Internal Mono(b)log

If you’re like me, it’s rare that I go anywhere without my phone.  Well… ok, I frequently run without the phone if I’m not expecting an important call and I’m going to be in a populated area where a pay phone or taxi/transit would be easy to come by, but other than that I live a pretty tethered life.  I like the convenience of having my phone at hand with it’s plethora of apps and the ability to connect with people if needed for whatever reason.  When I’m out for a long ride, I’ll frequently use my iPhone as a mp3 player, etc.

Of course, constantly having a piece of somewhat fragile electronics on your person adds greatly to the possibility that said electronics will get dropped, banged, dripped on or otherwise abused.  This is where the huge assortment of iPhone cases and protectors come into play.

Until today, I had never held my iPhone 4s outside of it’s Otterbox protective skin.  When I bought the phone, I had the store put it in the case and didn’t actually put my hands on the phone until it’d been screen protected and enrobed in the rubberized shield.  Today, that changed.  Today I *gasp* removed my iPhone 4s from the Otterbox housing to test the Ballistic LS iPhone case.

The Ballistic case is pretty cool. It’s a hard rubber case in one of 6 colours with interchangeable coloured rubber bumpers on the 4 corners that allow you to personalize your phone but still have good protection in a thin and lightweight design.  The 4 corners are also slightly more cushioned than the rest of the case to give extra protection should the phone land on a corner (which would definitely cause more damage to an unprotected phone). 

Inserting my iPhone into the Ballistic case 2 things were immediately apparent: the Ballistic case is generally a bit thinner than the otter case, which provides a better hand feel and, the Ballistic case doesn’t offer quite the same level of protection as the Otterbox.

You can see from the picture above (old Otterbox case on left, new Ballistic LS case on right) that the Otterbox case is roughly as thick as the Otterbox case on the corners, but tapers to a thinner profile in the middle.  This thinner profile is surprisingly noticeable, it gives the phone a better hand feel, generally feels better in the pocket and, perhaps most importantly, gives better access to the edge of the screen when you’re dragging applications from screen to screen and need to be able to swipe right to the edge of the screen (this is something that frustrated me with the Otterbox case on a regular basis).

You can also see that unlike the Otterbox case, the Ballistic case does not offer any protection to the docking port on the bottom of the phone, nor is there any covering the headphone jack on the top.  Having previously used phone protectors with a similar lack of headphone and dock lint protection, I can say (at least for me) that these extra flaps of rubber are at best a false sense of security at the cost of extra weight.  Given the amount of grime that was inside the Ottercase after 6 months of use, it’s fair to say that the little rubber flaps may serve to stop/slow a drop of water from entering the device, but otherwise they have no purpose.  All that said, it’s be nice of the Ballistic case gave you the option by including a coloured rubber (removable) dock cover flap and/or headphone jack cover.

I, unfortunately, don’t have a budget for drop tests, but I feel, by examining the two cases, that the Ballistic LS case would provide better drop survivability to my phone than the Otterbox case.  Again I don’t have any test data on this, but the Otterbox case just seems to be good general protection where the Ballistic case, while offering that general protection, also seems to be built to offer better drop protection.

Having spent a day with the Ballistic LS case I can say that I prefer it over the Otterbox case.  Yes the Otter case may offer slightly better overall protection, but the Ballistic case feels better, provides better access to the phone and is lighter.  Too bad Otterbox case, you’ve been replaced.