My bubble wrap phone case doubles as an audio experience

Phone Case of the Month is a monthly series in which we live with, and subsequently review, our time with a phone case. Phone cases are one of our only ways to express individuality with our smartphones, so what do our phone case choices say about us?

Most of my phones cases are a feast for the eyes. This month’s is a treat for the ears — it literally makes bubble wrap popping sounds. You’re welcome. I found this case at Urban Outfitters, and I won’t apologize for that. The company does a good job sourcing its phone cases, and if you don’t want to scour the internet for a unique case, UO’s got you.

That said, Urban Outfitters customers seem to hate this Bubble Pop case. Out of three total reviews, two are one star:

I trust these internet people to tell the truth about their case experiences, but I also needed to try the bubble pop myself. After a few weeks with it, I echo both of these reviewers’ experiences. The case is definitely never coming off without some form of industrial tool, and it doesn’t do any work to protect my phone. There’s no bumper on the sides, so if you drop your phone on its face, that’s probably the end of your screen. I dropped my phone once and it’s now in terrible condition. It embarrasses me.

But apart from all that bad, the actual “bubble wrap” feature works quite well. Each bubble is a button you push, so they make a sound similar to a pen clicking. The action of pressing them also feels like pressing down on the top of a pen. Bask in the experience here:

The sound itself is crinkly and annoying. It catches people’s attention and might make them hate you, and yet I enjoy pressing them. They also feel nice on my hand when I’m just holding my phone, although they definitely don’t feel good if my hand is sweaty. Sometimes the silicon over the buttons tries to come off, but I’ve been able to prevent that from happening up until now. People haven’t said anything about this case. I don’t think they really notice it because it’s white and not super obvious. They do want to try the bubble popping once they realize they can.

I kind of miss having a regular, flat case, but this bubble wrap case is never coming off my phone, so I guess this is my forever reality now.