[General Topics] Menneisyys:
3. Hardware accessories

3.1 Car kits

Parrot has come out with some new designs for controlling, docking and recharging the iPhone: the MKi9100 and the MKi9200. They have also come up with a pretty decently designed set of stereo speakers, along with an iPhone / iPod dock, the Zikmu by Philippe Starck (slated for Spring 2009 release). See product page HERE for more information on all this.

This is a decent addition to the T605, IHF1000 by Motorola and the Parrot CK3000 Evolution, CK3100 and the 3200LS Bluetooth car kits by Parrot.

3.2 Chargers and cases

There have been several companies offering chargers for the iPhone; for example, FreePlay (a company specializing in solar chargers and quick-to-recharge external chargers):

(their rapid charger and iPhone solar charger available to end users)

(the iPhone solar charger from the back)

(…and the bottom)

(their other products having very strong retro-feeling: two digital radios [without a shortwave tuner] and a stereo, battery-operated "audio box” with a built-in iPhone stand)

… and IDAPT-INOITULOS (homepage HERE; it’s still pretty basic; a CES article with video HERE), with their all-in-one solution: swappable charger sockets and a charger also functioning as a stand / cradle:

It’s already available for end users for US$ 50.

As with third party chargers, there have been several companies offering iPhone cases; for example, Trexta:

3.3 Audio enhancement, A2DP

3.3.1 Bluetooth stereo audio transfer

One of the biggest omissions of the iPhone (3G) is the lack of high-quality Bluetooth audio transfer (A2DP) and remote multimedia playback control (AVRCP). By using these, you could get rid of the cables while listening to music on either stereo headphones or external speakers; also, you gain a way to control (volume up/down, stop/restart, next/previous) the playback of your media.

There are two ways of fixing this problem. The easier and non-iPhone-specific one is getting a pair of A2DP headphones (for example, the Plantronics Pulsar 590A or the latest, just-released and astonishingly high-quality Altec 906 - see review HERE) coming with a Bluetooth adapter that plugs into the 3.5mm audio socket of the iPhone. This will make it possible to listen to music, but you won’t be able to remotely control the player with the headphones buttons. To allow for the latter, you’ll need an iPhone/iPod-specific dongle that plugs into the cable connector of the handset. (Technically, it’s there that the handset also allows for controlling playback.)

So far, only few dongles of the latter (AVRCP-capable) type have been released: the Infinxx Icombi AP21 and its enhanced, improved version, Infinxx AP23 iBluon Bluetooth Dongle Adapter (also known as iBluon TD02; review HERE). Another announced one, 8Bananas’s BD-906, doesn’t seem to be available and the homepage of the manufacturer is down.

Now, iSkin (webpage HERE) has announced another dongle that does the same, the CERULEAN TX ( homepage: http://www.iskin.com/ceruleantx/ ). They also offer a pair of Bluetooth speakers, CERULEAN RX. Note that there are several other similar Bluetooth A2DP loudspeakers – they have lately, become pretty common. That is, you don’t need to purchase the RX to listen to your tunes – as the TX utilizes the industry-standard A2DP and AVRCP protocols, any other set of speakers (or headphones) can be used.

3.3.2 SRS

SRS is a well-known company for its audio enhancement software and algorithm(s) – if you’re coming from Windows Mobile, you may already have heard of them as several WM handsets come with it preinstalled. They have come up with a headphones-only iPod / iPhone dongle (connecting to the system socket of the device) doing essentially the same.

4. The competition

There have been some remarkable, multimedia-capable phones comparable to the iPhone well worth mentioning.

On Windows Mobile, the WVGA (800*480 – the iPhone’s resolution is 320*480) 3D hardware accelerated Toshiba TG01 is worth mentioning. It has a whopping, new-generation 1 GHz processor, which greatly speeds things up. On the negative side, though, the device is huge, albeit leaner than the iPhone. Also, Toshiba has a pretty bad record of updates and bugfixes and the TG01 having no Start button, it’s questionable it’ll ever get the next operating system updates.

HTC, the biggest player in Windows Mobile, has also announced two new models. They are pretty nice but can go nowhere near the revolutionary TG01.

On the Symbian operating system, it’s mostly Samsung’s Omnia HD that is worth mentioning. It has an OLED screen capable of rendering colors far better than traditional handsets (including the iPhone), a high-resolution touchscreen and an excellent camera not only able to take 8 Mpixel shots, but also 720p (1280*720) videos. Its multimedia features are topped by allowing for 720p video playback and a pair of stereo(!) speakers.

Please see our blogs for more info on the competition: the last TG01-related article is HERE, the Symbian all-in-one one is HERE.