In this paper, we present the "Around the SmartPhone" interaction technique for manipulating 3D elements displayed on a distant screen. The design of the technique is based on the selection of the most appropriate value for characteristics useful to discriminate existing tactile and tangible techniques for 3D manipulations. We perform two user studies to compare this around-device technique for translating and rotating 3D objects, with two existing tangible and tactile solutions, in terms of performance and user's preference. The literature establishes that the tactile technique evaluated is the best tactile technique among the existing tactile techniques for 3D manipulation. Despite this result, our user study reveals that the two others perform significantly better. In addition, when feedback visibility is preserved, the around-device technique offers similar performance results than the tangible one. Finally, the around-device technique is significantly preferred over the two others in every condition.