Essential Phone: Fixing The Slippery Backside

The Essential Phone PH-1 has a very slippery body. It's frontside is covered with a pane of reinforced glass, and its back is mostly ceramic. The phone is a good weight (not to heavy, not too light,) but in combination with the front or back lying on any surface at even very small angles, the PH-1 slides right off and down, down to the surface of the floor or ground below.

To combat the slippy nature of the Essential Phone, one must attain a case. At the moment, no major brands have stepped up to the plate to create what I consider to be the ideal case: all silicone. Instead, I decided to test out a skin.

Over at DBrand, they've got one whole heck of a lot of skins for the Essential Phone. They only have skins for the back, but the skins they've got for the back are numerous in supply. The skin I chose for the Essential Phone was "black leather."

This DBrand skin came in a unique cardboard box with DBrand branding. Inside the box was a plastic sleeve with a card with instructions and links as well as the skin itself. Like other DBrand skins, this one works with 3M sticker backing. I've used a lot of skins for products of all sorts, and every one that's used 3M has stuck basically forever.

The DBrand skin fit precisely on the back of the Essential Phone. Insanely precisely, with no room for error, to a shocking degree. I'm talking, do not make a mistake, or you'll have to try again, levels of precise. Luckily I only messed up once, and the level of sticky of this product is such that I was able to lift it back up and try again, just once.

Now the Essential Phone no longer slides off the table. This backing skin is not made of real leather, but the patterning combined with the ever-so-slight level of friction between the case and the surface of the table make for a no-slip situation. The phone also feels at least as premium as before, if not more so.

The skin I've tried out here comes from DBrand and can be purchased direct from DBrand online at DBrand dot com. This skin is available from DBrand for around $9.95 USD right this minute.