Get a grip with egrips

egrips I have never been one for accessorizing my phones and PDAs. I don't add add blinking lights, I don't wear the devices around my neck, I don't even buy cases for them. Call me a purist.

So perhaps I am not the best person in the world to test a product like egrips, a product that claims to keep your phone or PDA from sliding around in addition to letting you add some, er, "style" to it. Well, my conservative tastes are not so sure about the style benefits here, at least not in the samples I received, but I can tell you whether or not egrips do an effective job of making your expensive little handheld device stay put when you place it somewhere.

The short answer: Yes.

They do an amazingly effective job, actually. Take the photo at the right. That is my T68i dangling from the curved surface of my car's dashboard. It was resting comfortably. I admit that I did place it at the most extreme position I could, for the sake of the photo, but there is another image later on after the story that shows an almost equally extreme position that I had the phone in as I drove around town getting lunch and picking up some office supplies.

So if my egrips equipped T68i can hang onto a curved dashboard while I drive around town, I think it is safe to say that if I actually laid it on something relatively flat that it would take a pretty major impact to get it to move. An impact large enough that you would probably have other things on your mind. Like car repairs.

I also received sample egrips fro my iPAQ and Palm device. I didn't find these quite as useful, since they didn't fit the devices as well. They serve the technical purpose of keeping the PDAs from sliding, but they looked pretty odd. You can see what I mean in the photos after the story.

So, how do they work? Well, egrips are relatively simple in design. On the side of the egrips that face your phone or PDA, there appears to be some relatively weak adhesive. I say relatively weak because you can pretty easily remove the egrips and place them in another position or on another device. But with that said, I was unable to get the edges to pull up on their own, even after a day of using the egrips equipped T68i while wearing jeans. The pockets were fairly tight, giving plenty of chances to catch an edge.

The exterior side of the egrips are grippy, dimpled rubber. They are not sticky at all. Honestly. They don't seem to attract pocket-lint or dust much, if at all, and can easily be cleaned by wiping them with soap and water. But when you place the device on any even remotely flat surface, the egrips grab. It's really quite cool.

You can also purchase egrips that are a bit thinner and missing the dimples. These egrips are meant to allow you to get your device in its holster and such things. I can tell you that I was still able to get my PDAs into their cradles with the thicker egrips, though.

Egrips sells a variety of colors and patterns for many different phones and PDAs, including some generic egrips pieces that you can cut down for use on any unsupported device you might own.

Since I use Bluetooth headsets all the time, my phone tends to stay in my pocket. But if you are the type to toss your phone around more, then egrips will provide a bit of extra protection to your device and will keep it from sliding out of your reach. And if you like the "style", consider that a bonus. I think I would have preferred the simple silver or black egrips, myself.

More photos on the following pages.