Windows Phone Thoughts: Another Journey Down Under: nSignia PDA Cases Revisited

A Look at the Book-Style Case...
I went from a book-style case for my iPAQ h1940, to a flip-style case for my Axim X50v. While I'm favoured towards the flip-style design, there are still plenty of standout features in the book-style design. After all, it all comes down to personal preferences, and I know many of you are book-style fans!


Figure 4: The book-style Eagle Ray case from the front...

In my last review, I discussed nSignia's push-button rivets and it seemed not too many people liked them. So nSignia went ahead and asked many PDA users what they wanted most in their cases. Enter the commonly-used button cutouts. Nothing new here, but it's definitely a vast improvement over the push-button rivet idea since it eliminates the accidental pressing of the PDA's buttons which I loathed in my last review. The size of the cutouts is large enough for a thumb, finger or stylus to fit through, so if you've got oversized digits, you need not worry about not being able to press the buttons.

There are also cutouts for the microphone and wireless light of the Axim X50v. These are covered by a transparent plastic, which is great for the light, but not for the microphone. I was a little worried when I first saw this since a blocked microphone port is a recipe for an audio recording disaster. But it wasn't... Microphone functionality didn't even appear to be impaired and it worked fine when I tested the X50v (in the case) with Microsoft Voice Command and VITO SoundExplorer 2005.

nSignia's cases are not cradle-friendly, which for some, is the crunch point for choosing to go with a particular vendor's case. But there's an advantage to this! Most cradle-friendly cases leave very little protection on the bottom edges of the device, purely because the protective leather must be kept thin for it to fit in the cradle. Here's where nSignia's cases go one-up above a lot of the others since the case is kept well protected on every single edge of the device. It's not the end of all case-friendly synchronisation solutions though. The case still allows you to insert a synchronisation cable - e.g. the Lil' Sync Pro from Pocket PC Techs.


Figure 5: ...and the same case from the back.

Now here's where I go into a little discussion about book-style vs. flip-style. Both cases offer ample room for accessing the card slots and stylus. With the book-style case, it's always open for access. With the flip-style case, that space can only be accessed when the case itself is open. But then the book-style case doesn't allow you to access the lock switch and the wireless/record buttons on the left of the X50v, whereas the flip-style case does. Being a frequent user of the lock switch and the record button I currently have mapped to Voice Command, I guess you can now see why I prefer the flip-style case over the book-style case, but as I said, it's all based on personal preferences. Finally, you'll have to open the buckle of the flip-style case to access the synchronisation port. That's not the case with the book-style case. Weigh the options, and I'm sure at the end of the day, you'll make the right choice over which style of case to go for.


Figure 6: The book-style case's removable storage module.