Lifeproof iPhone Case Review

Evenin' Folks,

  Well, I'm finally all moved in to my new apartment and I'm a week into the new semester at school, so I wanted to take the time to get another post up here.  It's been too long!  Unfortunately, I've been so busy lately that I really haven't been getting a whole lot of fishing done.  I did go fishing shortly after my last full blog (Skunked.....again!), and actually did quite well.  I went fishing for a few hours this past Sunday morning, as well, and did ok, but had some tackle issues (see A few quick fish pics).  For tonight's post, I thought I'd try something a little different.  I'm going to attempt to do a product review, fingers crossed!

   I try to have a lot of pictures on my blog, but all I've got to take the pictures with is my iPhone.  After my soggy canoe trip with my anonymous friend, I've been pretty nervous about having my phone around water.  I've already had to replace a broken screen on it, I sure don't want it to drown!  So, once I got the kayak, I started keeping my phone in zip top sandwich bags.  They work well at keeping the phone dry and they are very inexpensive (and I'm cheap!), but my pictures didn't turn out too well when I tried to shoot through the bag.  So that meant removing the phone from the bag and exposing it to wet hands and slippery fish and a very large lake every time I wanted to photograph a catch.  Not to mention the poor fish dangling from the line while I was futzing with the phone!  I started looking around and doing a bit of research on waterproof cell phone cases.  I liked my plastic faux-woodgrain case, but it had already proven to do nothing for protection.  It seemed the waterproof phone cases rain the gamut from what was basically a fancy, overpriced zip top bag for around $30 all they way up to $200 high end camera box looking cases.  I knew that I'd have to spend more than the cost of a sandwich bag, but I didn't really want to get into grocery-money-for-the-month territory.  While at work one day, I was listening to Rob Snowhite's Flyfishing Consultant podcast from IFTD 2013 and he mentioned the Lifeproof brand cases and how much he liked his.  I looked them up, read some reviews, and started hunting for a bargain (I do hate paying full retail for anything!).  I know ebay can be a crap shoot when it comes to a real item versus a knockoff, but I took a chance and got a genuine Lifeproof case for about half of the MSRP. 

I got the case in the mail and immediately popped my phone into it.   The plastic seems of good quality, it doesn't have that cheap, flimsy feel that some things can have.  It seemed to fit together well and fit the phone equally as well.  I was impressed that Lifeproof included a microfiber cleaning cloth, a waterproof headphone jack adapter and a spare headphone jack plug with the case.  Everything is sealed with silicon o-rings and it seems to be a diaphragm-type system for sealing the speaker holes.  Sound quality through the case is excellent, you really can't tell a difference between call quality with the case on or off.  Listening to music or a podcast without the headphones does have a little bit distant sound, but nothing that would put me off.  

  One of the points that Lifeproof advertises for this case is that it doesn't add much to the bulk of the phone.  According to the packing, the case adds only 1.5mm to the width of the phone.  And, the plastic is such that it slides easily in and out of a pocket, making the slight additional size even less noticeable.   Even the buttons on the sides of the phone still seem to work without much additional effort, but the slide to mute the phone is a little more difficult to operate.  

  I had seen online during my research that there is an available charger extension adapter.  Without doing any investigating, I took that to mean that the phone couldn't be charged with just the OEM charger without removing the case.  I was, luckily, mistaken.  When the waterproof door is flipped open on the bottom of the case, there is plenty of room for the original Apple charger.  No adapter is necessary.  

  When I first started using the case, I was disappointed in the film like cover over the screen.  It doesn't seem to sit down flat on top of the phone screen, but, instead, tends to be slightly raised above it.  I do, occasionally have to repress an icon on the phone because I didn't make good contact, but now that I've grown accustomed to it, I hardly even notice anymore.  

  Over the camera lens of the phone Lifeproof used an optically clear glass lens in these cases.  With the photos I've taken so far, I can't tell any difference between pictures taken with the case and without.

