I am about to start as a firefighter, and was originally going for the Griffin Survivor... But what other options are there? I need something that can take a beating, but I don't like the Case Mate Tank. ;-) Any suggestions? Also - anyone knows a place to buy Griffin Woogie 2 in Europe?
If I was a firefighter I would go with the likes of the Griffin Survivor or even LifeProof. From watching some videos it looks like the LifeProof can take a beating as well as offer protection from water, dust etc.
Griffin Survivor is a beast of a case. Lifeproof has problems with the screen protector and you can only put it on 50 times throughout the life of the case
LifeProof is the way to go. Screen protector issues are not happening to everyone. Mine had no issues. I did drop my phone and it took a big gouge of out the case, but held up very well.
normal cases are for regular joes dropping phones and whatnot, but given your line of work, i'd suggest AppleCare
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3) I returned the Tank case. Very sturdy and I thought it was better than the Otterbox Defender. However, you couldn't comfortably use the keyboard. The last row was totally unusable. It lasted for 5 hours on my phone before I put it back in the box. I'll give kudos to CaseMate's customer service. They were quick and not jerks about the return.
In my opinion you can't put the Defender in the same category as the likes of the Tank. It's an in between of the likes of the Speck Candyshell and the likes of the Tank.
Agreed. Say what you want about the Tank in terms of it's looks (and I will likely agree), or in terms of how it affects keyboard usability, but, in terms of PURE ability to protect your investment, there isn't a better option out there. The Defender just isn't in the same league.
The Griffin Survivor is a great option too. If I was a firefighter like the OP I would go with no less than the Tank or Survivor, possible LifeProof.