Otterbox Armor Phone Case Torture Test & Unboxing Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
2,333 words · ~11 min read
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this video is brought to you by coolermaster mobile featuring The Jazz
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Pro notebook stand check it out at mobile. coolermaster
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usa. welcome to my unboxing of the
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OtterBox Armor Series the toughest case
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ever built so it's available for a number of different phones uh of which
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the Samsung Galaxy S3 is one of them the
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iPhone 4 is one of them so I asked for the iPhone 4 case cuz I don't have an S3
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so uh there it is it's a little bit on the scuffed upside my iPhone at this
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point it's been in use for almost 3 years so I mean this is more like the
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kind of thing I would buy for a new phone but anyway here it is now this is
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a press kit so um so basically don't
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expect yours to necessarily come packaged exactly like this but it's
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waterproof drop proof dust proof and
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Crush proof the watertight latches here on the side use a patented o-ring
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technology Port covers and mesh coverings tolerate
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submersions for 30 minutes and up to 6.6 ft of water so there's the waterproof
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these guys the membranes and meshes that
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that are able to sustain waterproofness for a pretty long period of time there
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non-permeable membranes and protective mesh layer keep harmful elements out
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while allowing only sound to pass through so your speakers will still work
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because of the membranes but the water won't be able to get in see there's an O-ring for the port uh to plug into
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charge high strength reinforced plastic withstands crushing force of up to 2
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tons so presumably I can stand on it no problem and it's uh not going to have
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any issues so there we go we already figured that out corrosion resistant
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metal latches lock the two halves of the case together built-in screen protector prents scratches and damage to the glass
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display and so we are actually going to go ahead and uh put my iPhone 4 in here
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because I am going to be starting my Android I switched so this is the
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HTC1 very very shortly here and I think I'm pretty much done with my iPhone 4
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based on some toying around that I've done with the HTC1 so far so let's have
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a close look at the case on the bottom you can see there's a grill there and a
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membrane there then the O-ring seal here you can also actually see the O-ring
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here cuz this isn't totally sealed I had this out of the box already so I could check it out but uh that's how all of
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that seals there you go you put that right there on the side here we've got
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the two corrosion resistant metal hinges the back here is a reinforced plastic
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with a spot for the flash as well as the camera on the top you've got your lock
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button quite stiff actually as well as
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your headphone there we go headphone jack right there which is again got uh a
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membrane seal by the look of things and an O-ring seal around the outside so you
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can plug your headphones in without worrying about that there's your uh mute
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or your orientation lock depending how you have that configured and there's your volume up and down all these are
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quite stiff but what I'm expecting is once I actually get a phone in here
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things will change a little bit so peel those back just like that ow okay I
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don't have very strong nails so that's a little bit tough but there we go and
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let's see how she actually opens up I've never used an Otter Box before I've
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never really done the whole cell phone case thing because I don't really drop my cell phone but inside we find a super
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super grippy um layer here so that's going to
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allow you to put the phone down on it and have it not move while you're while
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you're actually installing the rest of the case so that's good it's also very
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cushiony so it's got some thickness to it so you can here we'll do H we'll do
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an iPhone comparison there you go so you can see how thick the actual backing
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layer is here there's that O-ring that seals up the whole case and uh here we
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go so these pieces here latch into these
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notches here you can see the way that all of these buttons pass through so
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it's actually rubber that is sealed onto the case itself and then the tactile
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feedback that you're going to get is probably going to be from the buttons
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themselves so that's other than that these are just uh these are just rubber
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here so the cushioning around the side of the case is provided by this is a bit
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of a harder plastic than what we found here which is more cushiony so because
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they've only got so much thickness that they can put around it but I'll go ahead and do an iPhone thickness comparison
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there actually that's quite thick um so they've got one two three layers that
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are between your phone and any kind of accidental damage and you can see they've built up the corners a fair bit
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more than the actual straightaways here and that's understandable because that's
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where there's the most risk of damage home buttons right here see I don't
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think never showed that before and then the uh the plastic cover is here so
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let's go ahead and install it show you guys how simple this is this is probably
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the way I would actually install it as opposed to going the other way which is what I suggested the first time just go
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ahead slide that on so this turns the iPhone 4 which is
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normally other than its weight pretty sleek and elegant into a bit of a brick
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so there's that um oh hold
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on I don't know if I did this quite right okay so I want to make sure that
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I'm getting I'm getting the right seal because there's a pond here I'm planning
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to throw the phone into it so I'm really really hoping that I get this on right
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before before I proceed with that so yeah there we go so once you get the
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O-ring into place it's just a matter of bringing the latches up like this and
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then latching it on just like that so I'm not real confident about that I'm
