Tech21 d3o™ Leather Slim Fit Case review

By Torbjorn Kamblad, Sweden
for www.touchgen.com

Published: January 8, 2010

Tech21 d3o™ Leather Slim Fit Case review thumbnail

I love innovation, I really do and anything that complements the excellent iPhone gets my interest. Scouting the Apple Store for new and exciting products I came across the Tech21 d3o™ Leather Slim Fit Case, and felt I had to get it.

Tech21* is an English company known from the show Dragon’s Den aired in the UK on BBC 2. The CEO Jason Roberts managed to pitch the d3o™ material to the Dragons, and Theo and Peter invested £150,000 for 40% of Tech21. Interesting to see what happens with the investments in Dragon’s Den afterwards. Tech21 focus on protection and has created a line of laptop cases, and some iPhone cases. The most known iPhone case is the the iBand that is just a protective band around the edges of the iPhone filled with the d3o™ material. The first version of the iBand had some design flaws such as hard to use controls, and a new version fixed most problems. As the iBand wasn’t available in the Swedish Apple Store I have yet to find a way to get a hold of it for testing.

The d3o™ material is super cool to use my most scientific term. It is soft until hit by an object, and it stiffens instantly. It distributes the force evenly in the material, and the process turning it from soft to stiff takes the hit instead of the object you want it to protect. In videos the engineers showcase the material by wrapping it around a finger, and hitting with a hammer unharmed.

The Tech21 d3o™ Leather Slim Fit Case has the d3o™ along the sides, and bottom of the case. It is soft to the touch within the leather, but once you drop your iPhone it hardens and takes the impact protecting the phone. As a protective case it works really well as long as you drop the iPhone on one of the d3o™ surfaces. The screen is not protected in a high fall other than that by the leather edges around it.

Design flaws rid the Leather Slim Fit Case, and you have to give up quite a lot of functionality to gain the protection it offers. Just looking at the pictures of it doesn’t show clearly for example that it doesn’t have any opening for charging when in the case, or that you have to choose to have either a functioning camera or functioning sleep/wake button. The flaws totally overshadow the beautiful quality leather that is both light weight and a pleasure to fondle.

Pros:

It does look great, especially the orange version of the case.

It is really light weight.

It does protect your iPhone really well at key areas.

The d3o™ material is a perfect subject to talk about, and bouncing the iPhone on the table is somewhat fun.

You can use headphones, volume controls and the mute switch while the iPhone is in the case, and the speakers have holes making them usable while in the case.

Cons:

It isn’t slim fit at the top front of the iPhone as it sticks out 2-4 millimetres.

It blocks some of the screen at the lower half of the iPhone. Especially around the home button you can’t reach the screen.

If you strap it on too tight you won’t be able to use the sleep/wake button but you can use the camera. If strapped too loose you will get an obstructed camera but usable sleep/wake button.

You have to take the iPhone out of the case to be able to charge it. I have to charge/synchronize the iPhone at least twice a day making this more of a sleeve than a case for me.

While playing games the sleep/wake button can be pressed inadvertently while holding the iPhone in landscape mode. It is also really hard to take screen captures using the sleep/wake and home button when in the case. I have had to remove the case when reviewing games.

Only superior impact protection when dropped at the correctly protected parts of the case. Top, bottom, sides, front and back are protected. The screen has no protection other than the case around the edges, and if dropped screen down on a stone or other protruding object the screen will take a beating. It offers only limited protection to the bottom corners of the iPhone.

Tech21 is a really exciting young company that is brimming with creativity. Sadly they seem to lack any kind of actual testing using actual iPhone users. If they had given me the task to try out their Slim Fit before launch most of the kinks could have been ironed out. And yes this is something I invite all case developers to do, send me your prototypes and I will help you out…for free. I am looking for the ultimate iPhone case, and find this worth my time so email me for my address details.

The Slim Fit isn’t slim fitting, it feels more like a fat chick who doesn’t see herself as fat but just big bone, and therefore able to wear tight jeans making blubber seeking new paths to escape. This is specially evident around the top of the screen, but also the flap on the back sticks out a bit too much. There are so many strange designs choices made with the case. Sure I understand that it might be impossible to have the bottom part open for docking purposes while at the same time retaining the impact protection intended. Taking the iPhone out of the case all the time will definitely wear out the Velcro securing the top flap. The lack of screen protection is also strange as most of the damage to the iPhone is done by having it in a pocket or bag together with other objects that scrapes it. A protective screen film should have been included in the package.

I am really disappointed at the Tech21 d3o™ Leather Slim Fit Case. It is more of a gimmick than a proper long-term protective case for your iPhone. Hopefully Tech21 updates the Leather Slim Fit Case like they did with the iBand to facilitate the needs of the iPhone user. The current version though I can’t recommend for any user as the functionality trade-off is too large in comparison to protection gained.

Final Rating

2-stars

Tech21 Official Website

Leather Slim Fit Case at the UK Apple Store £24.95

*Note. The name Tech 21 is also used by an American company designing amplifiers and effects.

Review disclosure: Any games reviewed on this page may have been provided to us by the developer for the purposes of this review. Note: the resulting review score is never impeded by this fact, all opinions are that of the TouchGen reviewer and not the developer. This is in keeping with our O.A.T.S oath. Read more about O.A.T.S here

Tech21 d3o™ Leather Slim Fit Case review

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Final Rating

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