First Look: Elago S4 Glide, S4 Stand + Stylus for iPhone 4

For a company that puts the phrase “design is improvement” all over its new products and packaging, Elago has a lot of designing left to do before some of its new products become impressive. The company’s new S4 Glide ($30) is the best of the bunch here, a glossy case with two different-colored slide-off bottoms that you can flip between for a change of style, packaged with two separate glass film covers and a microfiber cleaning cloth. S4 Stand ($10) is unfortunately not quite as impressive, a metal stand that’s designed to hold an unencased iPhone 4 — because there are surely bunches of those around these days — while its Stylus for iPhone and iPad ($22) is a black and chrome tube with a rubber tip and shirt clip, basically identical to a dozen others we’ve seen except for the company’s name and mantra. Bonus bummers: none of these products is packaged in the impressively clean eco-baggies Elago used for the earlier S4 Breathe case, and its S4 Slim Fit — a glossy plastic shell — didn’t qualify for coverage because it’s still using the awful circular Apple logo cut-out we’ve disliked in generations past. Here’s hoping for improvement (read: better design) next year.