Incipio Silicrylic

Incipio’s Silicrylic ($30) is a combination silicone and acrylic case that provides protection for everything other than the screen of your iPhone. Putting the case on is a two-step process; you first slide the iPhone into the silicone case, and then slip the now-encased phone into the acrylic surround. The silicone case, which has cutouts for the iPHone’s dock-connector port, mute switch, and camera, adds a protective layer of padding and helps secure the iPhone tightly in place inside the acrylic. Four color combinations are available: berry red or light pink silicone with clear acrylic, and mercury or black silicone with smoke acrylic.

The acrylic case surrounds the iPhone on the sides and back, with cutouts for the dock-connector port, Ring/Silent switch, volume buttons, Sleep button, and headphone jack. (The Sleep and Volume buttons are covered by molded sections of the silicone case that allow you to press the buttons through the case.) The headphone jack works fine with Apple’s stock headphones, but the silicone case interfered with the connector on a set of Bose headphones that I tried. The back of the acrylic case contains four small holes, through which small “nubs” from the silicone case protrude–these four feet mean your iPhone no longer goes sliding across any smooth surface you may set it on. There’s also a larger, thumb-size hole in the middle of the back of the acrylic case. There weren’t any instructions included with this case, so at first I was a bit stumped as to its purpose. However, the first time I went to place my iPhone in a dock cradle–which requires removing it from the case–the purpose of the hole became apparent: you remove the iPhone from the acrylic case by pressing your thumb or finger against the silicone case through this hole. The iPhone then pops out of the acrylic, and it’s then an easy matter to slide the iPhone out of the silicone case.

I didn’t have any typing issues near the edges of the screen as I did with the PDO’s Reviso case. That’s mainly because the acrylic shell doesn’t wrap around the front of the iPhone, and the silicone case isn’t very thick. The only real problem I had was with the Ring/Silent switch: it’s easy enough to flick down (to silent mode), but the combined acrylic and silicone cases made it difficult for my “fingernail challenged” fingers to flick the switch back to ring mode. My only other complaint with this case is that it offers no screen protection at all, but it’s not designed to be worn on your belt. So if you toss your phone in a pocket, the screen is just as exposed as if you had no case on the iPhone at all. On the other hand, if you were to drop your iPhone (though I didn’t test this!), the combination of the acrylic and silicone cases seems like it would help cushion the fall–as long as it didn’t land on its screen on a sharp object, of course.

Overall, I found this to be a good case. I liked the non-skid feet, and the fact that there’s not a lot of added bulk, even with two cases on the iPhone. I could still easily slip the iPhone into my pocket (my preferred carrying method), and I had no issues with slippage of the iPhone within the case.–Rob Griffiths