Belkin TuneCast Auto Live
Belkin claims its latest FM transmitter is the only gadget of its kind to use your GPS-calculated location to help find the best frequency on which to send songs from your iPhone to your car radio. Maybe it does, but a scan through the band works just as well, and the TuneCast found a free but hissy gap. If you have a cassette player in your car, a tape adaptor will give you better sound quality, but those of you with CD players will find the TuneCast a solid, workaday alternative.
Reg Rating 70%
Price £35
More Info Belkin
Griffin TuneFlex AUX with SmartClick
If you car stereo does have a handy auxiliary input - or a cassette deck - there's a better way to connect your iPhone than just plugging it in: Griffin's TuneFlex AUX with SmartClick. It fits into the ciggie lighter socket for power, and has a dock connector at the end of a flexible rod so you can position your iPhone for convenience. It has a 3.5mm output to feed either tape adaptor or aux port. But the best bit is the wee wireless remote control that you can attach to your steering wheel. Play/pause, skip tracks, active shuffle - the remote puts all these controls a thumb press away so you won't get distracted from the road ahead. The remote also detaches from the wheel clip for safe storage.
Reg Rating 80%
Price £50
More Info Griffin Technology
COMMENTS
Hey Poindexter
..wanna buy a bridge, and some snake oil to go with that iPhone valve amp?
eh?
"World+Dog will tell you that Apple's iPhone earphones aren't up to much. We don't agree"
April the first was a while ago. The crappy space fillers that ship with the iPod roll off like hell around 150Hz, and are flaccid all over the range- and more importantly, they leak like hell, and make your fellow travellers want to kill you.
How anyone (other than someone with a curious low frequency hearing impairment) could seriously claim that these headphones are any good is beyond me.
To some people, maybe
Well my wife has "the internet" turned on all of the time on her iPhone and she only charges it every two-three days. Guess what? Not everyone gets awful battery life out of every phone.
I'd also say that a tech journalists idea of "essential" is not necessarily the same as the average person, so simply because there are three may just be an indication of the choice available rather than the reflection of an actual concern.
So, no, I wouldn't say it was a concern any more than two or three carry cases in an 'essentials' list means something is difficult to carry.
And I don't see why a spare battery is a better solution than a battery jacket for anyone who wants a longer battery life. In fact, having had no less than three battery doors for my N95, I'd say the spare battery is not without it's pitfalls.
How much use is a spare battery in a phone that can't keep it in because of a broken compartment?
So, when you get to the end of the second day and have two flat batteries so you might manage to put the phone on charge overnight. With two batteries you can only charge one of them at a time, meaning you either need to get up in the middle of the night to charge the second one, do without one of them or buy a charger that can charge the other battery outside of the phone. On top of that you rarely encounter phones that are designed to have the battery compartment opened regularly, often making the act of changing batteries awkward at best and damaging in other cases (N95).
With the battery jacket, you plug the phone in and charge both.
*That's* why I call the "spare battery solution" inelegant
Sure, being able to swap the battery would give you better flexibility, but if I had to pick one I know which one my phone did. Of course, that assumes a phone that doesn't need the battery removing on a regular basis because it crashes. Unlike my N97.
£25 for a stand for a phone?
Indeed. Cable conduit? surely you can build one out of a business card. Works perfectly acceptably with an iphone w/o any case.
(yeah, and I always have a business card + a knife of some description).
http://www.instructables.com/id/Simple-business-card-iPhone--iPod-stand/
re: eh?
Not to mention that they fall apart at the drop of a hat, any hat.
