Wednesday, September 11, 2013

iPhone 5c Case

Ken Segall:

I was enjoying the iPhone 5c web page where you can experiment with the phone/case color combos. It’s very nicely done. Suddenly I was aghast — a chunk of the word “iPhone” can be seen through one of the holes in the case. While some will say “big deal,” those who love Apple’s taste and values will feel like they got punched in the stomach. Clearly someone fell asleep at the wheel. It not only looks like a mistake — it looks ugly.

[…]

Look at the image at the top of this article and note that in Phil’s presentation of iPhone 5c yesterday, this grievous mistake had been Photoshopped away.

8 Comments RSS · Twitter

Anyway, the iPhone is the only phone that is presented to be the perfection of industrial design through videos (that are becoming more and more boring like Apple ads *).

Yet, you are to buy a case to protect it, because it's not robust.

It's like buying a necklace to place it in a vault.

* The melting video is nice. The other ones made me sleep.

@someone Agreed. I’ve never used a case with my iPhone. When I ask people who do use cases why, they say the phone is too slippery.

I use a case because I accidentally drop my phone on the ground every week or two, sometimes on rough surfaces such as concrete. Certainly the slipperiness has something to do with it, but I like not having to worry. I also appreciate the ability to put the phone down on any surface and know I'm not going to scratch it.

My own experience, YMMV: I've had an iPhone 4S since new, with two cases thus far, and used a 2G iPod touch before that, never incurring any damage to the phone with either.

My first iPhone case was a SwitchEasy Trim (http://www.switcheasy.com/product/TRIM_iPhone4) which provides exceptional grip with its ridged edges, but is composed of two glued-together pieces which disintegrated when it's removed frequently. One of my iPod touch's cases cracked apart when I dropped it out of a truck, giving its life for the device, but that's about it.

The case I use now is an Incipio NGP Matte (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003SX0P2E/) and it's my favorite of the ~6 cases I've tried. It's good-looking, grippy, trivial to take the iPhone in and out of it without damaging or substantially stretching the case (as I do a few times a week to mount it on my bike); it doesn't show fingerprints; it scratches minimally (3 small scratches in 14 months), and the matte surface doesn't become shiny with wear.

My usual advice for case buyers is "if it doesn't protect the screen, you might as well use nothing". I've seen far too many folks with shattered smartphone screens walking around to say anything else.

I have stopped using screen protectors, however; the glare isn't significant and even the best-desgined are a pain to deal with.

Argh, I wrote several paragraphs on this which either the blog (perhaps it thought the links were spam?) or my browser ate. Should get a keystroke recorder going again.

Anyway, the short version: cases are useful for screen protection if you drop your phone a lot, and in preventing damage if you put your phone down on unfriendly surfaces. The best case I've used has been the Incipio NGP Matte (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003SX0P2E/ is the 4/4S version) — not easily deformable even if you remove/insert the phone frequently, matte surface doesn't rub into a shine, scratched minimally in the ~14 months I've used it, and saved me from any iPhone damage despite a few drops a month.

"Argh, I wrote several paragraphs on this which either the blog (perhaps it thought the links were spam?) or my browser ate. Should get a keystroke recorder going again."

Most WordPress sites seem to have a (reasonable, IMHO), limit of one link per comment, prior to sending the comment into moderation. But, one should also be aware that a reasonable blog, such as this one, will deal with the moderated comment with dispatch.

(And your own personal workflow - unsaved TextEdit docs are my fav - should have some means of saving your comment until you see it published.)

@Chucky Not sure why, but in this case WordPress did send the comment to spam instead of moderation. I get about a thousand spam comments per day, and perhaps one false positive per year. So I don’t go through the spam. If you think your comment might be caught there, please send an e-mail or post another comment.

It'd really be nice if WordPress said "your comment has been held for moderation" instead of displaying nothing. I run a really old version of WordPress on my blog and I recall it does that, but I got no such thing — my comment just disappeared, which was not great. (Thanks for restoring it!)

@Nicholas So if you don’t get that, definitely let me know before I empty the spam bin.

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