The belt clip broke on my Otterbox Defender case for my phone so the last few weeks I’ve been living with sticking my phone in pocket, which has been a pain. I poked around to see what was available now in ruggedized iphone cases and came across this. The Lifeproof case is touted as water, dirt, snow and shock proof. The waterproof kind of means the next two “proofs” are a given. What is nice is the surprisingly slim profile of this case. It’s actually thinner than the Otterbox and about the same in other dimensions except length! I’m a little dubious on it’s shockproofness in comparision to the Otterbox Defender. The case material is fairly thin and flexy and the face of the phone is protected only by the thin plastic film and small ridge of case material around edge. The Otter is significantly more beefy with its ridgid frame with thick silicone skin. As seen in the pic, the Lifeproof case is a two piece case on the left that snaps together sandwiching the waterproofing o-ring. The headphone jack has a threaded in o-ringed plug to waterproof that connection and comes with an o-ringed adapter plug so you can connect a headphone and still retain waterproofness. The dock port has a hinged door that has a sealing pad to waterproof that connection when snapped close. But how are the mic and speakers waterproofed? The wonders of GoreTex membranes works their magic here to allow sound to pass, but not liquid water. There is a slight loss in sound quality, but I think it will be liveable, we’ll see. It’d be neat if GoPro used this technology on their open back case.
As part of the instructions on line (there are no real printed instructions) there is a recommended water test procedure. You assemble the case empty and immerse it in water for an hour. If there is no water inside, then you can proceed to use the case. I went ahead and performed the test and the results were good.
No water inside the case. In my searches online, I’d seen a fair amount of angry reviews by people who said the case failed on them and leaked so I examined things carefully. The problem with waterproofing equipment is the o-rings. You need to be careful about those and look carefully for any tiny amount crud on them & the mating surfaces. I think this is where a lot of people probably had problems. When I carefuly examined the case, I saw a bunch of hanging plastic hairs near the sealing edges and even a loose piece on the o-ring. I took an exacto and tried to clean it up as best as I could. If you had one of these bits of plastic on the o-ring, assembled it, and took the case to its advertised limit of 2 meters, I can see it leaking. Honestly, I’d be pretty leary of taking this case diving. Even with the best scuba diving camera cases, I’ve heard there is the expectation of eventual failure. And this case has no robust latching holding the sealing together, it’s marginally tighter than a Tupperware. The docking port cover looks to be a weakpoint, it’s doesn’t look very strong and will see a lot of use, we’ll see how long it lasts. But as a splash and rainproof case I would have some confidence in it.
One downside of this made in Taiwan case is it’s cost, it retails for $80, and does not include the belt clip. The clip and holder is another $30. Although in a nice touch there is a 1 1/2″ or 2″ clip size option depending on if you use it on a wide belt common to many military and duty belts. Nice because my Otterbox clip would not clip onto the riggers belt I use snowboarding. Unfortunately once you install the clip to the holder it is not designed to be removable so you can’t switch sizes. Similar to the Otterbox clip, you can swivel the orientation of the phone. Unlike the Otterbox, the retaining latch has an actual spring loaded hinge, and in another nice touch has a lockout slide to lock the latch closed.
I will have to get back to this review after I’ve had more time in use with the case. I don’t plan on using it swimming, but we’ll see how it fares in daily life and my outdoor ventures. My Otterbox has it’s fair share of dings and scratches, we’ll see how this “Lifeproof” case holds up. I’m curious on how much an effect on sound quality there will be, I might finally need to get a bluetooth headset.
0 Responses to “Lifeproof Iphone 4 Case”