Perhaps you are going over to grandma’s house for Christmas dinner this holiday season and you’re going to once again be fascinated by her old rotary telephone. With the move to digital and touchscreens, we’ve lost that retro appeal in our homes, but that doesn’t have to be the case. The Pyle Retro Home Telephone Collection is a unique smartphone dock that reminds us of days gone by.

There are four models in the range and they are all handcrafted from real wood, featuring real brushed copper parts. They work with your regular landline, but the kicker is that they are also compatible with your iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, iPad, and other mobile devices, including tablets and even MacBooks. All you need is a standard 3.5mm connection.

Some of these retro home telephones, like the $89.99 PRT15I, look just like a classic rotary phone, whereas the $109.99 PRT35I comes with a built-in iPhone charging dock, in addition to the rotary dial and classic handset. Standard features include last number redial, ringer high/low selectoin, and one-button pick-up.

Check out the full press release below or head over to PyleAudio.com for more information. Prices range from $89.99 to $109.99 MSRP.

The post The Retro iPhone Rotary Smartphone Dock Grandma Will Love appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Have you ever attempted to do a conference call using your iPhone or Android smartphone? It’s possible, but it’s not the best.  If you’re looking for a high-quality group business conferencing system, there’s a snazzy looking communications center called the Phone Station Plus from ION Audio.  Just unveiled at CES, the Phone Station Plus turns your smartphone into a major conferencing system using Bluetooth.  Then at night, flip it on to stereo or FM radio mode to blast the office beats.

[ source ]

The post Ion Phone Station Plus Is Like A Mullet: Business Up Front, Party In The Back appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

If you’re one of the growing number of people who are passing up landlines and relying solely on your cell phone for communication, the iClooly might be pretty appealing.

The dock turns any model iPhone or Android phone into a stylish desktop phone, complete with handset receiver. This means you don’t have to struggle to pull your phone from your pocket when it rings, but also frees up your screen during calls to check notes or websites while you’re talking. Didn’t bother to read an email the email your boss is calling to discuss? No problem. Skim through it and ad lib while you’re talking. Call from a client you don’t really want to talk to? Check your calendar for a better time or your contact book for someone to divert his attention to without having to rudely hang up or ignore him/her by pulling the phone away from your head.

Plus, I imagine it would be good for FaceTiming in noisy or less-than-private environments.

The dock doesn’t have it’s own charger connection, meaning you’ll have to run your own cord up underneath to keep it charged. But this is actually a decent idea, as an attached 30-pin or USB charge plug would limit the number of compatible phones. The way it stands now, you could buy one for every desk and worker in the office regardless of what cell they’ve got.

That, in conjunction with either a Skype number or a Line2 account giving you work, home and cell numbers on the same phone, you could have soulless docks rather than stand-alone phones at work and at home.

Convenient.

I know the iPhone 4′s death grip is something of an old story, but this could be a boon in that respect, too.

The anodized aluminium stand sits on four non-slip silicone pads, holding your phone in either vertical or horizontal positions. The handset plugs into the 3.5mm jack and clips into the base to prevent your phone from sliding off whenever you answer the phone.

The iClooly is available now for about $40 on Amazon and various other sites if you’re looking to pick one up.

[GizMag via iClooly]

The post iClooly Desktop Phone Dock for iPhone and Android a Good Call appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Motorola today at CES unveiled the AT&T bound Atrix 4G Android smartphone. This device packs in a 1GHz dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor with 1GB of RAM. The massive 4-inch display will be a QHD 24-bit capacitive touchscreen, giving Apple’s Retina Display a run for its money. It’ll host Android 2.2 with MOTOBLUR and Flash Player 10.1. I know what you’re thinking, AT&T doesn’t have 4G, and that’s correct they don’t; so it will use the HSPA+ network until around 2013 when true 4G is unleashed. You can expect the Atrix 4G to surface in the first half of 2011, with another 20 or so 4G LTE smartphones coming out of the AT&T stables this year.

Not just another Android phone. What makes the Motorola Atrix 4G a little different than all the rest is their customized docks. Motorola designed three docks for the Atrix, but most notably is the laptop dock with 11.6-inch LCD display. You’re not going to be running photoshop or anything like that, but the “Webtop” dock will give you a big display to view your Android handset on as well as adding a fully tabbed FireFox browsing experience (Flash included). The other docks are a Multimedia dock for 720p HD playback and a Vehicle dock for seamless Google map navigation and multimedia playback.

No price is set on the Atrix 4G, nor are any release dates for the docks. It’s going to be interesting to see how the laptop dock performs with Android, we’ll do our best to get some hands-on time with the Atrix at CES.

[InfoSync, Gizmodo]

The post Game Changer: Motorola Atrix 4G Android smartphone with laptop dock appeared first on Mobile Magazine.