What is YOUR favorite version of the Sector 5?

Get your vote in to enter yourself in the Sector 5 Sweepstakes! We’ll choose 5 winners and for each friend you refer that enters, you get another shot at the title!

Element Case Custom Sector 5 Colors

Our Design Studio has been live for about a year so that customers could design and build a custom Element Case Vapor COMP or Vapor Pro for their iPhone 4. Now we’re blowing the lid off the iPhone 5 case market and you can build an Element Case Sector 5 of your very own design by choosing from different side rails, end caps, corner links, screws, power buttons, screws and back plates.

With over 40,000 combinations of parts and accessories available, the Sector 5 that you design is uniquely yours. So, each custom iPhone case that comes out of the Design Studio is labeled DS-01, meaning that it is the first in a series that you can create or 1 of 1 available.

We’ll build your new custom iPhone case exactly to the specs that you choose and deliver it to you. Create your own Sector 5 now at the Element Case Design Studio!

While we’ve always been thought of as the iPhone case company, we’re widening our horizons with this, our first offering for the Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone. The all new Atom follows in the footsteps of our insanely popular ION 4 iPhone case with its TPU chassis and real carbon fiber inlaid back plate.

Rōnin or rounin was a Samurai with no lord or master during the feudal period of Japan. From the death or fall of his master, or after the loss of his master’s favor or privilege, the Ronin is alone. The Ronin answers to no one, and abides by no rules but his own. He becomes his own ruler.

The 2013 Ronin Line is a Masterpiece from Element Case.

Special showing and pre-release of Ronin FE (First Edition) on December 4th to our Element Case “Loyalty Rewards” members only. If you would like to be notified of Element Case pre-release products in the future please create an account at elementcase.com and start enjoying all the benefits that come with being a “Loyalty Rewards” member.

UPDATE: Ronin is available for purchase now…

iPhone 5 Rash Guard II, Black and Silver

Rash Guard- “A means to prevent a rash.”
In this case, the rash I’m referring to are scratches and scuffing that can occur on the all so delicate aluminum band of the iPhone 5. As you know, the iPhone 5 utilizes an aluminum band rather than stainless steel. This is one of the reasons why the iPhone 5 is so light. Aluminum also allows the band to be anodized in a black finish or silver for the white iPhone. But this comes at a price, as aluminum is a very soft metal, compared to stainless steel. Being specialist in the area of precision machined aluminum and anodizing, our design team realized early on that the iPhone 5 would be very quick to show wear from every day use, even if a protective case is used. Although our cases provide extreme impact protection, we wanted decrease the chances of micro blemishes to the aluminum band caused by fine dirt or grit or UV rays that can fade the black anodizing.

It’s extra protection for your iPhone 5 when using an Element Case or any other case, especially if you take the case off periodically.

Rash Guard II now in Black and Silver-
The first Rash Guard we offered with the Sector 5 FE was clear and fingerprints tended to show through the special material, so we added little tabs to make the application easier. But the thinness of the material made it difficult to remove the tabs without distorting it. Now we’ve changed to a thicker material in black and silver to match your phone. It’s much easier to install. Orders shipping next week will include both black and silver version of the Rash Guard II.

We will offer the new Rash Guard II for sale soon on our website, and additional colors will follow.

Thank you,
Element Case Design Department

Ok, we’ve got some good news and some bad news:

First, the bad news: We have now closed the Sector 5 Pre-Order Reservation list sign-up and we are no longer accepting new entries. Element Case would like to thank everyone that has signed up and patiently waited to receive a pre-order invitation. If you are on the list and have not yet received an email from us inviting you to order, don’t worry because it is still coming. We have just shut down the list so that it will not get any bigger and you will still have an opportunity to order a Sector 5 First Edition or your choice of the available Sector 5 Standard Edition cases.

…And the good news is that Sector 5 Standard Edition will be available to the public without a pre-order reservation starting on Monday, November 19th! We’ll post more news about the release here or visit the Sector 5 product page on that day to get your own!

We’ve been getting a lot of people asking us how we came up with the design of the Sector 5, so I thought I’d share some of the design history of this very unusual iPhone case.

In summer of 2011, I was at Northstar Bike Park in Tahoe, for some downhill mountain biking and R&R with my buddies. All weekend I had been pondering the fate of the iPhone 4 prior to the 4S announcement. As I walked into the Northstar Village Oakley store, my attention was instantly taken by a display of modular goggles. That’s when it struck me: How cool would it be if our case was modular, customizable, and had upgradeable optional components?

I started sketching some ideas in the condo that night and again over coffee the next day. Some of the original sketches drawn on a Northstar pad are shown in the image above.

Soon after, two good things came about for Element Case.

The first was the Element Case Design Studio, which allows people to custom build a case on our website and have it shipped within days. Kudos to our web development team and supply chain team for making that happen.

