TwelveSouth has shrunken its BookBook MacBook case down to the size of an iPhone 4. It has also added a few pockets into which you can slot a couple of credit cards and your ID, along with a place for a few banknotes.
Unfortunately, the tackiness of the leather-bound book design has grown as its size has shrunk.
The BookBook is beautifully made. The leather is thick but not too heavy, the iPhone (or iPod Touch, if you must) fits snugly and the stitching is top notch. And when opened out as a wallet, it really looks classy and understated.
But when you close it and look at the spine, it’s as if you have walked into a particularly tacky furniture store, one which has cardboard boxes on the shelves in the shape of classic books. The spine is a strip of distressed and embossed leather which doesn’t so much look old as it looks cheap, and the gold lettering and Roman numerals (XII, of course) just make things worse.
Which is a great shame, as the idea of combining your phone and a wallet is a good one, and in this case very well executed. Even the transparent plastic sleeve for your ID has a lozenge-shaped cutout to let you easily slide it out with your thumb.
On the other hand, you might be the kind of person who loves to pretend his high-tech gadgets are olde-worlde artifacts, in which case you should go and buy this straight away. When you’re home you can leave it on top of the fake oak (MDF) cabinet that hides your HDTV.
The BookBook for iPhone 4 is available now for $60.
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