It took over 6 months for my pre-orders to show up. Was it worth the delay?

The short answer? No.

The long answer? Build quality is phenomenal. Design is not.

BUT if I put it through my scoring system, the Phone Rebel does break the Top 5.

See if its on Amazon: https://mreh.ca/3jhCJWR

In this video:

0:00 Intro
0:45 Design
4:17 Why I Dislike The Design
6:16 Protection

When it comes to design, the Phone Rebel case looks different. It’s supposedly a very tough case that exposes more of your iPhone than the average case.

Now the Phone Rebel cases are premium cases. Most cases are made from a blend of two materials whereas premium cases are made from three, excluding whatever aesthetic finish they use. These Phone Rebel cases have a polycarbonate back, TPU corners and a TPE liner on the inside of the case.

The case is tightly manufactured as the seams between the different TPU pieces are hard to see and the TPU corners have a nice finish to them.

The Aramid fiber case comes with a series of magnets on them but as of right now, I don’t see any accessories to go with the magnets on Phone Rebel’s website. I personally would consider these as one-way magnets as the magnetic force on the back of the case is much stronger than the force on the front of the case.

Now the lack of accessories on the website and the fact that I don’t even see any news for the iPhone 12 which is not a good sign. What day is it Siri? The iPhone 12’s were released for Pre-orders as of the filming of this part of the video so no news for the iPhone 12 on Phone Rebels website? Odd.

Or maybe the YouTuber who’s running Phone Rebel wants to wait until he drops a ton of iPhone’s in various cases before announcing new and improved Phone Rebel iPhone 12 cases?

Regardless, going forward, surely everybody sees the conflict of interest with those new drop videos right? Lots of you ask me if I’d do the same as Latercase or Phone Rebel the simple answer is no. Why? Because if I do, I’m not a reviewer anymore. Those review videos would technically be ads wouldn’t they?

In terms of dimensions, it’s hard to really pinpoint how big the case is because of the edges. The corners themselves are quite thick around 14mm’s as there are large lips on the front and back of the corners. The actual corner thickness is around 2mm’s which puts it on par as other triple layered cases like Mous and Casetify.

From a wear and tear perspective, the clear case is going to be a finger print magnet, the carbon fibre one is going to be a grease magnet and the frosted one is going to look the best from my perspective.

Now the clear and frosted cases claim to have a scratch resistant PC material but each one of these products will scratch around 3 on the Moh’s scale so basically anything in your daily life is going to leave a mark on the case.

The Phone Rebel cases won’t slide around easily and generally handle quite well. The exposed edges reduces the footprint of the device in your hand.

When it comes to using my iPhone in the Phone Rebel, I had no issues accessing the buttons (duh), camera or ports. There is a nice taper at the top and bottom of the case which results in a smooth swiping experience from the top and the bottom.

In terms of actual handling, lots of people love the naked iPhone feel BUT here’s the thing, it doesn’t really feel like a naked iPhone. It feels like a naked iPhone with a tail because you still know that the back plate is there. Visually, you think you’re going to be using an iPhone with exposed edges BUT it doesn’t feel that way because the back of the case is still there.

But all of this is a bit meta so let’s talk about protection. We’ve all seen the claims right? But how realistic is one 50ft drop in day to day life?

Phone Rebel includes two edge stickers and one glass screen protector. Some of you have noted that they fall off easily, mine stayed on for at least a week and a half BUT the glass screen protector, that's something else.

It took so much effort to break that screen protector (almost 400N on my meter). The toughest iPhone SE screen protector took around 300N to break so whoever is making the screen protector is doing a heck of a job.

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