PopSockets has spent more than a decade as the phone accessory equivalent of a loud graphic tee: practical, recognizable and impossible to ignore. The new Low-Pro Grip goes in the opposite direction. It’s so slim that, when collapsed, it sits at just 2.6mm thick — roughly the width of two stacked dimes — and it changes the feel of PopSockets in a way the company has clearly been chasing for years.
The Low-Pro launches today at Apple Stores for $39.99, with availability on PopSockets’ site and other retailers following later. For now, Apple gets first dibs, and the company is pushing the grip in four launch colors at Apple: Blue Aura, Electric Fuchsia, Black and Navy. TechRadar reports the broader retail rollout will expand the color lineup further over time.
What makes this version interesting isn’t just the slimmer silhouette. PopSockets rebuilt the mechanism almost from scratch. Instead of the familiar springy “pop” or the chunkier cone-style stand used on earlier models, the Low-Pro uses a one-piece polymer expansion layer that folds flat and opens with a single push. Around that sits a hinged metal ring that swings out to act as a stand in portrait or landscape mode. In other words, it still does the PopSocket job — just without the obvious bulk.
That extra restraint matters because thickness has always been the knock against phone grips. A lot of people love the security of a grip, but then they look at the thing stuck to the back of their phone and decide their pockets deserve better. PopSockets founder David Barnett says that reaction kept coming up, especially from men who liked the idea but balked at the size. As he put it, they worried the grip would snag in a pocket, even if that hadn’t been his own experience.
The Low-Pro seems designed to answer that objection directly. It attaches with MagSafe, so it snaps onto compatible iPhones without adhesive, and it’s meant to stay on even when you’re charging wirelessly. It can still work with MagSafe accessories and metal surfaces, but there is a trade-off: the magnets aren’t as aggressive as some rivals, so if you yank an iPhone off a charging stand, the grip may stay behind on the mount instead of coming away with the phone. That’s the kind of small annoyance that matters more in daily use than in a spec sheet.
That comparison brings OhSnap into the picture. Its Snap Grip line has been the obvious slim-grip alternative for a while, and the latest hands-on battle between PopSockets and OhSnap — sorry, wrong fight, but the point stands — shows just how close this category has become. The Verge found PopSockets’ Low-Pro more comfortable to hold and better as a stand, while OhSnap still has the edge when it comes to magnetic strength. If you live on magnetic car mounts or yank your phone on and off chargers all day, that stronger pull may still be worth considering.
Comfort is where PopSockets may have made the biggest leap. The company’s older low-profile efforts could still feel like you were gripping something mechanical. The Low-Pro is softer in the hand, thanks to that flexible expansion layer, and it doesn’t force your fingers into one awkward position. The Verge’s reporting also noted that the stand is more versatile than OhSnap’s, since it can angle freely rather than locking you into a single posture.
Barnett’s own origin story still sounds almost charmingly improvised. He reportedly started by gluing oversized coat buttons to the back of his iPhone so he could wrap wired headphones around them. That experiment led to the original PopSocket idea, then to early 3D prints, then to the brand millions of people now recognize instantly. TechRadar says he had already sketched an ultra-thin version early on, but shelved it because the core product had bigger potential. Years later, the idea finally came back once the original design had become a fixture on phones everywhere.
PopSockets also insists the Low-Pro is tougher than it looks. The company says it has tested the design to withstand more than 30 pounds of pulling force and opened and closed it 100,000 times without failure. That’s reassuring, because the whole thing does look delicate at first glance. It feels almost too airy when expanded, like a little mechanical flower made from a slotted polymer web, until you actually tug on it and realize it’s built to take some abuse.
There’s also a strategic angle here that goes beyond one accessory. Thinness has become a kind of status symbol in phones again, especially as manufacturers keep trying to shave down handsets without wrecking battery life or usability. If you want more of that broader context, Apple’s thin-phone push and its pricing moves show how aggressively the market is chasing slimmer designs. Accessories are following the same logic. No one wants a beautifully thin phone ruined by a brick-sized add-on.
PopSockets is betting that a lower-profile grip can pull in users who would never have touched the classic model, while still keeping the fidgety, one-handed usefulness that made the original such a hit. It’s a reasonable bet. If you like having a grip, but you’ve always hated how much it changed the shape of your phone, the Low-Pro is the first PopSocket that really feels like it’s listening.
