a case of red

The man from UPS dropped off some electrical components in a couple of packets the other day. It was my updated phone and various related bits and pieces. The switchover was fine and it's all up and running. Using the 'Waterloo train line test', it's holding the phone and data signal a lot better than the prior phone.

There's one area of particular irritation.

It's the case, which is described "to follow every hole, button and curve of the phone". Yes, "even the holes on the bottom are cut to exact specifications with a high speed drill normally used for cutting circuit boards."

The thing is, with this red artwork on the phone, it won't charge in the charging dock.

It's too big.

The precision case fits snugly, so getting it back off the phone is a small test of strength. The only leverage point on the back is the small aperture for the camera. I'm not happy about using the '5 element lens' as the pressure point to remove the case.

As another experiment I tried using an old dock with one of the little old style to new style pin adapters. That doesn't work either. The 'new' pins are not long enough. So the phone won't work in its case on any music playback device from the older style (or presumably the new style).

The front of the new dock is also poorly designed given the new fingerprint scanner. There's a small overlap so that the button is fiddly to use.

I'm expecting the car cradle dock to arrive any day. I'm already predicting that it won't work with the case either.

I get the impression that the case/dock/connector designers have been kept apart on this particular piece of industrial design.