BOTTOMLINE:

My greatest gear frustration, is that we consumers tolerate one of our most used and most expensive items to be the poorest designed.  Smartphones have become the epitome of design for profit, not user efficacy and advocacy.  The manufacturers have seemingly lost their consumer cares completely, shorting battery and product lives rather than making increasingly simple, intuitive, trustworthy and robust products.  At least Samsung is working to develop better options.  But I digress….

I’ve had to spend hundreds of dollars and countless hours fixing shattered and bent phones in the post flip-phone era despite treating all of them like fine China.  Only to realize it doesn’t and won’t work, and I was losing a LOT of results by babying a product that needs the robustness of a GoPro to be actually useful.  In a nutshell, this case gets the job done without breaking the bank.  More importantly, it empowers you to reconnect with the intended use(s) of the device so you can focus almost entirely on shooting rather than babying a poorly designed product (that’s right, I said it).  Though smartphones have become planned obsolescence at their worst, they are EXTREMELY capable creative tools.  Don’t make the same mistakes I did in waiting years to accept that an artist’s needs are more extreme than the average consumer, and you still need these tools to compete at the highest level in your field now.  Just make the investment and get your device the rugged durability you need to create more, and coddle/replace equipment less.  It will make a HUGE and immediate difference in your creative productivity even with the usability tradeoffs.

For me, the Lifeproof FRE has literally already paid for itself ten times over during drops and weather extremes that already would have killed my iPhone for the umpteenth time…..and even more importantly given me the courage to capture irreplaceable images and footage that in the past my phone felt too “naked” and expensive to take the risk.  Highly, highly recommended despite some of the use frustrations.  Trust me – it’s worth it.  There’s no perfect solution here (and the product reviews reflect that), but protecting your phones with something much more robust than a standard, non-waterproof solution is the right way to go out-of-the-gate.

WHY GET IT:

Phones have become a critical aspect of our creative, wayfinding and connecting lives.  But phones these days break, REALLY easily.  One of the best no-brainer investments to make to ensure you’re thinking less about your gear and more about maximizing your creative adventure.