Review: a couple of my favourite Apple iPhone 7 Plus/8 Plus cases

-
Reviewing the Apple iPhone 8 Plus for a week or so hasn't been without its trepidations. Not least that the phone is both very expensive and very droppable. Cases and iPhones seem to go together like strawberries and cream!

Happily, I found two terrific solutions. Both claim to be for the iPhone 7 Plus, but they fit the 8 Plus perfectly too.

Olixar Brown Leather-style Wallet (£8 - on offer!)

If you're going to have a case for your iPhone, why not go all out and make it fully protective and fully functional? This 'leather style' case feels far better than it has any right to at £8 and is amazing value.



The iPhone sits in a tight fitting neoprene lined sheath and then the faux-leather wraps around as shown above and below. There's the inevitable in crease in cased thickness:



...but the big gains are protection from the front (i.e. to the screen) and when watching media. This latter is very interesting, given the iPhone 8 Plus's enhanced speaker set-up - they're very loud and with great bass. Perfect for using the case's integral hinge to proper up the phone for some Netflix or YouTube enjoyment?


The extra depth of the cased phone may put some people off - but you're either someone who loves folio cases or hates them with a passion. 


For me, they're justified if they look and feel good and if they add something extra in terms of functions. And the stand mode is top notch here.

Overall, a big thumbs up at the price - you really can't go wrong.

Spigen Rugged Armour (£18)

My other favourite case style is the in-situ, TPU-all-round, but not just any old plastic - the cheap TPU cases offer little protection and threaten to fall off any minute. So I swear by the Spigen Rugged Amour cases and have been using the one for the ZTE Axon 7 for many months very happily.



The Spigen case here is immensely grippy and with genuinely high quality tough moulded TPU. It's tight enough that the iPhone never feels remotely like coming out yet just stretchy enough to get the phone in and out quickly when needed. It's a tough balance to get right, yet Spigen keeps managing it.


In situ, the iPhone 8 Plus feels thicker but also super-secure and you'll be using the phone in far more situations with complete confidence. I think you could drop the iPhone in this case a dozen times from waist height onto concrete and you'd probably be fine. (Don't DO this, by the way!)

The fit and finish is perfect, with only one side aperture, for the iPhone's mute switch, and this is well designed and accessible:


Being designed for the 7 Plus, this case does have the one very minor cosmetic issue in that the Apple logo isn't centred properly in the back cutout:



But, as they say, if this is the worst I can say about the case then it must be just about perfect in other ways. And it is.

Both cases come highly recommended by me.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wavelet - and better sounding speakers (and headphones) on Android...

-
Image
You may well be fairly happy with the audio output (speakers and headphones) on your existing Android phone. Or, like me, you may welcome an extra step up. Perhaps more bass/punch, clearer treble, or perhaps just a volume boost overall. Now, there have been various 'boost' utilities for Android in the past and they've been a bit patchy in how well they work. But Wavelet, discovered by Ted Salmon back in 2021, is a whole different kettle of fish, in that it works supremely well, with extra bass, clarity, and volume,   BUT has a very confusing interface. Which is why a brief tutorial is in order. The steps come from Ted in bullet point form, but expanded by me here and with screenshots, which will hopefully help. By the way, ignore the 'headphone specific' text in the app's title - it works perfectly well for speakers too. In fact, by definition, I'd say that it's really ONLY for speakers, since with headphones you've usually got plenty of natural i...
Read more

Bluetooth keyboard incorrect PIN or password - SOLVED

-
Image
Just in case this helps anyone else, I had a nightmare today with my Bluetooth keyboard and my Android phone - but I used some common sense and found a geeky solution. In my case it was a ZTE Axon 7 running Lineage OS and a Microsoft Universal Folding Keyboard (UFK), but I suspect this cure will work for more general issues. The symptom was that when I tried to connect a previously paired keyboard I first of all got just the raw Bluetooth address shown and not the keyboard name. And then, when I tried connecting, I got an "incorrect PIN or password" error message. No chance to reenter a PIN and no amount of restarting keyboard or phone would fix it. The cure seemed to be to reset something in the phone's Bluetooth system, but what? The keyboard wasn't showing up as paired, so I couldn't 'forget' it. I tracked it down in the end. Settings, Apps, then 'Show system' on the '...' menu. Find and tap on 'Bluetooth extensions'....
Read more

Why the Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max is better than the 15 Pro Max

-
Image
Forgive the click bait(y) title, but there's actual evidence here, I promise. Note that I did write an article before availability, putting forward worries and concerns , but I've now had hands-on to confirm a few things and report back.  Cased (of course, read the blooming' article!) Pro Maxes - 15 and 14 (with XtremeSkin, Aged Oak , in case you're wondering!) In fact, it's the first time ever in the iPhone line-up/evolution that I seriously think the old 'Pro Max' model can be argued to be  better than the new one. (Admittedly, that I already own the old one [14 Pro Max] and didn't really want to spend over £1000 on the 15 Pro Max possibly helps my argument from a personal perspective.) (There's one big win for the new model, of course. Type C connectivity has been a long time coming - but this will take several generations to become established in iPhone/Lightning households and maybe I'll come back to this in a future article.) My observat...
Read more