What do I think of it? In the spirit of full disclosure, you should know that I hate all cases for any phone. I’ve been slipping my phone naked into my front right pants pocket since I started using phones, so no case is going to impress me. So please, don’t consider this an unbiased review. It’s not a review at all, really. Just a reaction.
When I first put the bumper on, I hated the way it felt. It changed the entire way the phone rested in my hand, and not in a good way. The rubberized sides do give you a lot more grip, however. Though I’m not prone to having my iPhone slip out of my hand too often, if I were, the bumper would help that significantly.
The bumper is obviously well made and form fitted exactly to the phone. The metal replacement buttons for power and volume are a nice touch. This thing doesn’t feel cheaply made at all on the phone. And it doesn’t change the look of the iPhone in a particularly negative way. So that’s a huge plus compared to most other cases.
In the spirit of fairness, I decided to leave the bumper on for a few days, just to see if my attitude toward it improved. A few hours later, it had, as I began to get used to the way the bumper’s edges rose from the screen. The better grip grew on me as well.
The experiment ended abruptly this morning, however, as I began my morning walk to the train station and realized that the bulky plug on my custom earphones wouldn’t fit in the cutout in the bumper’s top. Immediate deal breaker for me. If you use earphones with a plug wider than Apple’s white earbuds, this case is definitely not for you.
I also find the ringer/silent switch a little hard to access while the bumper is installed. And, of course, you can’t use the Apple iPhone dock while it’s in the bumper, either. But that’s a problem for almost all cases of this type.
So I never expected to keep using my bumper, anyway. But if I were interested in adding minimal protection to the phone without interfering too much with the overall aesthetic, this would be a good choice. And if I had the “death grip” issue and needed a nonintrusive way to overcome it, I’d most likely use the bumper over most other options currently available.
