There's one other consideration: with a flip phone, the screen can be protected by a hard surface where scratches don't affect usage.
If they have an Apple-class thumbprint / face scanner with basically unnoticeable delay, the slight delay for flipping it open might be a reasonable tradeoff for the huge durability improvements for active people and there could be some nice mitigation techniques such as their small display for anyone who doesn't want to flip it open to see if they have a message.
If they have an Apple-class thumbprint / face scanner with basically unnoticeable delay, the slight delay for flipping it open might be a reasonable tradeoff for the huge durability improvements for active people and there could be some nice mitigation techniques such as their small display for anyone who doesn't want to flip it open to see if they have a message.