Early last month, I received an e-mail from Vincent Ko, a recent business school graduate from Georgetown University, with this story about a product he designed called the iFlip:
“How does a business started by a college student only selling one type of iPhone case reach $32,000 in sales during its first year with no advertising and no media outreach? By creating a unique iPhone case and offering the best customer service possible. At the time I was a student at Georgetown University and I had just gotten an iPhone for my 21st birthday. Realizing that I only needed to carry around some cards and cash on a regular basis, I thought there had to be a way to combine my wallet and iPhone. During a late night study session a light bulb went off – create an iPhone wallet case.
The first prototype was created by cutting up an old leather wallet and sewing it together with an iPhone case. It took several trials to refine the ideal design but it was eventually picked up by a leather wallet manufacturer. In the first year we have sold close to 1,000 iFlipWallet cases through our company’s website.”
Vincent asked if he could send me a free sample of his product. My first thought was that this was a crazy idea. Why would anyone want a wallet with an iPhone in it? Like many folks, I put a wallet in my back pocket, and I cannot imagine sitting on my iPhone. Many women put an iPhone in a purse, but then why would you need to keep the iPhone together with your wallet when there is more than enough room in all but the smallest purses to keep both an iPhone and a wallet without needing to combine them? But for some reason I found his story compelling, perhaps because I graduated from Georgetown Law School so we had that in common. I agreed to try out the iFlip wallet, and I have been doing so for the last few weeks. To my surprise, this is actually a really nice and useful product that I think many of you might be interested in as well.
The iFlip is a leather bi-fold wallet that feels good in your hands, like, I suppose, any good leather wallet. You slide your iPhone in one half of it, and when the wallet is closed you can access the front of your iPhone and the home button through an opening in one side of the iFlip.
There are openings on the side so that you can access the volume buttons and mute switch. The wallet stays closed with a small strap that attaches to the back of the wallet with a magnet, a feature that works very well.
When you open the wallet, you see four pockets to hold two or three credit cards or IDs and some cash. It is hard to tell from the below picture unless you click to enlarge it, but there is an opening in the see-through area where you place cash so that you can slide the cash in and out of that pocket. There is also a hole for the iPhone camera so that if you want to take a picture while your iPhone is in the iFlip, you can just open the wallet and don’t have to remove your iPhone.
The wallet does not hold very much, just a few essentials. Each pocket can really only hold a single card, and the place where you can slide cash doesn’t hold more than a few bills. But because it holds so little, I realized what the iFlip is really for. This is probably not going to be the wallet that you use every day. It is just a wallet that you use on a special occasion when you just want to carry all of the essentials — a few cards, some money and an iPhone — in one place.
For example, it just so happened that I was trying out the iFlip during Mardi Gras season here in New Orleans. When I take my kids to a parade route, I don’t need to carry much with me. I figured I should have a driver’s license and a credit card on me (not that I would be likely to use them at a parade) and a little money just in case I want to by something from a vendor, plus of course I want my iPhone with me. The iFlip is too big to put in my back pocket, but at a parade it was nice to have everything in one place in a front pocket on my pants. That way I could always know exactly where the iPhone and those other valuable items were, without the risk that a single credit card or ID or $20 bill might slip out of my pocket.
And it is easy to use the iPhone when it is in the iFlip, whether for making a call, taking quick photo to upload to Facebook, looking up some quick info on the Internet (such as the latest parade update on Twitter to see how many blocks away it was), etc. Since Mardi Gras, I’ve found the iFlip is just as useful when I want to carry only the essentials to take my kids to the Zoo or a park.
I had two issues with the iFlip, but frankly Vincent Ko warned me about them before he even sent me the product. First, the pockets are very tight. He told me that with use over time, the leather will loosen. So far he is right, although I look forward to them getting a little more loose over time. Second, the edges of the iFlip cover about 1mm of each edge of the iPhone screen. Ko told me that because the leather loosens over time, this was a conscious design decision so that after normal use, the leather would adjust to the size of the iPhone screen instead of starting at the right size and then getting too big. Even after a few weeks of occasion use, the edges still have a little more to go before the size is a perfect fit, but I suppose I just need to give it more time.
The list price of the iFlip is $39.99, but right now it is on sale for $29.99. You can buy a model for either the iPhone 4 or the iPhone 3G / 3GS. If you like the idea of carrying your iPhone and a few essentials in one place, perhaps over the weekend or when you are traveling, the iFlip is worth your consideration. It is a nice and useful product.
