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Why shopping for a cell phone case sucks and what you can do about it & or how i learned to stop worrying about in-store cell phone cases and love Retrevo

Look at your cell phone. If you’re not holding an iPhone, you’re still a cool person right? You still have a personality and sense of fashion, if you’re holding a BlackBerry, Droid, Samsung or Nokia, right? You may even have a fun cell phone case on your phone. But, sadly, if you’re not holding an iPhone, you’re just a second-class citizen that barely exists in the world of retail gadget accessories and, even if you are holding an iPhone, you probably paid too much for its case. These are the conclusions the Retrevo team came to after a recent road trip to some of the Silicon Valley’s Mega-Retail-Stores. Don’t worry; Retrevo’s Cell Phone Accessory Marketplace is the silver lining here, but first, the numbers.

Retailers Are Only Giving Lip Service to Shoppers (if that) Our team visited several popular retailers including BestBuy, Fry’s Electronics, Target, Radio Shack and Walmart in search of cases for popular cellphones including, the BlackBerry 9800, The BlackBerry 9700, the Samsung Galaxy Captive, the Droid Incredible, the Droid X, the EVO 4G and yes, even the iPhone 4. Here’s what we found:

The Good News: Most stores have anywhere from 4 to 40 bright, fashionable iPhone cases which is great & if you have an iPhone. But they typically cost much more than you’d find them for on Retrevo.

The Bad News: Pickings Are Slim. One of the stores I went to had a total of 7 cases for my BlackBerry 9700 and while that doesn’t sound bad, I must point out that they were either standard belt-clips or no-frills rubber cases that didn’t fit my phone very well. A couple of them even had extra mystery holes that didn’t match the buttons or plug-ins for my phone. The color options were limited to pink, blue, crimson, white and black.

If you wanted a fun case with Hello Kitty on it, or something sleek and classy, you were just out of luck. And don’t be fooled by BlackBerry cases marked “universal” – that’s just another way to say, it’ll work, but it won’t be pretty.

When I asked the sales associate where I might find cases for the popular Droid Incredible, she walked over to the rack and pointed to one, lonely black case. “There it is,” she said.

“There’s just one,” I asked. Surely this wasn’t Highlander, there could be more than one, but sadly, there wasns’t. The Best Buy we visited didn’t even have a case for the BlackBerry 9700. And, let’s not forget Walmart, and Target, which didn’t even have cases for the Samsung Galaxy Captivate, the Droid Incredible, The Droid X, or the HTC Evo 4G.

Shopping for cell phone cases should be as easy as shopping for shoes, as straight forward as saying, “here is my phone, I want a variety of cases, in many colors and materials to choose from.”

The Overwhelm of Amazon

While it’s true, you can wander onto Amazon and find mountains of cell phone cases, it’s a little too overwhelming. Amazon won’t let you sort by color (or multiple colors) or case material. If I walked into a shoe store and was only able to view one color at a time, or one material at a time, I wouldn’t come back. But that’s exactly what shoppers typically find online when shopping online.

Meet Retrevo Accessories: Guaranteed Compatibility, Choices, and Flavor Enter Retrevo’s Cell Phone Case Marketplace – The Utopia of Cell Phone Case Shopping. Why? Because Retrevo looks through all available cell phone cases, organizes them into something that makes sense and starts by asking you what kind of phone you have. Once you’ve nailed that you can sort by price, color (or colors) material(s) Brand(s) and more. Note that little (s) at the end of these words – that’s intentional and part of what makes Retrevo unique. Imagine you want to find a cell phone case but you don’t know if you want a silver one or a black one. Retrevo will let you browse both at once. Retrevo can also help you save money. I often found cases on Retrevo selling for about one third of what I saw them for in the store.

The Bottom Line

Skip the stores and head to Retrevo. If you’re looking for a fairly-priced cell phone case, and you want options that are easy to sort through, Retrevo is the best place to go.

Retrevo’s Cell Phone Accessory Marketplace

And Don’t Worry, Retrevo Has Plenty of Cases. Of course, there are the popular phones. But if you have less popular phone, you should still have choices, and far more than you will in-store.

Special thank to Jennifer L. Jacobson, Resident geek gurl and Director of Public Relations for Retrevo.com, for sending this in. We always enjoy getting articles from Jennifer … we’re going to have to give her an account to UGNN here soon!

Since its founding in 2006, Retrevo.com has grown into one of the largest, most trusted consumer electronics shopping and review sites in the world, helping shoppers decide what gadgets to buy, when to buy, and where to buy them. Retrevo uses Artificial Intelligence to sort through over 50 million online gadget-related data points to review about 97% of gadgets on the consumer electronics market (daily). Retrevo then applies its design and user interface expertise to guide shoppers to the right gadgets and gadget accessories. As a thought leader in consumer electronics, Retrevo publishes regular studies around tech industry trends as well as psychology/technology studies (Gadgetology). Retrevo is a well known Silicon Valley based company and it’s site, studies and expertise have recently been featured in such publications as Time’s TechLand, AFP, Fortune, Wired, BBC, SmartMoney, Mashable, TWICE, and Electronic House. Retrevo’s Latest Studies ; Retrevo on Facebook