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How Do Case Makers Reveal iPhone 17 Designs Before Apple?
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I don’t like cases. But I like even less the idea of a slippery 1000€ device slipping from my hand and crashing into pieces.
I wasn’t joking or being sarcastic. I feel like it looks much cleaner than mine, I don’t have the “Personal” profile selector, my corners are way more rounded whereas the picture has sharper corners. So I was just curious because it’s always a little fun trying out a new browser experience. Thanks for replying.
Apple does work with a few of the top case manufacturers, giving them (after they sign an NDA) the dimensions of upcoming iPhones so some new cases are available on day one. Some of the manufacturers Apple has partnered with are Otterbox, Speck, Incipio, and Belkin. Some other big case manufacturers like Spigen, Caseology, ESR, Mous, etc. are important to Apple too, but for whatever reason Apple doesn't partner with them by giving them dimensions before iPhone launch date. These companies get their dimensions from things like supply-chain CAD leaks and dummy units that someone shows them, who wasn't authorized to.
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So let me get this straight, according to the rumor, there is some sort of system of intelligence/information sharing, that gives case manufacturers a specifications of reference on upcoming products, and it’s not Magic 8 Balls, Ouija Boards and Rune Stones? Call me skeptical, but I’m not buying it.
Thanks for clearing it up.
I always buy Spigen case and screen protector for my iPhone and I am shocked Apple are not partnering with them. Thankfully I never had an issue buying Spigen case and screen protector on day one with the launch of the iPhone 13 Pro Max back then. Hopefully the same will apply this year with the 17 PM.
With Apple, who knows who they'll partner with and who they won't. At some point Apple might partner with Spigen, and drop another case manufacturer they had been partnering with.
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I hope these cases don’t fit right. That would teach them a lesson. They shouldn’t be trying to produce products before official announcement based on rumor/conjecture, they should get burned a time or two for being so sloppy and unprofessional…
First off, this is an Apple geek site, people spend a lot of words talking about a lot of pointless, stupid things, phone cases included. And, honestly, I spend more time with my phone case on my person or in my hand than just about anything else I own, so why shouldn't I be picky and care about it?
Second, I may have given an incorrect impression because of my own annoyance with the experience, but no I did NOT "make my spouse live with my busted-up beater", although we did both use it for a year. (Also, we're talking about a few hairline 3-mm scratches on the screen that were not obvious in regular use; if there was any genuinely noticeable damage I'd have repaired it, not lived with one of those cracked-screen monstrosities people who can afford a new screen seem to be okay with.)
My homemaker spouse has really low phone standards and doesn't use it much. Left to their own devices they'd be using a min-spec 5-year-old regular-iPhone and not even thinking about upgrading. I'm a tech professional who uses my phone pretty heavily in the field, in addition to a geek, so want a Pro and need extra storage. Our cell plan gets us a free upgrade every two years, so effectively we get one new phone every year and have one year-old phone.
For quite some time now, I use the new one, because I care, and they're more than satisfied with the older one, because they don't. I've offered the new phone of they really wanted it, and we could easily afford to get two new phones every year if it was important to both of us, neither of which is the case.
So, spouse gets a year-old WAY over-specc'd phone from what they need and enjoys using it like a nice camera, and I get the latest and greatest. The cost of that is, if I scratch the screen in my year with it--which inevitably there's something, if you turn it off and look at it from an angle--then we both have to do time with the damage. This caseless misadventure wasn't bad enough for me to repair, and wasn't bad enough for them to want repaired, either, but it was a lesson to not tempt fate.
On the other hand, thanks perhaps to always using a wallet case, since the iPhone 5s I have never once done more than slightly scratch the screen, and have never once damaged a phone.
If screen scratches do become an issue, installing a screen protector isn't too difficult (and Apple Stores will install theirs for you), though sometimes you have to work at it to get the bubbles out, after which it's fine.
