chill's Journal: Magnetic Cell Phone Docks

Just a short note. I picked up an Air Dock back when their Indigogo campaign was under way. I have now had this thing for a little over a year.

In general it works fine and does exactly what it says. I use the CD-mount, which has a nice picture down on this page.

The one flaw with that mount is the bolt and nut used to tighten it are fairly large, and extend beneath the mount. On DIN I sized radios, with the CD slot on top of the unit, the nut blocks the view of the display.

The one other thing I have discovered is that after a year of use, it has magnetized my phone! The Nexus 5 comes with small metal plates built in to the back to allow for the native use of devices like this. After all this time they have become magnetized, and that totally screws up the internal compass.

Now any time I start the compass app it complains the magnetic field strength is way too strong and it doesn't give accurate readings.

To be clear, this happens when the device is undocked and I'm walking around.

My next dock will be non-magnetic, as I do sometimes use the compass.

Magnetized, eh?

[fustakrakich]

Get one of those bulk tape erasers. It might freak out the charging coil though.

Re:

[mcgrew]

It should work. I don't see how it would mess up the charging circuit unless that circuit was poorly designed. It's the same as a TV degausser.

My day was a lineman working around AC at 90,000 volts. If he wore an analog (wind up) watch to work the watch would get magnetized by those high strength magnetic fields and stop working. He probably could have fixed the watches the same way.

Alternate positions

[RockDoctor]

As I can understand it, the magnets are purely for holding the phone to the sticky pad. So, wouldn't the degree of magnetisation be altered by rotating the device between 2 or 4 different positions from one charging connection to the next?

(My phone - stays in the jacket pocket when I'm driving. The jacket is laying on the back seat, or hanging behind me. No, I can't use my phone when I'm driving. But it's illegal anyway, so, "meh!"

Re:

[chill]

Hmmm...I am anal about putting the phone in the same orientation every time. I'll try rotating it and see what happens.

My phone also acts as GPS, police scanner, and traffic/weather alerts. That is why I keep it docked in full view.

Re:

[RockDoctor]

I learned the roads in my town on foot and push bike, and spend about 3 times as much time on the bike as in the car. Which neatly disposes of traffic alerts (route around any problems down side streets) and weather problems (if you don't have your rain coat with you, you're going to get cold and wet, always).

Re:

[chill]

I learned the roads of my home town the same basic way -- on foot and on bike. The problem is, I haven't lived there in years and I do a lot of driving. GPS and navigation is very handy when travelling outside of your home area.

I routinely just wardrive my current "home" town just to get all the streets and alleys imprinted in my brain.