[Nexus 7 Accessories] wussyib:
Hi, one of the founders of Less Case.

Hey guys. Just googling about the less case and saw this thread come up :). Longtime lurker, first time poster (android user since the G1 days).

The project moving forward was contingent upon the kickstarter campaign succeeding (obviously), so unfortunately we're not pursuing this product anymore.

Just to talk about some of the things being brought up in this thread...

Me and my 2 buddies that were making this really debated about the kickstand integration. There were many reasons why we decided to leave it out of the design, at least for the "version 1". Primarily, the case was initially designed to be as thin but durable as possible. Adding a kickstand to the Less case would have required considerable amount of redesign and re-prototyping. I know it sounds trivial "just add a kickstand"....Problem was, if it was plastic, we'd have to add extra thickness to the entire case to make the rest of it uniform thickness to where the stand folded back into the case. We could solve the rigidity issue of the kickstand by making it metal, but then our manufacturer was solely a plastics maker, and the logistics of sourcing a metal manufacturer, then adding post assembly would have taken it to a cost and timeline we weren't comfortable with. I'm sure we could have come up with the solution, but it was a matter of time and money management.

At the end of the day, the primary idea was to be able to slap this thing on any metal surface, so the ROI of adding a kickstand didn't add up. Double the project time, more cost, to accommodate what's essentially a "secondary" feature. I know a lot of people would disagree, but we had to weigh the pros and cons, and it just eeked towards "no kickstand" a bit more.

Also, for those talking about a cover, we had that planned. It was contingent upon the success of the initial case, and Kickstarter doesn't allow us to show anything that hasn't been already made. So we couldn't include the idea in our campaign. For me, the cover we had planned was the best part, so it was unfortunate we couldn't share it to potential kickstarters.

Here's some early mockups we did of how the cover would work...

(See attachments) If thats not working, just go to lesscase.com/pics and click on the files. Can't post images yet :)

Basically the thin plastic arm would connect magnetically to the back, and since the Nexus 7 is primarily a "portrait" device, we figured it would be good to have the cover be vertical, almost like a journalists notepad (which by the way we were going to make it look like that, kind of retro'ish). The plan was to input weak flat magnets inside the cover to activate the Nexus 7 sleep/wake functions which we tested, and worked.

The beauty of the case was that it's just like the iPad case, in the sense that it can stay on all day when you need it, but if you want to use the tablet sans-cover, you can easily snap it on and off w/ magnets. The fact that you could do this allowed you to re-purpose the tablet quickly and easily depending on how you wanted to use it. Take the case off, then car mount it, put the case back on, etc.

Anyways... it was fun to work on while it lasted. We had big plans, but they didn't flesh out :(. Thanks for the conversation!