Apple's $79 iPhone Duo Case Glues Itself On, So I Will Buy Someone Else's

Apple’s $79 case for the iPhone Duo does not clip on and it does not hold on with magnets. You peel a strip and stick it to the phone, with adhesive along the inside edges. It still has magnets, but they are there for MagSafe charging, not for keeping the case attached. Taking it off to swap cases, or to use the phone bare for a day, is a job rather than a movement, and adhesive does not come back to full strength once it has been peeled. Apple’s $129 Folio, for what it is worth, attaches magnetically.

I am out. Not because $79 is outrageous for an Apple case, that number has been outrageous for years and people pay it, but because glue is a one way decision on a $1,999 phone. I change cases. Everybody changes cases, after a drop, after a holiday, when the thing goes shiny. A case I have to commit to is a case I do not want. I would go straight to a third party with real magnets and accept whatever it costs me in fit.

Is it penny pinching? I do not think so, and I say that as someone who assumes cost cutting first when a product quietly gets worse. A phone that folds does not give you a rigid shell to grip. There is a hinge where the lip would be, two halves that move, and much less edge to hold on to. Adhesive is a plausible engineering answer to that, not a cent saved per unit. Apple is charging $79 either way, so there is nothing obvious to pocket here.

Plausible is not the same as good. The honest version of this product tells you on the box, in large letters, that fitting it is permanent enough that you should decide now. Instead the detail turned up in coverage after preorders opened, which is the part that annoys me.

So, do I buy it? No. Wait a few weeks. The third party makers have already started shipping cases for this phone, and the first one that holds on magnetically and survives a drop test wins this category by default.