Griffin Elan Form Case

Having tried unsuccessfully with an invisible shield for my 3G iPhone (it looked awful!), I decided to take the plunge and get a case. I've never put a case on any of my Apple devices, as I've always found them to be ugly and added too much bulk. However, I was getting obsessive about fingerprints on the back of my shiny new black iPhone, so decided to look into cases. In the end, I settled on the Griffin Elan Form case and I have to say I am very, very impressed with it. It fits snugly without adding much bulk to the phone, feels good in the hand and has great access to all the ports. It also has a polycarbonate front so you get some protection for the screen. You can even slide the bottom off to put the phone into a dock if you decide to get one. The only downside for some will be that it is leather over polycarbonate, so won't be suitable for vegetarians / vegans but beyond that I'd recommend it highly

I've included a few pictures of the case:

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 16GB: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5A347 Safari/525.20)

picked it up at the local Carphone warehouse: at £19.98 it's not the cheapest case but definitely worth the money

OK, to answer a few of the questions:
The inside is smooth, polished plastic: I've slid it on and off a few times (mainly to get rid of fingerprints from when I installed it!) and there's no apparent damage to the phone: No scratches at all on the chrome or the back plastic

The screen is covered by an acrylic piece that sits on top of the phone and then goes into the case with the phone. It seems very high quality and doesn't detract from the feel of the screen at all

It fits very, very snugly and whilst it's too early to tell if it will allow any foreign material into it, I don't think it will: All the port openings sit very flush with the body of the phone.

It doesn't really add any bulk and keeps the curved back of the phone so feels incredibly comfortable and not at all like an aftermarket case (the sides aren't as squared off as they appear in the photos: they're actually very slightly curved). The camera area does have a plastic ring round it and only the chrome bezel round the lens is visible, not any of the phone's back (it is very accurately machined too: No gaps or covering of the bezel)

Finally, the case is covered with leather which gives it decent grip without being at all "sticky" like some silicon cases can be: slides in and out of my pocket perfectly and doesn't bring any "pocket lint" out with it

I think that's covered most of the questions

meagain said:

Phil - Very nice. Thanks so much for giving more details. One more perhaps dumb question.... Do you think a 3g with an Invisible shield on the BACK would squeeze into one of these babies?

Click to expand...

It may well do, but it is a very snug fit. May fit better if you cut the corners off the IS before putting it on