Remember years ago (a.k.a. 2008) when someone would bust out an iPhone in a group of people to be met with the same type of awe directed at owners of Laserdiscs (remember Laserdiscs?)? Nowadays, owning Apple's iconic gadget is so humdrum your grandma is Pinteresting with the best of them.
And then came another status symbol for your status symbol: the case, which began as a practicality but soon turned into a way for designers to make a mint. Now, there are plenty more ways to individualize your phone—if you're into that sorta thing. And millions of iPhones sold don't lie, so you are!
For instance, that headphone input that just sits there doing nothing when you're not streaming Spotify or talking while driving? It's pretty useless the rest of the time, so charm it! Local girl JasminTCreations (etsy.com/JasminTCreations) makes charms that plug right in and perch atop your phone. There's a charm to match every interest and iPhone case: sushi, gramophones, cupcakes, dinosaurs, mushrooms, small forest animals. And if you really wanna up the obnoxious factor, there are pompons as big as the damn phone, plus feathers and bells. She also makes stickers for the button on the bottom of the iPhone that resemble mustaches, crowns, even just plain bling.
In an age in which the mexapixel capacity of camera phones rises like a J-curve with each version, iPhones have made standalone cameras virtually extinct, just one more accessory to lose or go toilet swimming. Though Instagram and other filters have long dominated the market, photo geeks are innovating the genre better than anyone. The Holga lens case gives your phone the dreamy quality of a toy camera via an attached wheel of filters. You can give your image a vignette or a soft, red-heart frame. You can give it a fly's eye-style double or even quadruple image.
A variety of companies offers different lenses for the iPhone, whether they're attached via a case or a small suction cup. Perhaps the coolest is the SLR mount (available via www.photojojo.com), which you can use to attach an actual SLR lens to your iPhone and take professional images. Who knew your phone could be the poor man's Nikon?
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This column appeared in print as “More iPhone Camera Filters!”
When not running the OCWeekly.com and OC Weekly’s social media sites, Taylor “Hellcat” Hamby can be found partying like it’s 1899.