TamsS60 - the S60 Blog

The S60 news and opinion source

May 26th, 2008

Brando Crystal Case for Nokia N82 - the review

Traditionally, cases for mobile devices were made out of either aluminium(metal case) or leather. Recently, silicone and PVC(crystal) cases became more popular and eroded the market share of full-metal cases - can Brando’s latest offering for the Nokia N82 stack up?

Like all other Brando products, our sample shipped in a envelope from Hong Kong. The case itself is packed in a blister for extra protection:

Crystal cases always consist of two parts - installing them follows an ageold convention. First, slide the back part onto the phone. After that, snap the front piece onto the back as shown in the image below:

Brando’s case completely covers the phone’s screen - there is no need for a dedicated screen protector here. The camera and the keys got cutouts - unfortunately, the cutouts for the keyboard are a bit too tight and make hitting the top keys of the keypad a bit difficult:

Cutouts at the back allow the camera to operate normally:

The various buttons and ports at the side all got cutouts - unfortunately, the cutout for the memory card slot is in the wrong place - swapping out your memory card requires you to remove the phone from the case:

An extra cutout is provided for the headphone jack and the power button:

Finally, here’s a shot of the phone in its case:

In the end, Brando’s Crystal Case for Nokia N82 is a great protection from accidental scratching. Even though typing is made unnecessarily difficult due to the case’s somewhat tight keyboard cutouts, the phone remains perfectly usable while in the case(except for an occasional memory card swap). The price of just 8$ makes this an absolute must-have case for everybody who likes Crystal Cases - a review of a leather case(costing approx 5x as much) is coming soon!

May 26th, 2008

New shots of various Sony Ericsson UIQ boxen

The rumor mill has spit out a few new bits of info relating to Sony Ericsson’s new, stylish UIQ devices via the folks at JAMPB(who seem to have an excellent translator team).

G900 unboxing pic
We handled the G700/G900 at the CeBit - another news service now managed to get their hands onto a box and present the first-ever unboxing.

BeiBei - preliminary review
The folks at Mobile-Review managed to post a preliminary review of the BeiBei(aka G702). Generally, the reviewer seems to be rather happy with the box, but is unhappy with the scroll wheel and the stylus.

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