iPhone accessories

 

Like the iPod before it, the iPhone is quickly becoming the hub of an ever growing range of accessories and add-ons. Encompassing software and hardware, and everything from simple cables and cases to more impressive hands-free headsets, there is something for everyone, as long as you have the cash to spare once you have splashed out for your phone and the contract you need to get it connected. Here, we dig out some of the best options for iPhone owners who want to spruce up their shiny new mobile, but a quick hunt online, and along your high street, will turn up a raft of other products for which we do not have room.

Before you are tempted to buy something just because it is cheap, though, be aware of the Made for iPhone certification scheme that Apple administers. This allows products that it has tested and certified as being fully compatible with the device to sport a recognisable Made for iPhone logo on the packaging. It runs a similar scheme for iPod accessories. Obviously, this is not so important for add-ons such as cases and screen protectors, which do not directly interface with the iPhone in any way, but any device designed to use the iPhone's Dock connector (the long, narrow socket on the bottom) should be certified.

This connector looks very similar to the one featured on the iPod, and the cables that connect them arc also interchangeable, allowing you to charge an iPod using an iPhone cable, and vice-versa. However, there is no guarantee that anything so simple as even a set of iPod speakers will work with the iPhone. In the production of this book, we found that several we tested did not, and were either ignored entirely by the iPhone or caused it to flash its screen in a worrying manner.

Speakers and Power

Most of the time you will listen to the music on your iPhone using headphones, but with a wide range of speakers available there's no reason why you should keep things to yourself when you're listening at home.  



 
 

XTREMEMAC LUNA VOYAGER

Price £79.95 (£69.52 ex VAT) Contact XtremeMac + www.xtrememac.com

Xtreme Mac's Luna Voyager is a small alarm clock with an iPhone dock in the top, allowing you to both wake up to music and charge your device while you sleep. It's also small enough to be easily carried on your travels.

The time on the clock is controlled by the clock inside your iPhone, meaning that when you take to another country on business or holiday you only need to reset one device — your phone — and you can sleep easy, knowing that your alarms will go off at the right time. Alternatively, you can set the time manually using one of the Voyagers only three controls. These buttons also allow you to control playback on your iPhone.

There are two choices of wake-up call: a traditional buzzer or the music in your library, which you must compile in a dedicated playlist called 'Luna' in iTunes, which you then synchronise with your phone. Unfortunately there is no radio.

There is no denying that the Voyager looks great, and it is easy to control, with an obvious and well-positioned snooze button, even if you do have to rotate it rather than pressing it. The display is large and easy to read, but not too bright: there's nothing worse than an alarm clock whose digits are so dazzling they keep you awake.

The speaker is good, but we would like a little more bass, although we can excuse this in a portable device. As well as playing from your iPhone or iPod, it will also play from other MP3 players connected by a jack.

Overall, then, this is a well-specified and keenly-priced iPhone add-on, with the bonus of being easily portable.

MOPHIE JUICE PACK AIR

Price £62.98 (£54.77 ex VAT) Contact Mophie + www.mophie.com

The iPhone's battery isn't user-replaceable, meaning you can't take a spare on your travels, and you can't swap it out when it runs dry and you have no access to some means of charging it. Fortunately there are several options for charging on the move, including the Mophie Juice Pack Air, which combines a battery and a case for the 3G and 3GS models.

It is made of shiny black plastic, to match the black iPhone's back casing, and it holds the iPhone very snugly, splitting two thirds of the way up to let you slot it in and slip it out. The Juice Pack Air isn't much bigger than the iPhone itself; the biggest difference you'll notice is along the bottom where it adds around half a centimeter to the length of the phone, and to the back, where it is around a centimeter deeper. Impressively, considering it contains a battery, it adds only very slightly to the iPhone's weight.

Unfortunately, however, there is no cover for the iPhone's screen, which is a shame as the rest of the case feels robust and reassuring.

Mophie claims that the juice Pack Air will more than double the iPhone's standby time, increasing it by 270 hours when fully charged, and increase talk-time by nine hours. It will also let iPhone 3G owners listen to an additional 20 hours of music, and iPhone 3GS owners 27 hours. As a bonus, when plugged in to charge via USB it charges the iPhone simultaneously. Around the back of the case you'll find a meter that gauges the remaining level of power, meaning you shouldn't ever have any nasty surprises when you're waiting for an important call.

