Materials aside, hard cases for the iPhone fall into three broad categories: ill-conceived, well-intentioned and nice but not great, and thoroughly impressive. Over the next day, we’re going to briefly review eight recent iPod cases that range in price from $20 to $50, and in design from one end of that spectrum to the other: four are made mostly from metal, the other four mostly from plastic. This review covers the metal cases: JAVOedge’s JavoShield for iPhone ($20), Innopocket’s Metal Deluxe Case ($30), and identical PDair and Wireless Ground cases called Aluminum Metal Case – Flip Type ($28) and Monaco Aluminum Case ($40), respectively.
Some iPod and iPhone accessories make no sense to us at all, and JAVOedge’s JavoShield ($20) for iPhone is one of them: it is a weird padded metal accent plate that’s designed to clip onto your iPhone, adding a black, silver, or red metal “shield” to its existing silver metal body.
Padded with neoprene on the inside, it doesn’t damage your iPhone when it’s slid on, but despite JAVOedge’s claims that it’s a “case” with “great protection,” it’s hard to really view it as either of those things: it only covers iPhone’s back and the bottom halves of its sides, offering nothing or the top, upper sides, face, or bottom.
Other than the fact that it barely covers iPhone’s body, our JavoShield samples had a couple of other issues. First, they cover the iPhone’s plastic antenna compartment with a layer of metal—something that Apple conspicuously avoided to avoid diminishing antenna strength—which means that you can expect to see cut-down wireless performance if you attach this.
Second, one of our samples arrived dented, but to its credit, JAVOedge sent out a replacement immediately and started to do a better job of packaging its products to avoid recurrence. We are confident that, should you have a similar issue with the JavoShield you ordered, the company will make it right.
That doesn’t make the product recommendable, though. An all-metal back plate for the iPhone isn’t an especially good idea, doesn’t offer enough in the way of added protection, and adds little to the device’s great contours—if anything, JavoShield detracts.
