Skinflips Review

Smartphone accessories are a dime a dozen nowadays, and personalizing your handset is made easy with thanks to hundreds of manufacturers internationally providing cases, skins and vinyl to make your device stand out from the crowd. Skinflips is one such company, and today we are reviewing their take on smartphone personalization with thanks to them shipping us out some iPhone 4 and Galaxy S II Skinflips.

Now product wise, Skinflips are round about what they say on the tin; skins, where by they are applied to your device and whilst providing style, also aim to provide protection from everyday wear and tear. Check out this review to see if they’re worth the money.

Review: Designs, build

Skinflips shipped us out four designs in total for review. For the iPhone 4, Skinflips shipped us out a bamboo print Skinflip and Bob Marley one, and for the S II a floral design and Union Jack print. Overall the designs available for the Skinflips are vast, and even if you don’t like the Bob Marley one pictured here, Skinflips are sure to have a ready made design which will take your fancy. However, even if they don’t, you can always upload your own custom design.

As far as pixelisation goes, the prints on our Flips’ were pretty good quality, and overall they look like an extremely high quality product and Skinflips should be proud of this.

Moving on to build quality, and you’d expect these skins to be some cheap plastic screen protector type of material which is easily scratched and will look faded over time, but not so, because Skinflips are made from a very durable plastic with lots of stretch and give, meaning that even if you scratch them or dint them superficially, they’ll only reform back to shape anyway.

During application, Skinflips are keen to stress that you should be careful when removing these from the sheets they are applied to and you should be VERY careful, because stretching them too much will cause them to lose their shape and not fit your device properly.

Application

Application of the Skinflips took us a little while to get used to, to be honest, as all accessories can be a little bit fiddly to get right first time. During our test, though, our iPhone 4 Bob Marley Skinflip application took just under 3 minutes which I was pretty impressed with (people with large stubby fingers may find it a little more tough).

On the packaging of the products there are instructions for application, where as stated above you should be very careful when peeling the skin off its underground because you may stretch it.

Before application, and as with any screen protector or skin, you should wipe your device clean and remove as much dust and lint as possible as to avoid air pockets. If you just so happen to get air pockets and you manage to balls up the application though, removing the Skinflip for re-application is very easy indeed with thanks to it leaving no residue behind.

If you do just so happen to get lint on the underside of your Skinflip for any reason, then we recommend the tried and tested old school method of just using a bit of double sided sticky tape to remove it. This should allow you to re-apply your Skinflip nicely.

The results

As you can see we succesfully applied the Bob Marley Skinflip to our iPhone 4. With no air pockets, mis-alignment and warping, the after product looks great and should give any consumer re-assurance against scratches and everyday wear and tear. As for the fit, I can’t fault the Skinflip we were sent at all, as cuts outs for all ports and buttons were there and it all aligned properly. The same can be said for our Galaxy S II floral Skinflip, which was equally as impressive once fitted.

The iPhone 4 Skinflip features two side skins, one top skin, one bottom skin, one back skin and one front skin. We decided not to apply the front skin because we have a screen protector on this side, meaning if we peel off the Skinflip it’ll take the screen protector with it.

Pricing

Skinflips are currently on a buy one get one free special offer, and the standard price for one is £12.99. This price is fairly reasonable, and the products themselves would make for a very good stocking filler indeed. If you like what you see just go here: http://www.skinflips.co.uk/.

Overall

Overall I have really enjoyed using Skinflips. On top of being reasonably priced and allowing you to design your own, the Skins feel very high quality and the end result once applied is excellent indeed, and i’ve turned a fair few heads in the high street with thanks to this.

The only future downside this product may face is keeping up with new devices, because one would hope that they’ll be quick to the mark and be able to get their iPhone 5 products out on the market asap. Down to experience, though, and as with quite a few companies, consumers can be left in the dark sometimes about future releases (hint to Skinflips: carry on your quality service, and get future Skins out quickly).

Rating: (9/10)
Note: Thank you to Skinflips for shipping us these out!