Overall, we were impressed by the Juice Pack Air, and the additional bulk is a small price to pay for such an increase in stamina. Unless Apple relents and fits removable batteries to the iPhone, this is one of the most sensible options for giving the device a serious boost.


 RICHARD SOLO 1800
Price $69.95

Contact Richard Solo + richardsolo.com

The Juice Pack Air works very well if you want to combine a case and a battery. However, the fact that it is sculpted to fit the iPhone 3G and 3GS means that it is unsuited to the original iPhone, leaving early adopters, whose batteries were not as good as the updated versions in the later models risking losing contact just when the need it the most.

Fortunately, then, there is a range of external devices that lit onto the Dock connector without enclosing the whole phone, including the 1800 from Richard Solo. This comes with a clever adaptor cuff that attaches to the male Dock connector on the battery and secures it to the female connector on the iPhone without risking stresses on either part. The i Phone then treats the 1800 as an external charging source and uses it to top up its own internal battery. It charges via USB, meaning that wherever you can plug in your laptop you can also plug in your iPhone and, with a chargc meter on the front you can keep an eye on progress.

If you need to make a business case for buying one, over and above the fact that it'll help you keep up to date with your work emails, it also has a torch and a laser pointer running off the same battery.

Books and software

The only software that works with the iPhone is iTunes, right? Wrong. Here we highlight the best Mac and PC software for use with the best mobile phone around.

APPLE iPHONE SDK

Price Free

Contact Apple + developer.apple.com/iphone/program

The Software Development Kit (or SDK) is the only official and authorised route to creating applications for the iPhone. In the first four days after its release as a beta product, it was downloaded by 100,000 prospective developers. The kit requires an Intel-based Mac running Mac OS X 10.5   Leopard or Snow Leopard, and is free, although to distribute applications through the App Store, it costs $99 for free and commercial applications available to the general public, or S299 for so-called Enterprise applications used in-house. Applications developed using the SDK can also be run on an iPod touch, although obviously they will not then have access to the GPS hardware, camera or cellphone features.
 

ELGATO EYETV3

Price £60 (£51 ex VAT) Contact Elgato + www.elgato.com

Elgato has long provided Mac users with a wide range of hardware and software for recording TV to their Mac. Now it has expanded the feature set of its EyeTV software (right) by building in wifi streaming for iPhone and iPod touch users.

It works by re-encoding your recorded programme library for best performance both during the transfer and when viewed later. This is a processor-intensive task that will take some time, but it can be speeded up through use of the company's Turbo.264 hardware add-on.

The converted edition of each file is saved in a packaged folder with the original recording and can be browsed in a menu on the iPhone's screen or in any other browser on a regular desktop or laptop machine.

As the software installs a web server on your machine, it is technically possible to view these recordings anywhere, remotely, by setting up a dynamic IP redirection service to give access to your home network from any web-connected computer. It does not stream live TV, so you can't watch the news while you are riding home on the bus, but it does allow you to stream programmes you have recorded in the past over a regular wireless connection.

EyeTV is a Mac-only product requiring a PowerPC G4 or Intel-based machine with 512MB of memory, running Mac OS X 10.4 or later. At present, there is no Windows equivalent.

iPHONE OPEN APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

Price £24.99

ISBN 9780596518554

Contact O'Reilly + www.oreilly.com

Apple's own Developers Center is a great resource for anyone who wants to program the iPhone, but for the real low-down, and for study offline, you can rarely do better than a book. And you can rarely do better for programming books than look to O'Reilly.

This book was written with developers of unofficial apps in mind, targeting those who want to create open applications that will not be distributed through the iTunes App Store but instead be installed on hacked handsets. However, the publisher is keen to point out that there is so much overlap with the official Software Development Kit that 'it will greatly benefit developers in both camps by exposing the iPhone's framework and APIs at their lowest-level on the device, as well as introduce readers to the many core concepts for building iPhone applications'.

iPhone Open Application Development covers such diverse topics as accessing the phone's underlying operating system, how iPhone applications are structured, and how to handle advanced graphic, including 3D, on the iPhone. It is a weighty tome, running to some 280 pages, and includes an appendix of handy application code for accessing the camera and creative Cover Flow-like album browsers.

