photo of the case in question

tldr : I'm a hater, but I actually love this case. It was made for me specifically. I just wish it were prettier.

tldr : Seriously, I love this case so much. Most of this post are about things I hate, which I no longer have to hate.

dbrand sux, apple sux, camera bumps sux

Dbrand is a smartphone case manufacturer that has built a cult of worship by highlighting their basic customer support as exceptional with the verbal abuse of their customers. They rush products to market, taking orders early and shipping late, only to invariably have to apologize months later for shipping a piece of shit, offering a free replacement. And Redditor's eat that shit up.

A few years ago, dBrand updated their "grip" case to have a sandpaper-y texture, turning an ugly-but-usable case into something that's uncomfortable to hold, difficult to put in your pockets, and which picks up dirt like a mother fucker.

But the state of cases is pretty dire.

I have an iPhone 16, and Apple's official case line have some dire flaws: Their plastic case is as slippery as caseless, their silicon case is too grippy and gets stuck in my pockets, and their "FineWoven" case is less than a bad joke. Worst of all, none of the cases on the market fail to address the design flaw we call the "camera bump".

The asymmetrical camera bump causes the phone to wobble when placed on a flat surface, and turns the camera lenses - the worst place to put your finger on your phone - into the only fingerhold for your hand. This is fixed on the iPhone 17 Pro, which copies wholesale the Google Pixel's camera bar, but I don't have or want an iPhone 17 Pro.

So, when dBrand announced their Tank case, the first thing I noticed was the full-width camera lip. Designed for the iPhone 17 Pro, this case promises to relieve every other poor soul of the affliction of the curse of the asymmetrical camera bump.

But it's not just that: The whole Tank case looks like a tire tread. It doesn't just promise a camera "bar' to rest your finger, the whole thing is greebled to hell. Awesome - that's a second long-time wishlist item of mine. Popsockets are too small for my hand, the accessibility cases are too large for my pockets. I had sketches of a fantasy (a magsafe ring + camera lip to make it easier to hold my phone) that I saw realized in this case.

And finally, the case appeared mostly free of that horrible "microdot" sandpaper texture of dBrands grip case.

Could my Soul of the Eternal Hater finally be put to rest?

yeah,

the tank case is good actually,

The articulation "this is like something made in a lab for me specifically" is a funny way to say things, but that's literally what happened here. That's how things are made. I'm the market demographic, and they made this in a lab for me and people like me.

I've had this case for 24 hours, and I'm anticipating needing to buy a toothbrush to remove unseemly grime from the myriad textures on this phone. But otherwise?

Yeah, the raised lip does make my phone usable when sitting on a table. No more wobbles.

Yeah, the greebles do make my phone usable with one hand. It used to be that my index finger could rest against my lenses and my pinkie could support the bottom. Now, my hand is like a spider or rock climber of sorts. I'd still appreciate a smaller phone, but this solves a lot of my problems.

Yeah, the texture is much better. It's that injection-molded dimpled plastic you would recognize anywhere. It's reminiscent of the Nintendo GameBoy. It has enough friction that my phone isn't flinging itself from every surface at the slightest provocation, but not so much that it's pulling my pocket out with it when I remove it.

Being away from the Apple Official case, there's another benefit that I appreciate: The lack of the MagSafe animation. See, when you remove or put on an Apple Official case, there is a full-screen input-blocking multiple-second long animation. This is a problem, because the Apple Official Silicon Case contains only a small cutout for the USB C port, making it so that the bodies of many USB C cables cannot fit, requiring you to take off the case to charge. Combined with the increased battery usage with iOS 26, you can see how this might make you bemoan the baffling UX catastrophe, and curse the generation of UI designers with no coherent philosophy beyond "copy what Apple does". Curses!!

But there were things I like about the Tank case that I didn't anticipate: This is the easiest case to "Swipe from the Edges" with. (Each successive iPhone chases a smaller bezel, which makes the phone less usable. The smaller bezel is not accommodated for in software, and the UI requires swipes from the edges for vital workflows. Cases compete with fingers for the increasingly-scarce bezel real estate. I still find myself failing to invoke the "swiped from the edge" action, but it feels remarkably more consistent compared to Apple's Official Silicon case).

I wish it had some other case niceities, like a place to add a wrist strap or stylus. But I don't use those any more, so it's not a deal breaker at all for me.

Finally, the tacticool tiretread aesthetic is slightly ameliorated by Illuminati symbol on the back, which is not becoming of the EDC-pilled matte-black-everything SWAT-aspiring guy. But this case makes my phone significantly more physically accessible , so I can accept the social hazard of what this communicates. I'll simply have to lean harder into "giving faggot". Good thing it's crop top season.

tldr?

• I'm a dbrand hater but I love this case. It checks every wishlist item for me.

• Turns the asymmetrical camera bump into a symmetrical one, provides a good fingerhold

• Greebled like a scifi tire-tread, makes my hilariously large phone into one I can hold.

• Texture is good, injection molded like the GameBoy

• Does not block the entire phone for two seconds when you put it on or take it off. (This is something the official iPhone cases do!)

• It's 95% as ugly as I anticipated, which is "Very Ugly".