The problem with Lifeproof NUUD iphone cases

The lifeproof NUUD case, described by lifeproof as the "Best selling waterproof phone case" (with an asterisk) has a serious problem that can hurt a phone it's supposed to protect.

The point of a phone case is to protect your phone, but this often comes at a cost to user convenience. The safest phone cases today cover the screen with a protective piece of plastic. This stops scratches and is also necessary for waterproofness, but these are usually susceptible to fingerprints, not as shiny as your real screen, and less smooth on your fingers. This means that if you want to protect your phone, you're usually going to have to sacrifice the look and feel that the manufacturer intended.

To get around this, some people today resort to a case that doesn't cover the screen, and opt for a separate screen protector, usually an adhesive sheet of glass. These glass screen protectors can keep your screen shiny, smooth, and fingerprint proof. The only problem is that these aren't always compatible with every case, and don't offer as much protection as a case integrated screen protector.

An adhesive scratch protector

This is where the Lifeproof NUUD case aims to innovate. The goal of the lifeproof NUUD case is to have a case that protects your phone, but at the same time preserves all of the look and feel intended by apple. The back of the case is clear plastic, showing off the apple logo and metal body of the phone, but screen is untouched and unobstructed. To keep the case waterproof, there's a rubber seal around the edges of the screen. This unobstructed screen, however, is also the downfall of the lifeproof nuud case.

Since the screen is uncovered, it's susceptible to scratches, and if you're bringing your phone to somewhere like the beach or most of the places lifeproof advertises the case being used, you're going to get scratches on your screen.

A picture from the lifeproof nuud page. just imagine having your screen face down in that gravel

As you can see in the picture above, the case comes with an adhesive screen protector, but it's slightly too small, and one of the most common features of the iphone, the menu that comes up when you slide your finger up from the bottom of the screen, appears to be ruined by this. The screen protector leaves a small gap of uncovered screen at the bottom of the screen, which seems to make the menu unusable, atleast for me. This means I can't use the screen protector that came with the case, and I'm forced to leave my screen uncovered. The fact that the screen is dipped in compared to the rest of the case also makes it easy for sand, dirt, or gravel to get stuck on top of the uncovered screen. After a day at the beach, my screen has several small scratches, which will only get worse over time. The lifeproof nuud case achieves it's goal of user convenience, but fails at being lifeproof.

If you want a truly safe iphone case, get a lifeproof FRE. These are waterproof, and also have an integrated scratch protector. They won't show off the original body of the phone or let you touch the shiny original screen, but if you want your phone to be truly lifeproof, you'll always have to sacrifice some user convenience.