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going to play around with this a little bit off camera we'll be back in a moment
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all right so it was just a matter of squeezing it pretty good and then getting the latches on there so now it's
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uh feeling pretty sturdy so I guess I'll switch over to what's going to become my
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new trademark HTC1 comparison so that's what an otter booxed phone looks like
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compared to a not OtterBox phone it's not the kind of thing that I would use
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unless I had a reason to keep my phone super protected with all that said if
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you put it in your pocket it's actually not going to look that much different
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than your wallet in your pocket and you
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know it's not like you can't get it out of your pocket and if you keep it in a purse this is a perfect thing to put on
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your phone because you got your keys and all your other stuff in there I mean just just in case you drop it then you
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know that you're going to have the confidence that it's going to be okay so
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there's a rubber bumpers here hard plastic here there's quite a recessed
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area between the actual SC so you'd have to drop it on something fairly textured
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to actually manage to impact the screen so let's uh let's see what we can do to
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this baby all right so uh how about that
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tree you think I can hit that tree now watch this
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drive wow oh it went all the way through to
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the other side okay just a sec I missed the tree though I hope I
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can find the phone what oh yeah right my mic's on
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okay so hold on it bounced all the way through onto the street here so I'm just
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going to retrieve it and uh okay it looks like we did a little bit of damage
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what do you think do you think I can hit the light post or the light at the top
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let's try Oh Oh wrong way
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uhoh okay that might have been it for it well there you go folks I don't think I
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recommend that let's see how the phone
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did oh wow check this out come come come
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come so that was probably a good 20 ft
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up so the otter box opened it did not
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actually stay closed so I guess if I was to find a design uh Improvement that
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they can make it would be the plastic latches here cuz you can see the metal
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ones held up just fine with that in mind
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the oh diesel is texting apparently we have to go meet him now with that in
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mind the phone has a scuff here see
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right there there's a scuff that wasn't there before a couple scuffs here the
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phone survived the screen did not scratch so okay let's go ahead and Chuck
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it in the water I'm going to put it back in we'll be back in a moment all right so uh We've reassembled
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it from the fall so there's some cracked pieces there so we're going to see if
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the waterproofness held up from the 20ft
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fall so to be clear guys this is designed for people not designed for
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people who are trying to intentionally wreck the phone and uh the fact that the
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phone survived at all being dropped out of what is essentially a second story
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window uh should be pretty impressive so I'm going to throw it into the water and
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try and hit that brick ready guys here we
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go and it's down there now slick do you think you can reach that this may
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actually be a problem okay hold on we're not going to leave it in there for 30
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minutes one way or another just because we already know that uh the Integrity of
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the otter box was compromised by the
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Fall oh it's cold oh it's cold okay I
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got
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it okay so we chucked it at a brick under
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the water so let's go ahead and oh it's
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dirty oh okay so let's go ahead and open
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her back back up and see if she leaked I mean realistically if they're
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rating it for 30 minutes no no there we go look at that there's just drips
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through from me opening it but the
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actual oh hold on oh oh okay yeah she
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ain't waterproof anymore never mind so we knew this was we sort of knew this
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was going to happen let's see if the phone survived was down there for
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probably a good 30 seconds anyway oh phone's on okay so there's Diesel's
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message that we haven't gone and met up with him yet so um yeah we're going to
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we're going to put it back in the otter box and we're going to kick it all the way back to where we're meeting with
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diesel and see if the phone continues to survive wish us luck with that
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okay and let's pick up here all right guys so let's see how our
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uh impact torture test uh how the ugh
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box held up so once again the metal side
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is outstanding you can see that spacing
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between the actual screen itself and the front bezel here paying off and you can
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see these metal pieces actually contribute to the scrap proofness of the
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device overall my only thing is I wish that
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they put uh at least one on the other side or something like that you can see
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this guy opened up during the impact but that's kind of to be expected that's for
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waterproofness not for impact but these plastic ones did let go again however
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you guys saw what we did to it that is not normal use and I think what we're
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going to discover at least I hope what we're going to discover is that the
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phone did survive and that to me is the
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point of one of these cases not here you can see how how beat up this got on the
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way over here the point of these cases is not whether the case looks beautiful
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after some abuse but whether the phone inside actually still works there's
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Diesel's message all right just like that there's
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the phone itself which is actually not really any worse for the wear and uh I
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give the OtterBox Armor Series a pass thank you for checking out this video
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