Lightning Knight HTC One M9 leather series case review
When I got my HTC One M9 on Ebay a bit back, the owner bundled in a Lightning Knight leather case with kickstand for the unit. It wasn’t something I was expecting, but it was a pleasant surprise as I didn’t know I was going to get the M9 and I didn’t have any cases for the unit lined up.
I’m currently using my HTC One M9 without a case. This will probably give you a good preface of the review to come.
The idea behind the case is an old one, and usually it works out pretty well. A flip case with a magnetic clasp and a few spaced to put credit cards or ID for a night on the town without much bulk. The case also folds a bit for a kickstand effect and on most devices I think it would be great.
Unfortunately on the HTC One M9, HTC moved the power button behind where the clasp is. This means if you want to activate your phone without pressing the power button you have to level it out and double tap the phone to initiate HTC’s wake up. Doesn’t sound all that hard does it? Try it one-handed. It’s not easy.
If you don’t want to level the phone out and just use the power button, you have to move the clasp away. If the annoyance of the clasp ended here I might still be using this case, however it also has the added effect of rendering the kickstand effect useless.
If you’re watching a movie or video and have the phone in kickstand mode, that clasp will slowly creep down to the point where it’s obscuring the screen. There’re people who claim that on the M8 version it got better, for me it didn’t.
Popping the phone in and out of the case takes fingernails and some choice cursing to gods or local wood spirits of choice. It’s not designed to come out easily, which is probably a good thing, but the more I got annoyed with the case the more I wanted it out and the more I disliked it.
The case retails for $39.99 to which I would emphatically throw a brick at someone over, but it’s currently rocking a $10.99 price tag on Amazon and oddly maintaining a 4-star rating there by people I can only assume hate convenience and design.
Actually looking at the reviews it appears most of them are for different cases, if you look there’re 25 different cases and one photo for Photoshop Disasters associated with this link.
Seriously, that’s an M9 photoshopped into a case that’s photoshopped onto an arm. If I did the math right to get the arm length based on the M8 and the height based on the wingspan, this jogger is 3″6′.
The Lightning Knight Leather Series wallet and kickstand case is available from Amazon for $10.99.
