The low tech fix for the Nokia CC-3046 hard case for the 808 PureView

Here's the CC-3046 in place on the Nokia 808 PureView. It's fairly form fitting and provides great impact protection on all sides, though at the expense of the somewhat bulky camera island pop-out and its cord tether....

 

However, there's a design problem here, in the way the camera island pop-out also covers the 808's loudpeaker, meaning that ringtones, speakerphone audio, music and podcasts are all very muffled. Doh! And this is something I've experimented with addressing below...

The look is attractive from the front, especially with black case on black phone - I do gather that Nokia are doing CC-3046 variants for each colour of 808 though, so a match should be possible.

This side shot shows the way the case wraps around the front of the 808 by a good millimetre or so, providing impact protection even if the 808 is dropped face down, in theory.

As you'd expect from a Nokia-sourced case, the cutouts (here for lanyard and microphone) are immaculately precise. In fact, so good that it really makes you wonder about the lack of cutout for the speaker, mentioned earlier... mutter, mutter.....

A look at the CC-3046's right side, showing the press-through button covers for volume and camera shutter - both are a bit stiff, but you get used to them in time. The latter might be a problem for some people in terms of introducing camera shake, but then there's always the on-screen shutter release....

But what's this? Steve with a power drill next to his beloved 808? Noooo!!!!!

 

My aim was to take the popout camera island cover and drill some small holes in it, to let the speaker sound out. I started with a series of four holes, but it's very difficult to do precisely and with no mess with a home drill. The experiment worked, but I wanted it to look better, so I took my craft knife and sliced an aperture around the holes instead. Taking one for the team here, I thought....

Now, I should mention here that I'm not the world's best DIYer and it turns out that it's almost impossible to do a neat job without a proper technician's workstation, complete with cutting mat and illuminated magnifying glass. This is how my new speaker 'slot' ended up on my CC-3046. Very functional, in that voice and music now sail out of the speaker unimpeded, but it looks a little 'rough'!

In addition to the cosmetics, the aperture wasn't perfectly aligned with the 808's speaker - a definite case of 'measure twice and cut once' rather than (what I did) 'guess and cut and then regret'! 

 

The modification works well though and lets me use the CC-3046 even with podcasts playing. There will be a little dust ingress, but with the main cover in place at least fingerprints won't be an issue.

You have to wonder why Nokia didn't think of this aspect though - a small set of perfectly machined holes when the case was being made would have kept 99% of the dust out and let 99% of the sound out.

And would have meant that I didn't need to get out my toolkit at all....