Oct 9, 2013

[Gadgets] SwitchEasy Flip Case for HTC One

I love my HTC One. It's a phenomenal phone and definitely one of the prettier Android phones on the market today. It has proven to be a rather robust device that addresses both business needs and leisure activities, so I'm definitely not complaining.

As much as it's solid aluminum body offers a lot of protection, naturally there's a strong desire to protect your investment in this gadget, and thus the question of accessories comes up. And sadly enough, HTC phones don't get a lot of love here in the Philippines. I spent quite a bit of time looking around for a case for my phone given how the market focuses a lot more support on iOS and Samsung devices.

I've recently been contacted by Digits Trading Corporation to try and review various accessories for mobile devices and so naturally I asked about what items they had for an HTC One. And thankfully they do have products that support my phone, hence today's review. This should be the first of many (I hope) depending on how this relationship evolves.

And at the very least, I now know of a definite source of accessories for HTC One. That's a good thing indeed.

Our first product is the SwitchEasy Flip case for the HTC One. SwitchEasy creates a wide range of cases for various mobile devices including iPhones, iPads and Samsung devices. And so far they have two products available for the HTC One - the Flip case and the Nude case. The case retails for PHP 1,295.00, which puts it in the same neighborhood as most other cases. You can try to find one at stores like Digital Walker.

The Flip case is simple enough - it's a simple one-fold case that only offers protection and no other features. You don't get additional features like a kick stand or anything like that. But that's not a bad thing, depending on what you're looking for.

This is the Lime Green model - it comes in additional colors including Charcoal Black, Snow White, Tanned Yellow, and Hot Pink. The case itself is a reinforced material with a faux leather exterior all around.


Each case offers you a rather complete kit when you get down to it - you get the case, a microfibre wipe cloth and not just one but two screen protectors. Cool beans.



Getting the phone into the case is simple enough - you just need to slide it in. Getting it in is easy enough, but it's a little trickier to slide it back out again. And that does make sense - I wouldn't want the phone getting separated from the case too easily.



The phone offers full protection of the front and back sections of the phone, but chose to leave the upper and upper right surfaces partially exposed. This was an interesting approach to giving you free access to the phones various buttons, but at the same time it sacrifices potential protection as well. I'm still undecided if I like this approach more than what was done for my current case, The Core Fold. That case chose to use a jelly back with smaller openings for the button. Great protection, but at times a little frustrating to use given how thick the jelly casing is.



The front cover has two openings for the speakers, which is always a thoughtful addition. Oddly enough my The Core Fold case only has one opening when we all know that the HTC One has two external speakers. IT's one of the best features of the device, quite frankly, and it's good that the SwitchEasy Flip case considers it in the design. However the magnet embedded into the cover isn't particularly strong and has a hard time locking onto the metal side panel. It seems to lock fine without the phone inside but doesn't work as well once it's in. And that's a bit of a concern.



On the whole, the SwitchEasy Flip case offers some pretty solid protection with no other bells and whistles. I'd really like to see improvements made to the magnetic lock, although perhaps this was a flaw limited to the unit that I was provided. Thus I can only rate it as a 4 out of 5, given this concern.


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