Case companies usually talk about drop protection in laboratory terms: so many feet, so many surfaces, certified by someone in a lab coat. We have something messier. Our 33,774 reviews, averaging 4.9 stars, contain hundreds of accounts of phones meeting the ground, and some of them describe accidents that should have ended at a repair counter.
What follows is an incident log. Eight drops, eight separate reviews. The setup for each entry comes only from what that owner wrote; the quote is their exact words. Where something broke, the log says so.
1. Out of an open Jeep at 50 mph
The most famous entry in the file. Her third Carved case, riding through the Rocky Mountains in the back of an open Jeep, until it was not.
my phone fell out onto the pavement doing 50 mph. I watched it bounce quite a few times and figured it would be smashed. We backed up and found it intact. Not a scratch, not a crack in the glass.
2. A welder's workday, every day
The shortest report in the log, and not a fall but a daily regimen. The reviewer's boyfriend is a welder, and the case takes whatever the trade hands it.
My boyfriend is a welder and the case withstands so much his phone is untouched. Highly recommend.
3. Down a whole flight of stairs
She buys all her cases from Carved and starts from the only honest premise in this category: the phone will be dropped. One descent stands out.
As will happen, I have dropped my phone many times. Once I dropped it down a whole flight of stairs, phone was 100% fine.
4. The blacktop, twice in two weeks
He took a chance on the case because it was on sale, and admits he was worried about how it would hold up to drops. Two weeks in, the road had already asked twice.
Once, I just accidentally dropped it onto the blacktop from about waist high. Last night, my teenage son was being a typical teenage boy and horsing around and accidently swatted it out of my hands and it bounced to the pavement again!
5. Five feet, corner first, onto concrete
The most preventable entry in the log. A few days after the case went on the phone, a mosquito landed within reach.
I went to swat a mosquito and accidentally bumped my phone...it spun end over end from a height of about 5ft and landed on its corner on concrete....the moment of truth I thought....sure enough my phone was unharmed
6. Out of a pickup, onto a gravel parking lot
The one report that includes a damage list, which is exactly why it earns its place. The reviewer is a wood artist, and the phone was riding on his lap in a pickup truck.
My phone fell off of my lap out of a pickup truck and landed on a gravel parking lot surface. The camera lens protector broke and a corner of the phone case chipped off, but my phone was not damaged.
The breakable layers broke. The phone did not. He kept buying the cases.
7. Parking lots and sidewalks, serially
No single cinematic fall here, just steady accumulation. Her second Carved case has worked through the routine version of everything above.
I've dropped mine in parking lots and sidewalks and there was never one scratch, dent or any damage whatsoever.
8. A house fire
The final entry is the one where everything fell on the phone instead. The owner assumed it was gone until the firemen brought it out.
One of my others cases even survived a house fire where firemen stepped on and dropped my roof on it. I thought my phone was a done for til the firemen brought it out. Even they were impressed.
What the log does not claim
That your phone cannot break. No case makes a phone indestructible, and a company that promises otherwise is selling you the lab coat again. Entry six is in this list because a lens protector and a case corner gave way there, and that is the honest shape of protection: the cheap layers break so the expensive one does not.
One buyer with several Carved cases remembers “the old days of Carved shown dropping them from their roof”. We do not need the roof anymore. The owners, their stairs, their parking lots, and at least one Jeep have taken over the testing program, and the reports keep arriving on their own.
Every case in the log was one of one, and so is every case in the shop right now. If your phone is going to meet a sidewalk eventually, it may as well be wearing something nobody else has.