Once an iPhone accessory manufacturer that has signed an NDA with Apple to officially receive the actual dimensions needed to make a given accessory, no doubt these figures then get leaked to some manufacturers that don't sign NDAs, and these non-NDA companies have ways of determining if these leaks are reliable. If someone who has officially received a dummy unit from Apple hands it to a non-NDA company, then that company has pretty much clinched reliable dimensions.
This theoretical is doubtful since if Apple found out, they'd probably drop that company permanently, but who knows what happens when Apple isn't looking. Harder for Apple to police would be an instance where they found out someone who works where the iPhone housings are made in China has leaked the dimensions to one of these non-NDA companies, since Apple can't drop their housing manufacturer(s) willy-nilly.
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Why is that so hard to believe? It's pretty unlikely that Magic 8 Balls, Ouija boards, and rune stones would be more reliable. I've tried them all, and the results average out to be only about 50-50, though you have to do some work so that the prompts you give them are always in the form of yes/no questions, or else they'll hallucinate.
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Brands like DBrand should sign an NDA with Apple and go through the proper means rather than riding on conjecture (because even “leaks” thought to be accurate can prove to be wrong). Several brands following these tactics have gotten it wrong, and sold consumers cases that didn’t fit properly. It’s a bad practice, because you’re selling a product to consumers with assurances it will fit a product when you don’t actually know that it will, you just think it will. It’s just very sloppy, and kind of dishonest. People ran into these problems with past iPhone models with cases that didn’t end up fitting their phone, because the case manufacturer had followed conjecture rather than simply signing an NDA so they could have been 100% sure their product would work. Why would a company choose the path that puts the consumer at risk of buying a product that doesn’t work, and tries to spoil Apple’s product announcement event, rather than just doing the right thing, signing the stupid piece of paper, and being 100% sure you’re selling your customers a good quality product that will work perfectly for them? It’s just pretty shoddy in my opinion, and lowers my opinion of such brands a bit. I like some of DBrand’s products (though I’ve never actually bought any yet), but this kind of behavior doesn’t really inspire confidence.
And as I mentioned before, this kind of behavior has resulted in consumers buying cases that turned out to not fit their iPhone several times in the past, which is just unacceptable…
Some of Apple's requirements are odd and picky for which companies it will sign NDAs with. Sometimes Apple won't enter into an NDA with a company since one or more people did and/or said something shady in the past, either directly to Apple or otherwise. In other cases, it might be because the case manufacturer just makes cases that Apple thinks show off iPhones better than another manufacturer, and so Apple might favor the company that makes cases that they like better. If a non-NDA accessory manufacturer (cases, MagSafe chargers, etc.) makes products based on leaked dimensions that turn out to be wrong since they didn't find ways to confirm the numbers, so that those products turn out not to actually fit with an iPhone, then customers who buy those products will be once bitten, twice shy, and will shop elsewhere in the future. It's kind of a built-in safety check that makes accessory manufacturers do their homework and check their numbers twice before they commit to actual hardware, at least these days after the previous foul-ups.
That said, it could still happen.
I still think the case makers may be in direct contact with both Foxconn and Pegatron. They probably got the final physical specs by June 2025 and case production started in middle August 2025 for availability by the second week of September 2025.
The screen protector thing is an interesting one to me; I know lots of people who use them, and if I was prone to significantly damaging the screen I would absolutely have one on my phone too.
But I really hate screen protector from an experience standpoint--the iPhone screen is designed to give the illusion that you're touching the pixels directly, and a screen protector basically puts a slight distance between the surface and the pixels, so no matter how good it is, it makes the phone subtly less pleasant to use. The surface feel of every one I've touched also isn't as good as the actual screen's coating.
So I've put screen protectors in my personal "the tradeoffs aren't worth it" category. I actually despise that cases don't expose the buttons directly, too--Apple buttons feel really good, and I push them many times a day, so it galls me to have to mash a rubber thing on top of them.
The old TwelveSouth wallet case used to have a cutout for the buttons, but when they took that away I stopped buying them. My current case has a nice cutout for the camera control button, so I know it can be done.