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by Patrick Lenz.
Original Post: Twelve South BookBook for iPhone 5
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I’ve been a fan of the Twelve South BookBook for iPhone cases ever since the first, vintage brown version shipped for my iPhone 4 back in the day.
To be quite blunt, I didn’t like the brown, but the black version wasn’t available yet. The combination of phone case and wallet was just so very intriguing and useful to me. When Twelve South announced the black version later on, I was using an iPhone 4S and my brown version was already well worn. While the black version was unchanged feature-wise, it was just that much nicer and I’ve enjoyed using it up to the point when my iPhone 5 shipped. Of course, it didn’t fit the then current BookBook version.
BookBook, Volume 5
Since the day I had switched to the iPhone 5 and was in turn forced to switch from using the BookBook’s built-in wallet functions to a dedicated wallet, I lost count of the occasions I had forgotten to take that dedicated wallet with me. I’ve almost run out of gas because I didn’t have any credit cards with me to fill up. I went without lunch several times because I didn’t have any cash with me. Thank goodness I never ran into a police check without being able to show my driver’s license.
With much rejoice I received a newsletter from Twelve South last Monday informing me that I’d no longer have to either put my wallet in my shoe (and end up putting on a different pair) or make a fool out of myself for going out without my wallet yet again – they had come out with an updated version of the BookBook, optimised for the iPhone 5.
Twelve South Logo
And what an update it is. Twelve South managed to rethink most of the elements that make up the BookBook and deliver an excellent experience for iPhone 5 owners. It features one more credit card slot, an updated holding mechanism, and, finally, a camera hole in the back.
Of course, it retained the excellent leather fabric, the vintage book design, and the gorgeous stitching.
The open BookBook case
The new mounting mechanism consists of a slender inner-frame that your phone is just clipped into instead of the all-leather insert of the previous generation that required your phone to be inserted from the top and secured with a dedicated flap, albeit a very pretty one. This new generation holding frame is almost invisible if you look at it top down. Every millimeter of the iPhone 5’s screen is visible, all buttons are accessible, yet the phone is completely securely mounted in place.
Since I’m using a dash mount in my car I’m putting my phone in and out of its case fairly frequently. Time will tell if the mounting frame loosens over time and gets floppy. I sure hope not.
The built-in camera hole
The other welcome addition of this new version of the BookBook is a camera hole in the back. Thanks to that, you don’t have to take the phone out of the case to take a picture with the excellent new 8MP camera of the iPhone 5. Especially with kids running around the house making cute faces when you’re least prepared, those moments now can be nicely captured even with your phone “stuck” in its BookBook.
My new (classic black, of course) BookBook shipped today and I’m looking forward to being well fed for the foreseeable future.