The HTC HD2 official car kit is here. It’s from HTC themselves and sold here by easydevices.co.uk. First up, I will mention the drawing on the box. I think it’s supposed to show you that the car kit can mount on the dash or the windscreen, but they’ve ended up putting it right in the drivers eye-line. This isn’t a good idea, so don’t do that 😉
So, what do you do when you drive your car? Do you leave your HD2 in your pocket or do you plonk it on the passenger seat, only to have it slide into that awkward narrow bit by the door? Before you know it, your phone will be jammed under the seat or scratched to heck. This will take care of it, plus you can rotate the phone into landscape mode easily – it’ll hold it in place at an exact 90 degree angle too.
As with all of our reviews we’ve done a quick overview video ..
The car kit itself is very well put together and, although the main cradle part is a sleek thin plastic, it’s still tough enough to cope with me generally bashing it about and jamming the phone in and out.
Around the back there’s a small, shiny ball-joint which attaches the main cradle to the base unit. Inside this metal strut, somehow, is the cable to charge the device. The cable, which comes provided, plugs into the base so you don’t have anything dangling from below the phone itself.
The round base can stick onto your dashboard. I didn’t stick this one down as we had to send the car kit back, but once it’s in place it’ll give a nice smooth surface for your car kit to stick to.
Put the car kit on, then lock it in place by rotating the base and the sucker will hold everything in place. The two ball-joints above allow for complete movement and you can angle the phone to your desired pitch. The charger cable comes out of the side.
Cables are always a bit unsightly in cars, but this one comes will a helpful sucker for tucking it away neatly. This will stick onto any smooth surface under your dashboard.
It’s then just a matter of sticking the official HTC power plug into your cigarette lighter and you’re pretty much done. This is a USB port, so you can charge anything else that needs USB power too.
On the shot below you can see that it’s easy enough to rotate the phone around into landscape mode. It won’t let the phone continue rotating, so there’s no worries about it being upside down and the cable won’t move an inch because it’s on the base.
Overall
This is a very sturdy car kit which survived a week of being stuck in my car on motorway journeys, windy country lanes and constant removal and re-installation. The ability to charge on-the-go should never be under-estimated, especially with todays battery-draining colour displays, WiFi and 3G capabilities. If you’re a heavy sat-nav user this is simply a must, otherwise you’ll find your HD2 going flat pretty quickly.
We’ve got a huge stack of up-close pictures for you to look at too, so click on or hit the link below to buy one of these. At the time of writing they’re £61.30 and indeed, this does seem like quite a lot of money to us. We couldn’t find anything to moan about though – it’s excellent quality and activates the HD2’s special “NaviPanel” application…. we just wish it was a little cheaper.
Link – easydevices.co.uk
Link – Up-close Gallery