The Nokia 5800 casing

I have been to a few shops (OK, only one) and they do not sell any additional protective casing for the Nokia 5800 because, knowing me, the phone would either be dropped or scratched in less than a week. And so, five days ago, I bought these casings from eBay for less than RM22.00 (plus postage) in anticipation for such thing that might happen. And if I was not able to get the Nokai 5800, I would have wasted the money for nothing. Luckily, instead of taking more than 10 days (I mean, who is going to be there when the postman comes during Chinese new Year?) it came just in time.

And so, here it is, in front of my table first thing in the morning!
The casing was in black and also in blue. I decided to use the blue
casing first. It has a very nice colour and its just a matter of days
before it gets its first scratch. The blue has different shades as if
they added a drop of pearl colour in it. It f it was green, it would
be same as Nokia's Matrix 7110 phone when it came out.

Just like those crystal cases, this is just thin plastic with very nice paint
applied. And it clips the two halves via plastic tabs. All nice and cool, right?
And it wraps the quite closely as if its the second skin

I was so impressed with it that I forgot about the "Hey, wait a minute
moments" until I started to use the phone.

So, when I wanted to listen to the MP3 player or use the camera, I noticed
the buttons have disappeared. Hey, wait a minute........

Yeah, the casing have completely blocked them. I think when they got the
phone prototype, they were unaware of the buttons, especially the touch
sensitive media button near the fontal camera. So, the only way to get around
this is to place shortcuts on the screen. Which is no biggie for me since I wanted
to do this as I hate to press the middle button to access the SMS function.
But for the camera, I think if I cannot stand this, I would have to cut out the
hole myself. And knowing me, it will be badly scratched.

Although the casing was stated to be of hard rubber, I did not notice the
rubber but the paint coating on the casing is very slippery despite its
non-reflective sheen, which should be having rough surfaces. In theory, that is

[Update: 21012009 1826]
Just my luck that I broke the casing trying to free the shutter button as it keeps going into camera mode once in a while. Let's see if I have any glue when I get back home......... haih.

[Update: 21012009 23:52]
OK, I used a drill bit, some coarse tip and made some improvements via a rotary tool. All done except for the media button which I am going to leave it alone.

This is the cacat part where I screwed up. When I put the
piece in my back pocket, it disappeared when i reached
home. So, I have to make do with the error.

Two holes here for the speakers. Now the music coming
out sounds much louder and more solid. Yay!