For all of its greatness, Apple Pay hasn’t nearly killed the need to take your wallet with you wherever you go. But if you are like me, it has lightened your load a little bit. Instead of carrying around 5 credit cards, I now carry around one each of debit and credit. Combine that with some other de-Costanzifications (scan insurance cards and health club cards for instance) I’ve made recently, I can now consolidate my wallet into a few card slots.
What I’m getting at here is that I can follow the lead of my wife and now consolidate my iPhone and my wallet finally. I’ve chosen two amazing iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus cases from my favorite iPhone case manufacturers to get me there: Pad and Quill’s Little Pocket Book ($60 -$10 off for Black Friday) and Twelve South’s $50 Surfacepad…
First up here is the Twelve South Surfacepad for iPhone 6. If you are at all familiar with Twelve South’s lineup, which has been around for 2 years, you know you are getting a top notch hand-crafted cover for the iPhone 6. On the inside you have a soft leather that provides an automatic dust cover/wiper for your iPhone, and on the outside you have quality stitched leather in four color options. I chose white to match the white/silver iPhone 6.
The back is ‘stickied’ onto the iPhone 6 and can be removed and added again a number of times (I am about six add/removes in and it still works great).
I beat the Hell out of my iPhone and these leather cases hold up for many months – perhaps even a year under harsh conditions. This year with the bigger iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, Twelve South added two slots for credit cards or a driver’s license which is huge. You can double up and maybe fit four cards in the ‘wallet’, but then you are already compromising the tight fit and finish of the case when it is closed.
The downside of the SurfacePad from Twelve South is that it doesn’t provide side impact protection for the iPhone 6. While this keeps the package slim, it kind of eliminates the whole reason to have a case to begin with: protection. You are pretty much naked when dropping the iPhone on its edges here. Sure the back and front are covered, but the edges are where you are more likely to take a hit.
And that brings up my second issue: although I’ve slimmed down my wallet, I do need to carry around a few more cards. That leads us to…
iPhone 6 Little PocketBook by Pad and Quill ($10 off today/Monday only). So my card usage is down, but I still need to carry around a license, a credit card and a few miscellaneous cards (and cash!) that blow out the SurfacePad. Not so for the luxurious Little Pocketbook by Pad and Quill. Like all Pad and Quill cases before, this is a serious wow! item with thick leather bound by heavy duty stitching and wood interior.
Like a Bentley or Rolls Royce of iPhone 6/Plus cases, this one is also very large as you can see in the gallery below, but you can pretty much drop this from your roof onto a diamond floor and expect not to see even a scuff. As for the leather, it is much, much thicker than the SurfacePad and will easily outlast your iPhone 6’s usability.
I ended up going with the Little Pocket Book by Pad and Quill after using both for a few weeks. The SurfacePad is awesome and will have many happy users, especially at its $49.99 price tag, pleasant color selection and super-thin profile.
But for me, the Little Pocket Book’s luxury, ruggedness, protection and full wallet utility were easily worth the extra thickness and $70 $60.