Click here to get the iFlip from the iFlip website ($29.99).
I live in DC. It’s probably the same everywhere. People in the Metro all seem to have electronic devices. Hardly anyone reads books anymore without an e-reader. These devices get snatched all the time. If you use your device in public and it has a wallet attached to it, doesn’t it make it a more attractive target?
[Jeff responds: Good point, although you may protect your iPhone and wallet more by having them in your hands as opposed to having the wallet in a back pocket where I suppose you could be the victim of a pick pocket. If someone sees you using this in public, they are probably just going to think that this is a case for an iPhone, not a wallet. But who knows.]
This is not an original product. There is a store here in NYC that I frequent that has reams of iphone cases, two of them have wallets (I think one of them is made by Incase). I keep my phone either in a shirt/jacket pocket or my right front pants pocket, and such a case is too thick for the latter.
I got an iFlip for my G3 then upgraded to G4 version.
After using the G3 version for several months, I continued to have trouble getting credit cards out of the very tight pockets. In my opinion they are WAY too deep and some only leave a sliver of the card available for man-sized fingers to pinch. The worst offender is the pocket directly under the camera hole. Cards inserted into it deep enough to keep the camera hole un-blocked will require a pair of needle nose pliers to extract. I’ve resorted to removing the camera from the iFlip to take pictures since I need that pocket. I wrote the company suggesting they make the pockets shallower but was disappointed when my G4 version arrived with the same deep-pocket design “flaw”.
Despite this, I still love having only one item to keep up with for phone and wallet and would buy another if this one vanished. I’ve used it every day for almost a year and it’s held up very well.
Don’t waste your time, or money on this product.
I have had an iFlipWallet for both my iPhone 3G and iPhone 4 that came apart. I didn’t ask for replacement on the iPhone 3 case because I upgraded to an iPhone 4. However, after less than a year of use the iFlipWallet for my iPhone 4 also came apart at the seams. The warranty email address for iFlipWallet results in bounced messages and the person who monitors the info@ address has not responded to multiple emails asking for information on how to get a replacement case.
The claim on iFlipWallet.com that this product has a lifetime warranty is an outright lie.
So I’m back looking for the next version of the iFlip Wallet for the newly released iPhone 6. I didn’t upgrade my phone to version 5 so I’ve been using the iPhone 4 version since my first post in 2011. Having been an iFlip customer for over 3 years allows me to comment on the durability of the product and the warranty. My first iFlip wallet for iPhone 4 lasted about a year and a half before it started to show significant signs of wear, particularly along the bottom pocket holding the phone and at the closing flap. Understandably, there is very little wallet material at the bottom pocket holding the phone because it needs to allow user access to the charging slot and microphone-speakers. There is also minimal wallet material at the connected side of the closing flap due to the oval slot that accommodates the camera and speaker so I can see where this would get a great deal of fatigue wear. When the bottom pocket holding the phone looked like it was about to let my phone drop through, I contacted iFlip, sent my old wallet in and they sent me a brand new one. To my utter surprise and delight, the replacement iFlip wallet featured the shallower pocket design changes I had suggested to the company years before and I’m happy to report, they made a world of difference to its functionality. I’ve never lost any contents and the cards are easy to grasp and remove. GOOD JOB iFlip!
One observation needs to be mentioned. I’m not a leather expert or know the proper definition of “bonded leather” but the wear I’m seeing appears to reveal a synthetic product and not what I consider natural animal hide. In the wear spots that I mentioned before, the outer black leather-like layer is worn away revealing a fabric like woven material. This fabric is currently the only thing holding my phone in and is what’s keeping the closing flap on. Perhaps “bonded” is another term for “artificial”?
So, in my experience, each iFlip wallet that I’ve owned held up for about a year and a half of moderate everyday use. I didn’t have any issues getting a replacement. I think if the iFlip was made from genuine animal hide leather, I would still be using the original iPhone 4 version that I purchased in 2011.
Regardless of that it’s made from, I will purchase the next version of the iFlip if they make it available for the iPhone 6 due to its functionality and ease of use. I can’t imagine carrying my phone and wallet separately again. And, if the makers are listening, I’ll gladly pay more for higher grade materials… Just keep the pockets shallow enough for man-sized fingers to grasp the cards. I had to use needle nose pliers to get the cards out of the previous design.