The Best Leather Cases for iPhone 15 Pro

Monday, 30 October 2023

Stephen Robles tested 11 leather cases for the iPhone 15 Pro, and put together a nice video review. If you’re in the market for a leather iPhone case for your new iPhone 15, you should definitely watch his video.

For the last three or four years now, I’ve been buying leather iPhone cases from Bullstrap. They’re expensive — $89 — but they check every box for me:

• High-quality leather. Feels good, smells good, ages well.
• A cut-out bottom lip. This design used to be common, but is getting harder and harder to find on any iPhone cases. I presume that’s because people prefer cases with a lip that goes around the entire circumference of the front face of the phone, “for protection”, but the additional protection of covering the bottom lip seems negligible to me. I strongly prefer the way a no-bottom-lip case feels when swiping up from the bottom of the phone — an action I perform dozens of times a day. This design also solves any problems regarding USB-C or Thunderbolt cables fitting while your iPhone is encased.
• Good buttons. Not great buttons, but good. This includes a button, not a cutout, for the Action button.
• A unique (well, sort of — see below) “gentle hump” design around the camera cutout. I think this looks good, and it feels great. I don’t like a sharp plastic ring around the camera cutout.

Robles ranked the Bullstrap highly, but behind the case from Ryan London. I don’t know what the deal is between these two companies, but their cases are nearly identical. Same shape (no bottom lip), same buttons, same gentle hump around the camera cutout. I suspect both companies use the same manufacturer in China. Robles prefers the Ryan London because he prefers the way their leather both looks and feels. It definitely looks like a slightly different texture. Also, the Ryan London cases are a bit cheaper: $59 (with an optional $8 add-on to personalize your case with some embossed text).

Previously: My reader poll from April regarding case usage amongst DF readers. I posted this photo comparing a year-old Bullstrap case next to my then-brand-new one for last year’s iPhone 14.

Postscript: I actually like Apple’s FineWoven cases. I spent a week vacationing in Florida with my iPhone 15 Pro in one. (I go caseless most of the time, but like using a case while traveling, when I’m more likely to be taking a lot of pictures with my phone. An encased iPhone feels more like a camera to me, with better grippiness.) The dealbreaker for me is not the FineWoven material, which I actually kind of like. Rather, it’s the bottom lip. If Apple’s FineWoven cases had a cutout along the bottom, that would probably be the only case I’d use.

Holy Crap Another Postscript: I, uh, just happened to run into Dan Seifert from The Verge this morning, and wouldn’t you know it, he had a brand-new Ryan London leather case on his iPhone 15 Pro. I had my Bullstrap with me, we compared, and we both agreed that the Ryan London leather looks just as good but has a slightly different — and better — feel. You can’t go wrong with either of them — they really are remarkably similar cases overall, almost certainly made by the same Chinese manufacturer — but given that it’s $30 cheaper, I suppose I’d recommend the Ryan London. I actually like the Bullstrap embossed logo, though.