I have been worried about not having a ... what would you call it ... a handle or an assist or something attached to the back of my cellphone for some time. I have increasingly gotten worried about dropping it or someone snatching it from my hands in a public place. Also, when I carry it, I have this tendency to cradle the bottom of it with my pinky. I just Googled "smartphone pinky" and the results from reputable sites say that's a myth, but I kind of think it's like looking down at your phone: Do it long enough and you'll have a deformity. I needed something that I could use to grip my phone with along my hand's biological lines.
My boss at the health insurance company when I was a temp first enlightened me about a gadget that you could stick behind a phone that could be used as a tighter handle for your phone. It also could extend and stand on its side if you want to see a video without holding it. The more I thought about it, the more I thought finding something to attach to the back of my phone was a no-brainer. So I bought at Wal-Mart what I think is the doohickey people use for such a function more than any other: The Pop Socket.
I'll explain what a Pop Socket is quickly. It's a plastic thing. When it's closed, you see two circles connected to a bellows. One side has an adhesive. You stick that to the back of your phone. And that's it. You can pull out the outer circle so you can slide your fingers around the narrow bellows and between the circles to hold it securely in your hand.
At first it was great. My anxiety over losing it via clumsiness or theft disappeared. But some of the annoyances I thought I would have with the Pop Socket turned out to be quite true. First of all, even though it does retract, it's still sticks out enough that I have a horrible time putting it in my pants without using my other hand to pull the mouth of my pocket open so I can slide it all the way in. That gives me nightmares that my phone could drop to the floor because it's hanging out of my ass pocket less than halfway because it's blocked by the Pop Socket. Also I realized something when I did prop up my cell on its side: I don't like to watch videos, so I don't care that I could prop it up on its side. It's not heavy, so when I tap the screen with my finger, I nudge my phone, and I hate that. Oh, and most of my apps can switch from portrait to landscape mode; I realized I find the reorientation distracting, and I actually don't like looking at my screen in landscape mode. Yeah, I can change the settings to lock in the orientation, but whatever. Finally, when I don't lie it on its side and instead push the Pop Socket in and lay it flat so it stays in portrait, the damn thing spins around. That's annoying as hell too.
And still I planned on using it, at least for a while. The peace of mind I have in being able to secure it is still indispensable. So, when I decided I needed a change of pace and switched out my skin, I looked online to see how I could take the Pop Socket off the one I'm changing out and putting it onto the one I am putting in. I was going to half-ass the job, to be sure, but I thought that using a credit card to loosen the Pop Socket, then gently peeling it off, then quickly sticking it to the new skin would work.
It did for about, oh, two days. Then the adhesive quickly dried out because it came in contact with the air, I guess. The seal was not at all tight, and then it started to loosen, and then I was able to pull the Pop Socket off my phone unintentionally. This tutorial about how to pull this off mentions putting it in cold water before re-adhering, but this tutorial said that didn't need to be done, so I didn't. Maybe it wouldn't have mattered and that you really could only stick a Pop Socket once, but maybe I should have dunked it in cold water just in case. Or, maybe I should have kept it on my first case and not try to peel it off.
So now the Pop Socket is on my nightstand, sticky side up, its gobs of adhesive slowly solidifying. Meanwhile the back of the North Stars skin I wanted the Pop Socket to stick to has adhesive remnants that I have yet to figure out how to completely remove. (It's worse with my old Vikings Football As Football skin.) I'm back to fearing that my phone will be stolen right out of my hand again. But do you know what? I'm OK with it. Sure, it's about $15 down the drain. But I see it as a test drive, and experience to learn that a Pop Socket is not for me. So maybe I will instead find a handle that has a lower profile so I can easily slide it into my pockets and not worry about it spinning on me as I scroll through Twitter. Something like the LoveHandle. Yeah, that's the ticket.
Oh, and when I think of the words "Pop Socket," for some reason I think of this:
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