[Nexus One Accessories] flarbear:
I got the car dock to use when traveling. My own car has an excellent handsfree system and its own GPS so I am all set there, but I wanted something easier to use on the road where I don't have built-in bluetooth and I need to use the phone for GPS so the car dock seems ideal for those travel purposes.

I received it last week just before a weekend trip out of town with a rental car. Note that since I am only using this in rental cars I need the attachment to work without the disk they send. This severely limits the attachment possibilities, but I figured it wouldn't be that hard to find a decent surface to mount to. Even if it isn't the optimal location, it's only being used for temporary service in rentals so I can live with sub-optimal mounting locations.

Well, the mounting turned out to be a major pain to figure out.

First, about the only surface that the suction cup can attach to (other than, I imagine, the disk it comes with) is smooth glass. Even the little stippling dots that they have for shade along the top and sides of windshields are enough to break the suction.

My rental was a Prius and it has these nice little windows at the base of the A-pillar that are perfectly sized and out of the way for installing this device, but they are recessed into the base of the A-pillar where hand-room is tight. It was nearly impossible to get the device attached there because of the lack of range of motion on the device itself. You have to turn it a quarter turn and the arm and the phone cradle do not come off, have a limited range of angles, and are very stiff so while your hands are in there trying to turn the base, the arm and cradle are swinging into things like the dash, the nearby pillars, and your hands. Note that there are ways of approaching the area with the arm and cradle out of the way so you can twist the base on, but when you are done, the arm and cradle are now stuck by their range of motion pointing off into space and not towards your driving position. If you want the cradle aimed at your driving position then that severely restricts the starting and ending position while you are twisting the base. The only place you can easily (or quickly) mount this is in a very open area.

With the disk it comes with and your dash, this isn't a problem at all, but when you need to mount it to a windshield or other glass surface, you kind of want to keep it near the edges so that it doesn't sit in the middle of your line of view. No-go on trying to mount it above the rearview mirror as that area usually has the black "shade" stippling. No go near the base of the windshield (even if your car is raked steeply enough that you can reach the phone at the base of the windshield) because there isn't enough clearance to have the arm and cradle swing 90 degrees while you are twisting the suction cup.

After nearly 15 minutes of cursing, I did manage to mount it to the window by the A-pillar of the Prius only to find that: the phone was sandwiched against the A-pillar so tight that I couldn't reach the power button which was a disaster the first time the screen shut off; I can't manipulate a touch screen left handed to save my life; the call screens did not switch to landscape and the "range of motion" of the adjustable cradle didn't swing the right direction to fix it even if it wasn't so tight against the edge of the car so as to make it difficult to tilt in the first place.

In the end, I used the car dock simply as a charger and dropped the base into a cup-holder when in the car. It wasn't the ideal position for the phone, and it wasn't stable enough to use easily, but it did the trick.

Later in the weekend I discovered that I could wedge the base of the car dock into the dashboard display hood (the one that is up near the base of the windshield) so that the phone looked like an extension of the dashboard displays, but it was a bit too far to reach comfortably (being near the base of the windshield rather than near the center console).

I'm going on another weekend trip this weekend so I'll see how well it works in a different car.

Good things:

- Base is very secure on glass

- Cradle positioning is very sturdy and robust

- Phone is very secure in the cradle

- Removing phone from cradle is very easy

- Bluetooth connection with dock is seamless and very automatic

Problems:

- Phone gets *extremely* hot when plugged into the car dock

- Many screens you use from the "Car Home" app are not landscape aware (after landscape has been available for over a year?)

- Volume keys are not intuitively laid out, especially in landscape mode

- Volume keys do not interact with phone (despite the fact that bluetooth handsfree has volume protocols)

- Sliding phone into cradle catches the seam along the top of the phone in a way that worries me about eventual damage to that seam.

Problems that you might not have if you use the adhesive disk it comes with:

- Poor range of rotary motion of the arm (note that lots of devices provide > 360 turning capability even with wires and electrical connections going through the mount)

- Poor range of angular motion of the arm (it can't go flat or vertical enough for some tight installations)

- Cannot separate the suction base from the arm and cradle for easy of attachment

Wish list:

- Fix landscape bugs

- Integrate volume into phone better

- redesign the dock with a separable base for ease of installation

- design it to integrate with a Proclip mount for non-adhesive attachment, but still provide the suction base for temporary installation and/or for cases where it works well