Think you could get a wetsuit for your iPhone? We didn’t think so but the Dog & Bone Wetsuit has shown us otherwise!
Right off the bat, this is one of the most uniquely designed cases that I’ve come across and because of it, I think it will offer better protection than your average LifeProof and Otterbox case even through they’re all rated to 6 ft in terms of drop protection.
Now, we’ve been reviewing cases for the last year and we only recently came across Dog and Bone by one of our viewers, brando12343 on Google Plus so props to him for suggesting this case to us. Dog and Bone is based out of Australia so the case that we’re reviewing has definitely travelled pretty far. In fact, Australia is probably the farthest place of travel for me here in Calgary.
Alright, so this case is waterproof and shockproof up to 6.6 ft which is pretty standard for waterproof cases. One of the selling features of this case, is the fact that there is no screen protector. It’s topless which means there’s no screen protector for the case. There’s only one other case that has this feature and that’s the LifeProof Nuud. We’ve done a review for the LIfeProof Nuud for the iPhone 5S which can be found here:
The Dog and Bone Wetsuit waterproof iPhone case can be broken down into 3 pieces, actually it’s more like 3.17 pieces but we’ll get to that in a bit. There’s 2 housings, the Front and Rear and the boot, as they’ve labelled it on their website. The Housings encase the boot and is made from engineer grade plastics with over-moulded rubber bumpers. These bumpers sit on the corners of the cases and will most likely absorb most of the damage that could occur to the case on a daily basis.
Both housings have a ton of cutouts for the various functions of the iPhone. The back housing has the access door to the iPhone. Dog and Bone does include a screen protector than can be installed with the case but it isn’t one of the Bone Guard impact resistant screen protector but rather a scratch resistant screen protector.
The entire boot of the Dog and Bone Wetsuit is made from a high grade silicon rubber which provides the waterproofing and a bit of shock protection. Getting to the buttons on your iPhone is quite simple,the volume and power buttons are easily accessed through the membrane, the Touch ID is covered with a film that isn’t like the stickily looking membranes of the LifeProof and Otterbox cases.
Now, the mute button is a bit different on the wetsuit. There is no fancy mechanism, there’s no lever that reverses it, the silicon rubber just covers it. I wasn’t too fond of this at the beginning but I do like how easy it is to access my mute switch. Cases such as the Otterbox Preserver are known to have problems with this area and Dog and Bone just took a really simple approach to it. Kudos to them.
For the front camera and ear piece speaker area, there is a piece of plastic, it might be glass, there’s no documentation for it but it’s incorporated into the boot. The ear piece speaker is covered by a waterproof acoustic membrane and it doesn’t look like any of the wire meshes that we’ve seen before.
The bottom of the boot also incorporates a grills for the speaker and the same type of wire mesh over the mic. Accessing your Lightning port connector is done by pulling apart out the plug, the same with the headphone jack. Now, at the beginning, I said there’s 3.17 pieces. The .17 comes from the plugs that cover the ports. I am not a big fan of having these port covers come off and there isn’t a spare set of plugs in the box.
On the back side of the boot, there’s a plastic cover for the Apple Logo and cutouts for the camera and flash which are covered by anti-reflective glass. That’s basically the boot and again, this is pretty unique.
Putting everything together, you have a case that looks pretty solid. So, what do you guys think about the Wetsuit by Dog and Bone? Do you guys like how they’ve taken a different approach with the case? Leave it in the comment section below!
Alright, next up is going to be the drop and water tests!