The second was the design of the Sector 4 for the iPhone 4S. You may be asking yourself why we created the Sector 4 knowing that the iPhone 5 was on the way. Well, it’s because the design is complex, and the concept would need to be developed and proven prior to the release of the iPhone 5.

So, after a long year of development we launched the Sector 4, and then we eagerly awaited the arrival of the iPhone 5 in order to apply the Sector 4 design language to a new Sector 5.

Getting back to the original concept of “modular” and “upgradable,” we’ll soon be offering cool accessories and upgrades to the Sector 5. All of this takes time but we’re already rolling, so be patient as great new things are on the way for the Sector 5 line.

-Jeff Sasaki, CEO

The release of the Element Case Sector 5 aluminum case for iPhone 5 is highly anticipated and we appreciate how patient you’ve been while we kick off production and start shipping the first orders. Even though there are images and information on the Sector 5 product page, we’ve seen that you still have a lot of questions about availability and details of our newest CNC aluminum iPhone 5 case. We’ve seen the questions in the comments on our blog, Twitter, Facebook and Google+ pages and wanted to get them together in one place so that you could see answers.

Top 5 Sector 5 FAQ

• 5. When will the Sector 5 orders ship/be released/be available to those not on the list?

  When you get your invitation (which are going out faster all the time), it will have the estimated shipping date for your group. That date is not exactly the date that your order will go out, but the date for which we will start shipping cases from your group in the order in which they were received. We complete production on new inventory every day and if we run out on the first day, more orders will continue shipping the day after.

  Production is ramping up and we are able to produce more and more cases each day. Thanks for sticking with us, we’re able to send out more invitations to order for each group and yours will be coming very soon.

• 4.  Is there going to be a Vapor Pro for iPhone 5?

  The Element Case Vapor Pro is an awesome iPhone 4 case, but now we’re talking about iPhone 5 and we’re always looking ahead so that we can bring you innovative, original products that you’ve never seen before anywhere else. We prefer to bring new ideas to the table for your iPhone 5 than to try to rehash and package old ideas, no matter how cool they remain. Sector 5 is here and it’s unlike any other case that has ever been on the market. If it’s not exactly what you want, sit tight – we’ve got more coming and it’s going to be a wild ride.

• 3. What accessories will the Sector 5 First Edition come with?

  The Sector 5 First Edition is, like our Vapor Pro cases, a complete kit that covers all of the facets of protection that you need for your iPhone 5. Included in the kit are a Ultrasuede back plate, a Speed Wrench, screen protector and molded Transit Zipper Case.

• 2. How much does the Sector 5 weigh?

  Almost nothing – it tips the scales at only 17 grams! It’s 2.66″ wide, 5.15″ long and .35″ deep, too!

• 1. Can you tell me where my spot is in line?

  No, actually, that is pretty tough to predict at this point. Production is getting faster every day and we anticipate being able to increase the size of the order groups that we’re sending invitations to. We expect that in the next 3-4  weeks we will have sent everyone on the list an order invitation. There have been so many requests to check status that we would have to allocate one person to only check on those requests – we’re still a small company and we can’t afford to take any manpower away from building/processing/shipping the orders.

If you still have questions about the Element Case Sector 5 aluminum case for your iPhone 5, please make sure that you have looked at the Sector 5 product page or contact us at Customer Support.

Photo Credit: Adam Chow – Follow him on Instagram @adamchowchow

On September 21st, less than 4 weeks ago, Apple released the long awaited iPhone 5.

In the short time since, we’ve tested our prototype Sector 5, redesigned it to optimize signal strength, re-prototyped, retested, and gone into production.

Today the Sector 5 FE (First Edition) began shipping!

In our last Sector 5 iPhone case update, we showed you prototype CAD renderings after we made design changes prompted by getting the actual iPhone 5 into our hands. After finishing and testing the updated prototypes, our shop went to work getting ready for production manufacturing. Machining aluminum parts for production is different than creating a prototype because things like CNC tool path efficiency and material fixturing have to be considered in order to maximize production volume while minimizing machine time. The methodology for this varies with each machine shop and the CNC machines that they use. While it may sound completely mechanical, high end machining like this is as much art as it is science and our shop is top notch.

We have now gone into production just six days after our last prototype was completed! Next week, we hope to have the first ordering group’s production units completed and off to anodizing with the second group’s orders well under way.

Above is an image of a pre-production unit just after coming back from our anodizing shop so that we could do a final evaluation of the new “Graphite Grey” which is a special color for the Sector 5 FE (First Edition).

Reserve your spot in line to pre-order the Sector 5

NOTE: The reservation list is long and we’re working as quickly as we can to make as many as possible while still meeting or exceeding our standards of quality. As we ramp up production, we will be able to increase the size of each pre-order group. Sorry, but we’re getting way too many requests to find out where people are in the list and we will no longer be responding to those requests.