If you ever have a concern about dropping your iPhone 4… say, down three flights of stairs, I have the case for you! It took me eight tries, but I finally managed to ‘drop’ my iPhone in a way to get it to go down a set or stairs, bounce off the corner and down the next set. I wasn’t worried about the iPhone, just didn’t want to dent the walls.

The case is the new ‘Survivor’ from Griffin. If you remember the video I posted a while back, they really put it through the tests to show that a drop from your hand shouldn’t concern you anymore. The case carries a military grade rating against getting bumped around and for dust.

The Griffin Survivor case includes a snap-on clip. The clip size is right to go over a belt. Since the case facing side clip snaps around the outer edge of the upper/lower edge of the case, you can remove the case from the clip without removing the clip from your belt.

Inside of the soft rubber outer is a hard plastic inner case. The inner case holds the iPhone4 firmly and ‘floats’ inside of the outer case. The soft rubber of the Griffin Survivor is soft and actually a bit slick feeling in my hands. The look of it appears it would be more porous feeling. Due to the perfectly placed cut outs along the edges of the case it is easy to hold without fear of dropping your iPhone. That said, it might be the fact that the case offers so much protection for the iPhone4 is the real secure feeling you get holding it.

The inner hard plastic part of the Survivor case splits open to sit the iPhone4 inside, then snap back together. For buttons/switches there are raised tunnels to protect those items. These raised area will get covered later with rubber flaps in the outer rubber case.

The outer rubber doesn’t ‘open’, you tip the hard plastic shrouded iPhone4 in and roll the rubber over the edges. In the picture above, you can see the little hard plastic tabs that lock into the outer rubber so it doesn’t move around.

Included in the Survivor case is a see through plastic cover for the screen that is locked into the hard plastic ‘inner’ case. This covers the screen, front camera and ear speaker.

All around the Griffin Survivor case are lip locking flaps/doors. Each one has a trick to it to open quickly. The speaker/cable opening are covered by one door. Pushing the middle of the cover causes the outer edges to pop up so it is can be opened more easily than trying to pry at the corners.

There is a flap covering the sound on/off switch since it isn’t a push button. The volume up/down and top on/off buttons are accessible through rises in the Survivor cover. The on/off switch and audio-out jack are a ways down inside since you reaching through the rubber outside and the hard plastic protection inside. Both are easy to get through though.

There had to be some negative I would find… here it is. I have yet to find a way to get the camera flap door open quickly. And, there is no way to lock it open so one hand has to hold it open while you trigger the photo with the other. Not a very natural process for me. Yesterday I mentioned that more and more people are taking pictures with their iPhones over regular camera so this might be an important limitation to get handled in a near future version of the Survivor.

It should be to a surprise to anyone that the case is much thicker than a bare iPhone4. There needs to be a buffer around the iPhone4. The iPhone floats in a hard plastic case inside of the softer rubber outside. Even with the size, the case does not restrict the ability to get the iPhone in/out of pants pockets.

In short, the Griffin Survivor really works to absorb the energy of the drop and distributes it to places other than your iPhone. If you worry about dropping your iPhone4 and the expense of being without it while it is getting repaired, the size is not an issue.