More-thing.com Silicone Case for iPhone 3G

I kept seeing ads for this case on Cydia app preview pages, and the pictures made it look kind of sweet, so I decided to give it a try. This is the Mono Series Silicone Case for the iPhone 3G from more-thing.com. It’s very affordable, slim, and has a cool circular texture design, but is it worth the $12.90 USD? Can it really be that great of a case for that price?

Well, it is. For the money, I’m really happy with how this case turned out. I’m not speaking about the new more-thing.com Ultra-Slim cases here, which people say are cheap pieces of crap that don’t stay on their phones, but the older Mono Series case.

Things I liked…

This case fits very well on the iPhone 3G and provides excellent coverage to protect again scratches. The grippy texture of the case keeps the phone from sliding around when we’ve got it sitting on your car dashboard, for example. I like that it doesn’t cover the Apple logo on the back too. The circular design on the back is one of the coolest I’ve seen for the iPhone and I’ve looked through all sorts of cases trying to find something that doesn’t completely ruin the visual design of the iPhone, which I think a lot of cases do. I hate bulky cases and I’d use no case at all before using a bulky case. If you’re the type of person that drops their phone all the time, you and I probably do not share the same needs out of a case, so you probably won’t like this case. If you care about how your phone looks and take good care of it, generally, then this case is enough for you to avoid those unavoidable scratches that ruin the resale value for when the next great phone comes out.

Things that I didn’t like…

It is a $13 dollar case from a pretty unknown company, so you shouldn’t expect it to be completely perfect. Here’s what sucks about it. If these are deal breakers for you, then I suggest you look elsewhere for a case.

1. My biggest problem with this case is how flimsy one area of coverage is: the bottom part that goes over the front, just underneath the home button. I’ve had the case for about 2 weeks now and I had my doubts when I first bought it that the piece wasn’t just going to break one of these days. It’s still early and it could still happen to me, but I’m a little more confident after 2 weeks that it might not be as fast to break as I initially thought.
2. The case makes it a lot harder to flip the mute on/off switch. When I didn’t use a case at all, I could reach into my pocket and mute my phone without even taking it out. With this case on, you really need to take the phone out of your pocket to do it. I’ve gotten better at flipping the switch now, as I tend to move the case with it as I do it, but it’s not as easy as it was before, and that sort of sucks.
3. The grippy texture is cool, because it protects the phone from sliding around when you’ve got it placed somewhere, but it’s also one of the downfalls of the case for me. Prior to this case, I didn’t have a case on my iPhone at all, and it was really easy to put the phone into my pocket after using it. The iPhone 3G’s glossy texture makes it really easy to slide the phone into a pocket, but with this case, I can’t just slide the case into my pocket. I have to lift the pocket open and make sure to leave enough of an opening to slide the case without touching the sides of my pocket too much. This gets a bit annoying in some situations.

So there you go, the more-thing.com Mono Series Silicone Case is slim, stylish, and offers great value for the price. It’s not perfect, but for $13 dollars, it’s a great case. You could easily spend $40+ dollars on a case from the Apple Store and be less satisfied.