MISSING SYNC FOR iPHONE

Price $39.95

Contact Mark/Space + www.markspace.com/iphone

iTunes does a pretty good job of synchronising your music, photos, videos and contacts between the iPhone and Mac, but it does not do everything. One key area it missed out is the iPhone's notebook application. It is also blind to the text messages stored in your phone, meaning that should the worst happen and you lose it, they will never be seen again. Mark/Space has ported its existing Missing Sync software, which used to only cater for the phones and PDAs ignored by Mac OS X, to plug this gap, allowing for computer-based organisation of your notes and a complete, safe archive of all texts sent or received. Quite apart from the safety aspect, if you are a heavy user of either of these two iPhone applications, the ability to archive your content means you will be able to free up valuable limited space on your device.

With the advent of iPhone 3G, which is likely to appeal to PC users more than ever now that Apple has rolled out MobileMe, Missing Sync for  iPhone has been ported to Windows, too, making it possible to use it for transferring data from Outlook 2003 and 2007, and to use a PC as a means of copying data from your old phone to your new iPhone.
   
   

The Sennheiser MM50 is a replacement for the bundled earbud and mic combo set 

SENNHEISER MM50 £38 (£33 EX VAT)

Sennheiser is a well-known name in audio circles, and the MM50 is a good earphone set for replacing the default units bundled with the iPhone. The cable is lighter than on Apple's own earbuds, but the sound quality is better, so this is no reason to worry.

We like the way that the right earbud is on a longer lead than the left, allowing for it to be passed behind your neck while you're listening, where it will sit out of the way. The bundled buds, on the other hand, hang to the front, and may get in your way.

The MM50s sit inside your ear canal, and come with three different-sized caps to suit ears of different sizes, meaning you should be able to achieve a comfortable and secure fit.

Sound quality is good, although we found the bass a little strong. They made both music and spoken word audio tracks sound good, and they were a definite step up from the Apple-supplied earbuds that come with the iPhone. However, in our tests of using the integrated microphone, callers said that they preferred the mic that comes as part of the bundled set, which was a shame.

Apple accessories

The iPhone is bundled with a cable for connecting it to your Mac or PC, and a set of iconic white iPod headphones. That is enough to get you started, but you will get far more from your phone-cum-media player if you add on these little extras. Perhaps that's why Apple itself has got in on the accessories market.

APPLE iPHONE DUAL DOCK

Price £29 (£24.68 ex VAT) Contact Apple + www.apple.com/uk

Since the arrival of MobileMe, Apple would rather that you synchronise the data on your iPhone over the air. It does mean that you will be paying it an annual subscription for a virtual data service, after all. If you would rather do things the old fashioned way, though, you may be disappointed by the disappearance of the old iPhone dock from the bundled accessories. Fortunately, the Dual Dock, which also has room for charging an Apple Bluetooth Headset (above) gives your i Phone the podium it deserves. If you do not have a Bluetooth Headset and do not intend ever to buy one, then the plain iPhone Dock is available without the extra port for the same price.

APPLE USB POWER ADAPTOR

Price £19 (£16 ex VAT)

Contact Apple + www.apple.com/uk

If you just don't have sufficient spare ports to charge your iPhone through your computer, or you are off on holiday and don't want to take your computer with you, then Apple's own USB Power Adaptor is a convenient, affordable solution to the problem of keeping your iPhone battery topped up. It is a small plug with built-in transformer for ramping down the mains power to a level that the iPhone can cope with without blowing a fuse. Its white casing goes well with the white-backed 32GB model and, although there is not a black one for the 16GB edition or an aluminium one for the original iPhone, it remains a discrete enough gadget to slip into any travel case without taking up too much room.

APPLE iPHONE BLUETOOTH HEADSET

Price £79 (£67 ex VAT) Contact Apple + www.apple.com/uk

Pretend you are busy and important with this sleek Bluetooth hands-free kit {right). It connects wirelessly to your iPhone and allows you to answer calls without even touching the phone itself just by tapping the button on the side of the headset.

Apple claims five-and-a-half hours of talk time and 72 hours of standby from a full charge. It has a range of up to 10 metres, so you can safely shut up your iPhone in your car's glove box where it is out of harm's way and will not distract you while driving.

It comes bundled with an iPhone Dual Dock that lets you charge both your iPhone and your Bluetooth I Headset simultaneously while using just one USB socket.

socket at the other, lets you use any set of headphones or earbuds, no matter how large or small, with the iPhone.

Prices have been sourced from online retailers and will fluctuate over time.


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