This is a short review of an accessory I managed to pick up last week. The O2 shops, in the UK, are selling a Dexim iPhone Cradle with a remote control for under £20 and this looked to be a good price when you consider the cost of buying the official Apple cradles. The universal cradle is still being sold for a whopping £30 and this does not exactly bring with it much flexibility.
The Dexim cradle is heavy, which is always a good sign, and includes an LED on the front so that you can check that it is running- I haven’t seen the colour change yet to show when the iPhone is fully charged so I presume that functionality is not included. All you need to do to get started is to connect it to your PC via USB and away you go. This will take care of synchronisation and charging which is maybe what most will use it for and to date I have had no issues with this part.
Because USB is used you can also plus it straight into the wall using the standard iPhone charger plug and this is where the next function comes into play- there is a line out port for exporting sound, or video, to a separate unit such as a TV or stereo system and my tests with a stereo system worked well. You will of course need the relevant cable to export this media, but the flexibility this simple addition adds is impressive.
The remote control is also useful for quickly skipping through music tracks and videos and also includes volume buttons. It is tiny though so make sure you keep it safe, and the inclusion of a battery for it is yet another bonus.
All in all I am mightily impressed with the Dexim cradle. It will not win any design awards, but looks fairly smart and the price is definitely the killer feature here.
