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Is Your Apple Bumper a Little bit loose? (Boiling alternative)

BergerFan

BergerFan

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Mar 6, 2008
2,170
63
Mos Eisley
I just got my free Apple Bumper yesterday and I noticed that it's a little loose(about 1mm of play).
To fix it, I put a thin strip of electrical tape on the insides of each corner of the Bumper, to pad it out by a millimetre or so. The result is that the Bumper is really snug now and it feels like it's*a part of the phone.
So much better. :)
 
My white bumper was pretty loose as well. Luckily I still had the side pieces from my unused Wrapsol Ultra set...so I decided to apply that and so far it seems to have done the trick; my bumper now fits nicely with no movement whatsoever.
 
Oh, and I was doin' it wrong when I boiled mine and put it on almost immediately after boiling. The headset jack is now... well... jacked up (pardon the pun) and stretched out. It also misaligned the noise cancellation speaker hole, so I think that part is now useless, haha.

I wonder if I can take it to the apple store for a replacement... :rolleyes:

But the moral of the story is; Let your bumper cool down.
 
Wirelessly posted (iPhone 4 (32GB, JB): Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8A306 Safari/6531.22.7)

owmygulay said:
BergerFan said:
LOL. :D
Click to expand...


I said the same thing the first time I heard someone say to boil it. Works great. Starts to loosen up a little after a while but then you just do it again.
Click to expand...

Yup. Boiling is the ticket. Too bad it doesn't help the iPhone itself.
 
Repeated boiling, over 4 strips of electical tape in a once-only solution? Hmm. Each to their own I guess. :D
 
With the electrical tape, it will still loosen over time. You'll just need to add additional strips of electrical tape. It's just the nature of the material is that it will stretch a bit over time. Boiling causes the molecules to contract and therefore make the bumper fit a little tighter. It's not destructive and leaves no slimey residue(unlike electrical tape).

Just be careful boiling and make sure you don't do it too much, I shrank mine too much so it didn't fit right.
 
ddeadserious said:
With the electrical tape, it will still loosen over time. You'll just need to add additional strips of electrical tape. It's just the nature of the material is that it will stretch a bit over time. Boiling causes the molecules to contract and therefore make the bumper fit a little tighter. It's not destructive and leaves no slimey residue(unlike electrical tape)...
Click to expand...
Aha. You're forgetting that the tape merely fills in the 1mm 'play' gap - it doesn't stretch the case at all(as long as you only use one or two layers of tape, per strip) so nothing is getting stretched, meaning that it is a one-time solution.
 
I did the boil thing a couple weeks ago. As with many others I thought is was a prank- but my bumper was loose enough that it was driving me crazy - as each time I'd pick it up I could feel the tiny gap collapse.

I'm clearly picky- but to each his own....

Anyway, I figured what the heck - and did the boil things (2x@ 30-60 sec each, dropping ed it into a dish of cold water after each time - not idea if this was needed but figured what the heck). There is no doubt that it shrinks the bumper slightly. It fits tight now- you can actually see where the earphone hole is slightly elongated as a result of the smaller radius. I'm very content now.
 
BergerFan said:
Aha. You're forgetting that the tape merely fills in the 1mm 'play' gap - it doesn't stretch the case at all(as long as you only use one or two layers of tape, per strip) so nothing is getting stretched, meaning that it is a one-time solution.
Click to expand...

Negative.

If you're literally never removing the bumper, then your theory is correct.

I take my bumper off about once a day, so after a week or two, it's stretched enough to be bothersome. The bumper being on the iPhone doesn't stretch it. It's removing and reapplying it often that stretches is. It will stretch with electrical tape inside it, or after boiling, either way.
 
ddeadserious said:
Negative.

If you're literally never removing the bumper, then your theory is correct.

I take my bumper off about once a day, so after a week or two, it's stretched enough to be bothersome. The bumper being on the iPhone doesn't stretch it. It's removing and reapplying it often that stretches is. It will stretch with electrical tape inside it, or after boiling, either way.
Click to expand...
That's what I mean. It's not really meant to be taken off every day, I'd guess.
 

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Just wait for iPhone 5 (or 4G)! This iPhone 4 affair has already passed the stage of being ridiculous.
 
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