iPhone cases and alarms

One of the things that's struck me about the iPhone apart from how easily it picks up fingerprints (funny - it never bothered me on the Centro) is that it's quite a slippery device.

Lovely though the iPhone is, it's not a natural shape for the hand, and I've been petrified ever since I've had it about dropping it. My Centro also gradually picked up a scuff mark on the back where it used to lay on a surface, and I don't want the same to happen with the iPhone.

Generally I shun cases for devices. They are either to fiddly, bulky when you need frequent access and I've just never got on with them. If I had a Nokia I wouldn't have a case, so why have one with anything else?

Nevertheless, there are few rubber "skin" type cases for the iPhone, and I found one like the one pictured here on Amazon for just a couple of pounds, so I thought I'd give it a go.

As usual for Amazon it arrived promptly with no-fuss (along with a screen protector which I discarded straight away because it was crap and I don't like screen protectors, and the iPhone screen is supposedly scratch resistant anyway).

It's basically a back only case which slips onto the iPhone with no fuss and adds only minimal girth to the device. It has holes for the connector, mute switch, camera and earphone jack, but none for the volume and on-off switch. However, both of these switches work perfectly well through the case. The cut out holes fit perfectly.

Immediately this case gives the iPhone more "grip" and it feels unlikely to slip from my grasp. Equally I can put it down on any surface knowing I'm not going scratch the back of it. I'm quite impressed considering the cheap price.

The only downside I've found so far, is the "grippiness" makes it a bugger to get in and out of a pocket, so I may use the case selectively, depending on what I'm doing. It's so easy to put on and off, it's hardly going to be a problem doing this. Whether I persist or eventually succumb to my preferred "naked device" approach, we'll have to wait and see.


The other thing that I've found (it's taken me over a week!) is the alarm clock. One of the things that's been bugging me is the lack of a task manager/todo. All the todo's I've seen tend to be list type todo's with the ability (sometimes) to put a due date, but not a due time in (there may be something like this, but I haven't found it yet).

All I want to be able to do (pardon the pun) is put something into the device along the lines of "Pick up kids" with an alert at 6pm type of thing. Well, the alarm clock function fits the bill perfectly (almost).You can create multiple alarms, and importantly give them a custom name as well as an alert time. So almost perfect, except you can't put a future date in - the alarm has to be set in hours and minutes. You can set it to repeat any day of the week (or a combination of days) so there is a partial workaround. For the moment, until I can find a decent task/to do list manager, it'll do for me.