Every year over the holidays millions of smartphones are bought and activated, with this year seeing a record of more than 17 million devices in the US alone. And for way too many folks, those devices have a very short life due to damage from being dropped. Because while the devices are much tougher than in the past, they remain fragile.
When you get your awesome new iPhone or Android smartphone, the LAST thing you want is for it to end up looking like my old Droid 4. That was awful – and totally avoidable. I had lost my running belt on vacation and didn’t replace it before my Hyundai trip, nor had I gotten a case or armband or other thing that could keep it safe. And yet I went trail running on the side of a mountain at 8500 feet elevation – pretty serious stuff. And it cost me my beloved 4G/LTE smartphone.
You know what ELSE is pretty dangerous? Being a teenager. This Christmas we surprised (shocked would be a better word) our kids with iPhone 5s. We knew they would need cases, because they are teenage boys and therefore put everything through their own version of the ‘gorilla test’. Dan sent along a few cases he had, which was great ‘starter cases’ but from day one we knew we’d need more.
Within a week we had the proof – one son had simply banged his against a corner of a door while text-walking, and the other had been taking out the recycling when an item pushed against the phone in his pocket and pushed it out. Here are the results:
We started looking at cases online, and found that Amazon was having a sale on the Otterbox cases. I asked the other editors for opinions about Otterbox, and Dan volunteered to send along the LifeProof he had gushingly reviewed here. That was awesome!
When the case arrived Dan put it through the ‘1 hour water test’ which showed how impervious the case was to being submerged, and after putting it fully inside the case he was able to quickly get used to everything and totally loves the LifeProof. It makes him much more comfortable using his phone knowing that it is pretty much ‘teen proof’.
But that was just one case, and we knew we wanted one for our other son before his ski team season started. My younger son had a gift card for $25 from his godmother, so we grabbed him the Sky Blue case, which is pretty cool looking and immediately put him at ease.
It also installed easily and offered full use of all functionality. While not as rugged as the LifeProof, it works very well for him so far.
We know there is no such thing as an indestructible smartphone, but we also know that teenagers are terribly hard on devices while also using them almost non-stop. That combination makes it worth protecting the huge investment properly – because while the bare iPhone 5 is an amazing piece of hardware, if it is dropped or crashed or otherwise damaged it suddenly becomes an expensive brick.
Don’t let that happen to you – get your new smartphone a proper case and protect your investment.