MercuryAV leather flip down smartphone cover
I bought a smartphone recently, and it is all kinds of awesome. However, I'm on not going to go into any more detail than that, other than to say it is quite thin. There are enough phone review sites out there already.
This post is about the case that I bought for my new phone.
The MercuryAV leather flip-down smartphone cover (which I will refer to as 'the case' from now on) is black, with a stitched tan-leather interior, afixed to a black plastic hardshell backing which surrounds the edges of the phone and the back leaving the leather front to cover the screen. There is a hard flat piece of plastic stitched inside the front cover to protect the screen. It was purchased for ~$20 at Allphones in Vic.
The good
- Material. The outer (faux??) leather feels extremely durable and looks like it could take a few knifings without breaking a seam.
- Lining. The inner leather lining is extremely soft and won't scratch a plastic screen let alone the fancier gorrilla glass on the phone the case was designed for.
- Latch. The latch is magnetic but the contact plane runs along the bottom edge of the phone. This keeps the latch small and flush with the edge so is very compact. It also means there is no unbuttoning to open the cover and it can even be pulled open without touching the latch as the magnets slide past each other. The other neat thing I've noticed is that as you close the cover, the latch will rise above the edge due to the particular poling of the magnet, so there is never any chance the latch lip will close into the screen rather than around the edge as it's supposed to.
- The Look. The unit looks very slylish and it would be hard to not be able to accessorise around it. Unless you are wearing a clown suit or a white tuxedo, it won't look out of place.
The bad.
- Size. Considering this case is meant for one of the slimmest phones in the market today, I can't see the point in making this case so thick. It's at least twice the thickness of the device and it really doesn't need to be. While the outer leather looks nice, since it was going to be reinforced with plastic, it didn't need to be, it just needed to be a facia. The plastic backing where the phone clips onto is also way too thick. There is bulge on the phone, which fits into a cutout of the plastic, but they've based their minimum thickness on this, rather than the larger area of the phone back, so the entire plastic section is about 2-3mm thicker than it needs to be. Even with a thinner plastic, the leather on the back is also too thick for the purposes of protecting the phone. Another 1-2mm wasted.
- Weight. The case weighs almost as much as the phone. Same arguments as above.
- Finish. On the inside of the plastic are some rough edges and raised sections where there shouldn't be. I'm not sure if this is on purpose or not, but it looks slightly poor.
- Price. $20 seems a bit much for this. I can understand the materials cost, but the design seems to be based on a cookie cutter template rather than a custom design specifically for this phone, even it is meant to fit that phone. I've seen this case design on other phones and I'm sure they just input the alternate dimensions and extrude the plastic without a second though.
Conclusion:
A nice looking phone cover that ultimately won't get used except when taking the phone to rough environments, as it negates most of the selling hilights of the phone, and even then other cases would be more appropriate as they would be designed for harsh conditions.
Score: 6/10
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