Millions and millions of people get by without shattering their phone every day...myself included. Put it in a rock solid case like an Otterbox Defender or a LifeProof case, and you're pretty safe against most drops...unless you plan on dropping it onto sharp rocks that stick out, or throwing it off a 20 story building. No guarantees there.
I am really excited by this phone.
The screen looks frickin great. Apple puts so much thought into the one thing that you use the most on the phone, and it shows. Perfect colors, great contrast, and the display practically floats on the glass, looking like something right out of Star Trek.
The A6 processor is the first to market with an ARM core that is beyond Cortex A9. The benchmarks of it beating the quad core Galaxy S3 and Nexus 7 prove that with the right engineering (in both hardware and software), you don't need to throw more cores at it, just better cores. I've seen a few video reviews online and it looks like the claims of 2x were underestimated. Some of the games I play are loading in less than half the time.
I am seriously considering getting a real Android phone and comparing ...Apples to apples. Pardon the pun. I have an Atrix, it has terribly outdated software though (imagine, a 1 year old Motorola phone has 2 year old software while a 3 year old Apple phone--the 3GS--has brand new software). It's not representative of the best that Android has to offer, so I want to give it a fair shake by getting a top of the line Android. Not sure that they have their priorities straight, though.