completely when dropped in a parking lot (if I had a $1 for every time that happened...). I've used the beefy cases as well, but in my experience they can cause significant signal interference.

After several broken "pretty phones", I decided to get a ruggedized phone from Verizon. It ain't pretty or feature-laden, but it can be immersed in fresh or salt water for half an hour without failing, can be dropped from significant (10'+) height without cracking, is impervious to dust, and most importantly, can be manhandled by a 2 year old without any ill effects. I literally wash it off with soap and water when she's done with it. If they made an iPhone/Droid/BlackBerry like that, I'd be all over it.