Intro;

So. You’ve thrown down megabucks to secure yourself the latest technological marvel. It’s shiny, it’s sleek, it’s fast and it’s perfect. It’s also extremely fragile. It’s constructed from the latest aerospace materials which make it impervious to damage, but with our back luck, it will probably end up being damaged in some way before you’ve even taken it out of the box. (Yes, this has happened to me).

In all seriousness though, you will most likely want to protect your new device in some way. Some will go for screen protectors, others will get cases. A lot will do both. Today, we are looking at cases – and the folks at Snugg have been kind enough to give us a taster of what they have to offer. We will be looking at their ‘iPhone 4/4S Jibitz Case’, read in tomorrow to find the review of their ‘Blue Denim’ kindle offering.

Jibitz;

Luckily, the day I received this case was the day I upgraded to an iPhone 4. There are things I love about this case, and things I dislike. These may be personal to me though. So I’ll tell you what I think, and you can take what you want from this.

The Jibitz case is constructed from a very resilient but soft silicone blend. It comes in blue and blue only. It has cutouts for all of the main ports and switches. The silent mode rocker, usually an annoyance with cases, is easily accessible – even my chunky fingered friend had no difficulties flicking it! Volume selection is handled by two bumps in the silicone which are easy to find by feel when not looking at the phone. The headphone jack has a hole made for it, along with the noise cancellation mic. The silicone is quite thick, so there is a bit of distance from the hole to the headphone jack. The hole should be wide enough to fit most headphone connectors, but those with extra wide plastics on their 3.5mm may find troubles when trying to connect (although I have had none). Both the speaker and mic on the base of the phone have wide openings, and all sizes of aftermarket Apple connectors should fit into the cases wide opening fine. I tried the case in an aftermarket dock of mine, the dock connected fine while the phone was inside.

The silicone is thick. It adds some bulk to the phone. It’s not too bad though. I love that it gives me something sturdy to grip, and the corners of the phone are very well protected. This thing will withstand drops and offers very good scratch protection. One of the main selling points of the case is the supposed ability to customize and individualize the case through arrangement of silicone letters on the rear of the handset. In theory, this should be a fun feature, especially for young Teens and Kids, but there are a few caveats to this idea. Firstly, you only get one individual A-Z – so writing common words/phrases or names which use a letter more than once can be troublesome (The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog, anyone?). Luckily, having these doesn’t detract from its ability as a case. The bumps on the back add thickness, yes, but it offers another layer of protection to the rear-side of the handset if you just so happen to lay it down a tad too hard. The squares stay in place too, so you are not going to be annoyed having these bits falling out every time you use your iPhone. I did find, though, that in taking the handset in and out of the case, this would cause the white silicone surround for the camera port to fall out. There are no user replaceable camera port inserts included with the case, so it cannot be customized, only lost.

The issue;

There are only two issues with this case, sadly both are common within cases. This case suffers from the Halo’ing problem on the iPhone 4. When you take a still or video with the LED flash, it bounces off the case surrounding the lens and casts a very thick blue haze over the photo – almost opaque. Sadly this is common with silicone iPhone 4 cases, even taking the previously mentioned insert out of the case fails to solve the issue. The other issue is mainly personal to me and my choice of usage and clothing, and again is universal to most silicone cases. When the phone is removed from a pocket or tight piece of clothing, the case is exceptionally grippy and pulls my pocket and its contents out along with it. This grippy-ness is excellent when actually holding the case though, as accidentallydropping it is no longer an issue. Again, you will know if this is an issue for you or not.

In conclusion, the case is good. My friends love the design, they couldn’t work out what I was using from a distance until they came and saw that it was my iPhone. It looks different. Even if you don’t customize the rear-side, it is very individual. The colour is nice and the protection is good.

~ The Snugg Jibitz case is available direct through Amazon at a price of £19.99 or through Snugg themselves. ~