Today I received a Trident Kraken iPhone 5 case. I was looking forward to this case but was somewhat disappointed in the end. I already have two Trident Aegis cases, one in blue and the other in black. These I love. They provide a good 2 stage protection of silicone and outer plastic, with all the ports protected with flaps.

The Trident Aegis pictured below has a large enough opening for all my headphones. It uses comes with a good screen protector as well.

The Trident Kraken shown below, is slightly different. It is a 3 piece case. Silicone and 2 pieces of plastic, one for the back, the other on the front. It also features a flip out stand, which clips on to the modular connection on the rear. With this modular system you can attach a variety of add ons from bicycle mount to a windscreen mount and more. Weirdly, the belt clip fastens over the front of the screen. Bad design as to use the phone you have to remove the belt clip. The other poor design is the headphone flap. It’s too small to fit most headphones so you have to use the supplied adapter tool. However when I used this adapter with a number of headphones the sound only came out of one side. The other positive aspect of this case is the built in screen protector. There were no issues with this at all. Just one small point, the case weighs 78g without the belt clip. So the combined weight with the iPhone 5 is 199g.

In summary, if the Kraken had a larger headphone flap, this would be a keeper. But it doesn’t so I can only recommend this case if you don’t listen to music. The Aegis is superb.

Recently I received a Bluetooth iPad Mini Keyboard which also acts as a cover/case for the iPad Mini.

I was very curious as to how good it would be both as a keyboard and as a case. The first thing I did was unbox the keyboard. Inside there is a very clear and well written English instruction leaflet and a micro usb cable. The keyboard features bluetooth v3, designed to allow the Mini to rest upright and then close up as a case/cover, a home button, sleep mode, 60 day standby time, 55 hours uninterrupted working time and dust and waterproof resistant.

Pairing with the iPad Mini was a breeze. Turn on the bluetooth in the iPad Mini’s settings. Turn on the keyboard and hit connect. On the iPad select the keyboard and then type the pairing number on the keyboard that appears on the iPad screen, followed by enter. And that is it.

The keyboard has a home button, long pressing activates Siri. A quick double tap of the home button brings up the multitasking. The on screen keyboard automatically disappears, but you can bring this back up by pressing the dedicated keyboard button. Typing at first feels a bit cramped and I kept missing the shift key on the right hand side of the keyboard. Auto correction and capitalisation doesn’t happen automatically. However, with more usage my speed increased. In terms of design it is great for holding the Mini in an upright position, and I like how it then doubles up as a case. Photos as below. To protect the back of the Mini being scratched, I have a vinyl carbon cover attached.

Overall an average solution, but the keyboard keys are too squashed together for quick typing. It is not as quick as the on screen keyboard either, nor is it quick as a full size keyboard. Otherwise it works as described.