Otterbox, a company which stands for high quality safety-solutions for your device in aspects of hardware protection was so kind to send me 2 samples of their HTC Desire series. Today, I want to review one of them, their every-day-usage models The “Otterbox Commuter Series Case”.

The whole package contains 3 “main ingredients” (from left to right on the picture): The screen-protector foil-package, the soft-case and the hardcase.

In the first place, I wondered about the amount of parts, I got sent. For Example the “screen protector foil package”, as I called it, contains not only the foil itself but also a little instruction and an installation card, as well as a tiny microfibre rag. The rag and the foil are the usual ingredients, but the “new thing” is the “Installation Card” as they call it. With this gadget a credit card is no more needed for installation and it even fits on the screen. The second interesting thing is the two-layer protection.

The inner layer is the soft and the outer layer the hardcase. This seems to provide some advantages. I am someone who does not like  softcases, I just don’t like their surface. Furthermore most of them usually are not very stable and can easily get pulled off the phone. The Otterbox Commuter Series now connects the advantages of the softcase, which are perfect bump-protectors, with the advantages of the hardcases. Due to the hardcase everything is stable and seems to perfectly fit to the phone, but because of the softcase it is optimally protected from hard bumps. One more thing the softcase also offers: protection for the side-buttons and the sockets, which would not be possible with a hardcase only. However, there is my first little criticism:  The socket-protectors seem to easily get worn off and may break away at some point. Another, less important, point about the socket-protectors is that the protector of the microUSB-cable overlaps the rest of the case a bit, when the cable is plugged in. This causes the phone to bounce a bit to the sides, when getting touched on a table.

All in all, I tried the case during every-day usage, as well as gaming on the device and writing emails. My consumption is, that the usability does not decrease with this great solution for protecting your phone. However, there are still points on which the producer could look. My conclusion:

• Great protection for the HTC Desire, but:
• A second foil would be nice for beginners, who might fail at their first installation
• A better solution for the socket-protectors.

4.5 Points from me for great protection and nice design. The product is available in the Otterbox-Store for the adequate price of 34.95 US$.