Damaged and deformed smart phones: poor metallurgy
Modern smartphones use surprisingly bad alloys with insufficent strength and stifness. See for yourself.
Some very recent smartphone casings try to use 7000-series grade aluminum alloys. Many are currently made of the grade 6013 aluminum alloy, whereas some use a derivative of the 6063 grade, which is mechanically a bit inferior by comparison. The highest grade alloy used at the moment is the 7075 alloy.
Phone makers write that "These alloys have a tensile strength equivalent to steel but is light and durable at the same time" which is of course profoundly wrong. Even simple corrosion resitant tool or maraging steel properties are superior to Al alloy based phone bodies by a factor of 3-5 in every respect except mass density. Try to bend a tool steel ;-) Also, much stiffer 7xxx series Al alloys and frame cross ectional concepts with better second areal momentum could be used. We learn that phone makers have very poor understanding of metallurgy.