Exotic or uncommon materials seem to be all the rage in smartphones right now. Motorola started offering wood backs, then later leather, for its Moto X 2013 and 2014 handsets, respectively. But this wasn't even the first time a phone was offered with some integrated exotic or unorthodox materials. When Apple released the iPhone 4 with a glass rear cover, people flipped - wouldn't it break (yes, it would!), or get scratches (not that much) on it?

But people went for it, and there were more glass-backed phones. And then, there were things like Kevlar, football (?), leather, plastic that looks like leather, and so on and so forth. And then, earlier today, the G4 leaked. It, too, will be offered with a variety of leather (and plastic, thankfully) backings, and all of said leather backings, to my eye, are tremendously ugly.

Still, because the cover itself is removable, LG could just offer these as accessories - there's no need as an end user to commit to a particular back style, because the front on all the devices looks the same.

So, let's have a discussion: do you actually care what your phone is made out of? Why do you care? Are the considerations practical, aesthetic, social, or are there other concerns you take into account? While having extra choices certainly doesn't hurt anybody, consumers have generally not seemed to indicate a huge interest in, say, a leather-wrapped phone. And yet, here we are. So, what are your thoughts on this construction conundrum?