Reviews for Apple iPhone 3G Dock

Pros:

- The viewing angle of the dock looks pretty natural when used on your desk, but also on the average night stand.

- Easy to dock and undock. Fits snugly, but not too tight

- Small and easy to take to an office

Cons:

- No extra cord

- Don't ask me how, but it's easy to knock over face forward. Wouldn't have been a problem if the "base" area was a little bigger

Overal not a bad solution, but I went with a all silicone cover. No te phone doesn't fit in the dock unless you uncover the bottom part of the skin. This could have been prevented if the connector had variable height options.

Without a cover the phone would scratch so I think I will get rid of the dock and just lay it flat.

The first iPhone came with the charging cable AND this dock. Now they don't include it and that really hurts. The dock is alright, it does the job but is still overpriced for being essentially a stand for your iphone that looks neat. I've gone back to just using the cable direction because the base of the dock is not big enough to stop the iphone from falling over from time to time when you try to use the phone while it is in it's dock.

Why didn't Apple just put the dock in the iPhone box? Why make people pay even more for something that should have been there?

When the third generation iPhone comes out, I bet they're not going to put anything but the phone in the box, everything else will come out seperately and will not be compatible with the previous model...

Anyways, the dock itself works, so it deserves a 5/5 rating, but Apple's little annoying methods like this to get the customers to pay even more deserve a 1/5...
5+1=6 6÷2=3

I bought one of these because it wouldn't fit in the original iPhone's dock. I travel a lot, and keep the iPhone's cable & plug in my suitcase, so I like to have a dock as a charger while at home. Things to keep in mind if considering buying this...

1) It does NOT come with a cable or plug, so you will need to purchase those separately.

2) I had many previous iPod models, and have been using the Firewire cable from those to run from the wall plug to the dock. (Power only, not using it to sync.) This worked great for iPhone, ver.1. iPhone 3G will NOT charge from a firewire cable!

3) Does not support the Apple Remote like the Universal Dock does, so if you connect the line-out port to the dock, you cannot use a remote.

So just a word of caution, if you use the included plug for travel and would like a separate desk/home charger you will need to purchase a separate USB iPhone cable and USB power plug. This dock does not come with them, nor does it support previous iPod/dock firewire power.

If you still want to be able to use your original cable when you're on the go (and don't want to have to keep plugging and unplugging it from this dock), then the real cost of a iPhone 3G dock is $49. ($30 for this 'stand' and $19 for a USB cable). It NEEDS to be noted on the box that no cable is included because I'm sure that many people made the same mistake I did: thinking that for the already significant price of $30, the dock would come with everything you need. I love my iPhone, but I don't love Apple cheaping out on stuff like this.

For 29 USD, what you get is a simple dock, that is no more useful than the usb cable alone, apart from it's looks when it is in your desk (and it doesn't include an extra cable).. If the 30 pin connector would allow for video output, this would be a whole different story.. but it's not the case. For 20 USD more, you can get the universal dock, which is capable of doing video output, includes an apple remote controller and also gives you the neat looks on your desk.

A dock this simple, should be offered in the phone's package, just like the first iphone, in which it was a nice addition.. not an expensive, almost useless accessory like this one.

In a strange oversight that I can't really explain, Apple engineers seem to have created a dock that can't be used by a large number of owners without considerable inconvenience. Since a lot of people are likely to buy a case for their phone, it's worth pointing out, that in the majority of cases you're either going to need to remove your phone from its case every time you want to dock it, or buy the more expensive universal dock which can hold a phone inside its case (albeit only when you remove the small plastic adapter).

For those with slide-in cases, this might be fine, but if you buy something like a silicon rubber jacket (which a lot of people use for its anti-shock potential), it's basically not worth the hassle (or the wear and tear) to keep removing it and putting it back on.

Like many others...a little disappointed that the iPhone dock doesn't allow A/V pass-thru. Why would you not create the dock specifically designed for the iPhone to capitalize on all it's features??

Sorry...this was a big miss.

I've had this dock since I bought the iPhone 3G. It's been great. It keeps the iPhone looking neat on my desk whilst it synchronizes and charges.

A while back I also bought myself an a/v cable so I could watch videos from my iPhone 3G on my tv. What I really wanted was to plug the cable in to the back of the dock so that next to the tv my iPhone would still look as neat and tidy as it did on my desk. To my annoyance I discovered that the dock will not allow this. There is no capability of providing the video to the cable for some reason.

And today I bought myself the iPhone Bluetooth Headset, which of course comes with a special cable that lets you charge the headset and the iPhone at the same time.
Well what would be ideal would be a dock like you could get for the iPhone which accepts both phone and headset, but we STILL can't get that for the iPhone 3G.

So, I decided I could just plug the cable that came with the headset in to the back of the iPhone 3G Dock and succeed in charging/syncing both at the same time that way.
No such luck. Do this and the headset stops charging - the iPhone doesn't even recognise that it's connected.

Why has Apple done this? Why isn't the dock just a straight one-to-one pin connection. Why have they limited its capabilities?

So to sum up:
The dock is fine if you ONLY need to charge or sync your iPhone 3G.
But if you wish to use any other cable that you could plug directly in the port of the phone; forget it. The Dock just won't let it work.
So you can't keep your desk looking neat if you want to be clever!