In a world fraught with danger, it’s all too easy for our phones to meet their demise at the hands of the laws of physics and often our own carelessness. If we drop them, there’s a possibility they will break. But, we can limit the damage thanks to products such as Corning® Gorilla® Glass, found on the Nokia Lumia 920.

Additionally, if you followed much of the coverage from CES this year, you’d have noticed a company – Tech21 – promoting their wares and something named D3O. This material is what’s called a non-Newtonian material. For the most part, it’s a material that is fluid in its relaxed state. But, when a force is applied to it, it becomes solid.

Here’s a demonstration of a non-Newtonian fluid. This isn’t D3O, however. D3O is a lot less messy.

Tech21 have created an Impact Snap for the Nokia Lumia 920 that has been partially created using D3O. What this means is, that if you drop your Nokia Lumia 920, at impact, the phone case will toughen up and take the stress of the fall. Hopefully, resulting in an undamaged phone.

And when it comes to the Nokia Lumia 820, Nokia makes their own protective, interchangeable shells. This again stops a lot of the damage when your phone slips out of your hand and takes a tumble.

Last year, we also bought news of how Nokia is working on a Superhydrophobic solution to help protect phones against liquids.

All this is interesting and necessary if we’re to keep our phones alive for longer. But what are the best ways to protect your phone, what are the real-life dangers and have you ever damaged your phone beyond repair? We’ve got three – informal – polls to find out. Take part… now.

What do you use to protect your phone?

What are you protecting against the most?

Irreparably damaged your phone?

Thanks for taking the time to cast your votes, we’ll go over the results in about a week from now.

Image credit: Jim_K-Town