  All in all, I am very satisfied with the Lifeproof case.  It does seem to offer a higher level of protection than most other cases on the market.  And, it really doesn't look bad in the process.  I've also recently found self adhesive "skins" for the Lifeproof cases, so I'll have my faux-woodgrain look back soon enough!

  There's just one more thing before I wrap up this review.  If I'm going to continue to use my phone to take pictures while fishing and kayaking, I had to know if the case was truly waterproof.  According to Lifeproof, the case will protect the phone during submersion up to 6 feet deep for up to an hour.  I don't have the proper equipment to do a very scientific test of that claim, however, I do have a large mixing bowl full of water!  I'll let the following photos tell the rest of the story.  

  I'm glad I purchased the Lifeproof case and would definitely recommend it to anyone who might also use their phone for fish pictures.  Like the old saying, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  If you don't want to spend a few hundred dollars replacing your phone, it might not hurt to spend the $80 to get a good, quality phone case that will protect it.  

  Thanks for reading my first product review, and as always, Tight Lines and Happy Fishing!

       -Nick

My largest mixing bowl.  An acceptable analog for a lake!

Here goes the first dunk!

The Lifeproof case for iPhone 4. I used green tissue paper for leak detection.

I pushed it to the bottom of the bowl and held it for a full minute pressing the buttons and on the screen.

I rotated the phone on both axes to ensure that bubbles were released.

And the tissue paper is wet.  Turns out the gasket was seated incorrectly.  I fixed it and repeated the entire test.

Phone is out and water is dripping!

Second try- NO WET SPOTS!!

After fixing the gasket the tissue paper came out completely dry.  Definitely happy with the Lifeproof phone case!

Skunked.....again!

Good morning folks,
  It's been a little while since my last post, but I have a good reason. Much like the rest of the country, Georgia has been getting an awful lot of rain lately. Since my last post, I've only been fishing twice.  I got skunked both times. I've been spending some time learning to tie flies and packing for my upcoming move to a new apartment.  We've been pretty busy at work recently and on top of that, there's only a few weeks left until school starts back.  Where did the summer go?
 I took the kayak out to Lake Lanier the Saturday before last.  The morning was very overcast, there was a pretty stiff wind on the lake and the water had a pretty good chop to it.  I had my 2 weight TFO rod and fought the wind with every cast.  The fish must have been down deeper than I could get with my floating line. After 3 hours on the water I only had two soft strikes. I didn't hook up once. I threw every fly I had that my two weight could handle. Then started throwing the flies that it couldn't!  Finally, I tied on this big, black streamer-/woolly bugger-type fly that I bought too long ago to remember and noticed bass nipping at its tail. I'm a fan and follower of the teachings of Tom Rosenbauer and the Orvis Fly Fishing Guide Podcast and one of his most often reiterated pieces of advice is that if the fish are showing interest, but make a last second refusal, change size first!  Well, that's all well and good, but I didn't have another size of that pattern. After about 20 minutes of watching the small fish try to school with my fly, I paddled back to the launch and called it a day. Skunked. But, with a plan.
  I spent the next few days listening to the rain fall and researching fly patterns and tying recipes (when I wasn't at work, anyway).  I decided to try my hand at tying up some woolly buggers, but most of the recipes I could find were for larger hooks, sized 6 through 10.  I wanted something smaller.  I determined that I could follow the instructions I had found, and just scale it down to a smaller hook.  Then, I stumbled upon instructions for tying wooly buggers on a size 14 hook and I decided that it could be done, pretty easily.  I bought the needed materials (I thought tying flies was supposed to be cheaper than buying them?) and spent an evening at the tying vise.  I'm a beginner at fly tying, so it took me a few hours to come up with a half dozen flies, but it's a very easy pattern to tie and probably a very good one for a beginner like me to get started with.   I've read that black, brown and white are the three preferred colors for wooly buggers, so that's what I tied.  I didn't use bead heads, but did put lead under the body to weight the fly down.
  So, armed with a half dozen, newly tied mini-buggers, I hit the lake again this past Sunday. The weather seemed a bit more cooperative, big clouds about, but mostly sunny and not nearly as breezy as the weekend before.  I spoke to a couple gentlemen bank fishing and learned that the fish weren't biting.  In the two hours they had been there, they only caught one fish a piece, both catfish on bait.  I pushed off from the boat launch and started to paddle back to one of my most productive spots so far.  I stopped and fished some along the way, but got no bites.  I was amazed at how few fish I could see in the water.  Normally, it seems, you can see bream and small bass swimming amongst the rocks in the shadows.  I paddled into a grassy area to fish around a fallen tree that has produced good bites in the past.  Not even a bite.  At one point, the best fish I had seen in a while showed themselves.  In about 2 feet of water there swam three carp that were each, easily, 18" long.  Swimming directly under and around my kayak, with I good net, I could have grabbed them!  They showed absolutely no interest in my size 14 wooly buggers.

