Prima Treo Leather Cases Review

I recently had the opportunity to do a side-by-side review of two cases offered by Prima. These were the Premium Leather Flip Style Case and the Premium Leather Open Face Case for the Palm Treo 680.

Open Face Case (view large image)

I used them both over a two week period in my regular life situations, which for me means getting in the car in the morning to go to the station, commuting by train, going to quite a lot of meetings and conference calls at work, and then going back home. In the weekend I also used the cases to to allow me to listen to podcasts while doing chores outside.

Both cases are made of really soft leather, and I must say, I love the smell of leather. They have a big button on the back to hold on the belt clip which, unfortunately, is not removable. This means an additional bump in your pants if you decide to use the case without the clip.

Flip Style Case (view large image)

Speaking of the clip, in all the situations was in while using it, it never came loose once. It offers a very solid clip which you can attach to your belt, and the button of the case slides down and clicks into position (view image). Getting the case back out is also pretty easy.

Accessing Buttons and Ports

These cases offer cutouts at various places to allow you to get at the Treo's buttons and ports, though I did run into a problem with one of them.

On the Flip Style Case, the cutout for the side buttons is not large enough toward the top, and the opening for the SD card is also too small. The Treo 680's SD card lid could be opened with a bit of prying, but when closing it I had to be careful not to get a corner stuck on a piece of leather.

Open Face Case -- Side Buttons

Flip Style Case -- SD Card Slot

On the bottom side all connectors remained accessible except for, again, the Flip Case where the HotSync and charger connector are not always free, since that is where the case uses a flap which closes on the back with a magnetic closure. For normal usage this is not really a problem since I can not imagine someone running around with a closed case and still requiring the HotSync cable to be plugged in or the charger cable being attached.

The Open Face case offers an opening on the top to see the Treo's LED and to access the vibrate switch. Not so with the Flip Style Case. Especially when going from meeting to meeting, it's not that handy to have to open the flap every time just to flip that switch. But then again, getting the case out and opening it became -- after a bit of practice -- a one-handed operation. It simply added to my already high geek-factor at work.

Keyboard Problems

Using my Treo while in one of these cases was sometimes a bit of a problem. Especially with the Open Face Case it was close to impossible to use the bottom row of the keyboard.

After detailed analysis I found this was a clear result of the bottom leather part being almost twice as thick as the one used on the Flip Style Case because a double row of stitches was used. Why Prima decided to do that is beyond my comprehension since it is for me a design flaw.

With the Flip Case the earpiece was slightly covered on the bottom, which lowered the volume a bit. Especially in noisy situations where you really need all the volume, this was a bit of a problem.

Both cases offer satisfactory openings for the speaker on the back, so using it in hands free mode using speakerphone was not a problem at all. I did quite a number of conference calls like that over those two weeks.

Using the camera was a no-brainer with the Open Face Case since there are nice openings for the lens and mirror. On the Flip Style Case, however, the same cutouts were there, but they're a bit useless.

Trying to take a picture with the flap opened using one hand is impossible. One way or the other the flap will come into view unless you use your other hand to keep it away. As far as I am concerned this cutout was not really needed on the Flip Style case, but that's me.

Neither of the cases offer a storage area for an additional SD card. Not that big a deal for me but I can understand others will find this to be a problem.

Conclusion

From a personal point of view, I liked the Flip Style Case a lot more since it protects the device far better. It also allowed me to disable Keyguard since no keys can be pressed inadvertently.

Walking around with the Open Face Case always made me be a bit more cautious to avoid bumping into things. I just felt more at ease with the Flip Style Case.

Both cases are quality products, but if you are a frequent keyboard user I certainly do not recommend the Open Face Case due to the accessibility problems of the bottom row (which contains quite important keys as Shift, Space, ALT, Menu).

The Flip Style case definitely gets a recommendation. It does what it needs to do quite well: protect your device while still being able to use it. Obviously for real heavy keyboard usage, one should even take it out of this case.

These cases are available from primacases.com. The Flip Style Case goes for $39.95 and the Open Face Style Case goes for $29.95. Both are available in black leather only, but Prima Cases offers other models in other colors.

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