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Your iPhone may be getting more and more wireless, what with iCloud and Wi-Fi syncing and all, but there are times when it’s nice to have a dock.
Of course, most docks are little more than stands, offering few, if any, features beyond charging and syncing.
Enter the Foundation Dock, a Kickstarter project that’s arguably the most versatile iPhone dock to date.
The Foundation Dock consists of two key components. First, there’s the dock itself, a heavy aluminum base with four powered USB 3.0 ports, a Mini-USB port for connecting to your PC, a shielded audio-out jack, a 4-watt stereo speaker, and a built-in microphone.
Then there’s the “flexible cable,” a 16-inch gooseneck that can bend any which way. It has an iPhone cradle at one end and a USB plug at the other. It’s designed to plug into the top of the dock, though it can just as easily connect to a USB port on your PC, in your car, or anywhere else.
Put it all together and you’ve got a pretty potent setup, one you can use for everything from FaceTime calls to document scanning (via an app like Scanner Pro) to plugging in extra USB peripherals. Heck, you could put the dock on your nightstand and use your iPhone as an alarm clock — one that’s charged and ready to go when you wake up.
World of Simple Design
If you decide to skip the dock and get just the flexible cable, you’ve still got a versatile cradle for your iPhone, one that would work well alongside your PC or in your car. (Developer World of Simple Design will also offer an aluminum USB car charger for autos that don’t have USB ports.)
To me this sounds like a pretty sweet project, one I’m thinking seriously about backing. For $30 you can get a flexible cable in your choice of colors (blue, green, black, white, or orange). Fifty bucks buys you two of them. To get the dock and a cable, it’ll cost you $99 (though at press time only a handful of these early-bird specials are left).
The best bundle costs $114 and consists of the dock, the cable, and a car charger. Assuming the Foundation Dock gets funded, delivery is expected in January 2013. (Bummer! A month too late for the holidays.)
World of Simple Design
Obviously the Foundation Dock is a bit on the pricey side, especially given that it’ll probably cost even more if and when it becomes a retail product. That said, I like the idea of having such a versatile dock on my desk, and I definitely appreciate the versatility of a flexible cradle I could also plug into my car.
Your thoughts? Is this something you’d consider funding? Or do you think you’d be better off with something like a generic gooseneck mount for the car and a standard charging cable, both of which would cost considerably less? Let’s hear from you in the comments.
