A few tips about silicone covers, cases and THAT nojoystick.

I've been a bit blogged down lately with work and such so I haven't had much time to post or even develop something to post. Here are a few tips for you to chew on while I cobble something more together together.

Those silicone/rubbery stretchy case thingies look cool and are all the rage but there are a few drawbacks:

1. They don't protect the screen. You'll probably want both a stick-on screen protector and maybe even a hard or soft case of some kind. Make sure you fit the silicone cover BEFORE seeking a case for the phone or you could end up with a case too small for the combined phone and cover.
   
2. The navpad/joystick thingy actually does have its uses. When the phone's in your pocket and you're bopping away to the eager sounds of Windows Media Player, you can just about play/pause, skip to the next/previous track and control the volume by fiddling with the navpad through your jeans. Of course, there is always the risk that you appear to be playing with yourself. It's up to you whether or not this is a "value-added" extra. Again, fitting a silicone cover means that the once easily-twiddled joystick is much, much harder to control, especially through your dirty raincoat, I mean jeans.
   
3. External audio, such as ring tones, are masked by the silicone cover
   
4. Real silicone covers are quite smooth but still make is harder to slide the phone in and out of your pocket. The cheaper ones are even worse.
   
5. The awesome good looks of the Xphone II are smothered by the silicone cover.
   
6. None of the silicone covers I found had a cutout for the wrist strap holes so if yawanit yagata hack it.
   

Bottom line?

No matter what you do, if you want more safety for your O2 baby, you'll probably have to sacrifice some other aspects of the "O2 experience", like ease of use. Life is always about these pesky compromises...

Hmmm, I wonder if I can use voice tags to control Windows Media?