Size 14 Mini Bugger

  I paddled on to fish around the rock dam where I've had some luck before.  I pulled up into a small inlet where I've caught a few bream in the past, and dropped my anchor right in the middle of the mouth.  From this spot I could fish almost the whole inlet.  There's a sloping dirt bank on the left and a steeper rip-rap stone bank to the right.  I was starting to see some more fish swimming around, so I thought, surely, I'd have some luck here.  The water was nice and clear and smooth and I could really see the action of my mini bugger as I stripped it in.  I was working it in every way I could think of, long fast strips, short slow strips, short fast strips, long slow strips, you name it, I tried it.  I would occasionally see small bass following the fly, but no bites.
  In the three hours I was on the lake fishing, I got two soft, but splashy, strikes.  I had things to do at home, so wasn't able to put in any more time.  By the time I made it back to the car, I had paddled almost 5 miles.  You tend to feel paddling that kind of distance more when the fish aren't biting.  I loaded up and went home.
  I got skunked, two weekends in a row.  See now why I haven't posted?  So, what have I learned?  If you're not going to catch fish, you should at lease learn something about fishing, right?  I need to do some more research, but I'm guessing that due to the cloud cover over the lake the fish must have been holding deeper than I could reach with my mini bugger and floating line.  At one point I had crimped on a small split shot to my line.  That seemed to garner the most attention.  I think I'm going to spend some time tying some more mini buggers, but this time I might try some tungsten bead heads.  I also might have to look into investing in a spare spool and some sink tip line.  One of the purposes of the original wooly bugger was to imitate leeches.  From what I've read, freshwater leeches tend to prefer living in and around rocks.  I need to tie my mini buggers so they will get down into the crevices of the rocks and can be worked in and around.  The buggers I tied had 5-7 wraps of .015 lead wire, but with the chenille and marabou it just wasn't enough to take the fly down more than a foot and a half or so.  Even to reach that shallow depth required me to wait probably a full minute.  Being that I'm still new to fly fishing, coming off of years of fishing Texas rigged worms on spinning gear, I'm not used to waiting so long for my lure to reach the bottom.  A bit more weight on the fly and a sink tip line might just do the trick.
  Hopefully soon I'll have some caught fish to share with you.  I'll post a photo tutorial on the mini buggers that I tied.  I'm still working to get them right and practice my tying skills, but you folks can critique me on how I'm doing so far.
  Thanks for reading.  Tight lines and Happy fishing,
      -Nick




Jim Misiura - Wooly Bugger Tutorial
Tim Cammisa - Wooly Bugger Tutorial
The Orvis Fly Fishing Guide Podcast

Today's Equipment

Flyrod: Temple Forks Outfitters 6'6" 2wt
Fly Reel: White River Fly Shop 3/4
Line: Rio 3wt WF
Flies:
    #14 Mini Wooly Buggers asst. colors

Knife:
Kershaw Ken Onion Scallion