Dock Awareness

[Mateles]

Do most phones nowadays have some way of detecting when they're in a dock? I know my D1 has magnets that will automatically put it into car or desk dock mode.

Is this a Motorola thing? or just a Droid thing? I'm holding out for a Bionic and I'm hoping it will have some way of knowing when it's in one dock or the other. I know it's not released yet so no one can say with certainty, but is this something Motorola is doing with their other phones?

Thanks

[takeshi]

Depends on the phone. Not all are identical. If it's a must-have feature then make sure the devices you're considering include it.

[Mateles]

Does anyone know if most or any other Motorola phones do anything like this?

[holjes]

Im not sure but i would assume that since they are going to sell both a car and desk dock for the bionic (from that leaked amazon page) that they would have a way to differentiate when the device is plugged into one or the other.

Whether its with magnets or something else they came up with since is unknown to me.

[zomnomnombie]

My Droid 2 differentiates between the two. I don't know how but it does. I imagine this is a persisitent Motorola feature.

Sent from my R2 unit using DroidForums

[sirsloth]

As far as I know, the phone uses a magnetic sensor aligned with a magnet in the dock. There are two sensors, one activates car mode and the other activates dock mode. This is based on the location of the magnetic sensor in the phone and the magnet it aligns with in the dock.

[Droichuck]

I am an original Moto Droid owner, who just made the change to the Bionic a week ago.

The multi-media dock just came, and I am very impressed.

I haven't hooked it up to the TV yet, but just as a charger dock it works great.

It has a removable sleeve so that my Bionic with a hard rubber case fits and works.

Put it into to charge, the night clock comes on with weather, and music available if you want.

Very impressed. Motorola or whoever, did a fine job with this.

Will repost on the Media results.

[Mateles]

I am an original Moto Droid owner, who just made the change to the Bionic a week ago.

The multi-media dock just came, and I am very impressed.

I haven't hooked it up to the TV yet, but just as a charger dock it works great.

It has a removable sleeve so that my Bionic with a hard rubber case fits and works.

Put it into to charge, the night clock comes on with weather, and music available if you want.

Very impressed. Motorola or whoever, did a fine job with this.

Will repost on the Media results.

The car dock also automatically sets the phone into car mode, but only when the power is on. My car doesn't provide power unless it's on, and I found that placing the Bionic in the dock doesn't put it into car mode until the car is on. Unfortunately this doesn't always work and sometimes I need to re-plug it or pull the bionic out and back in the charger after I turn the key.

Someone in another thread mentioned that it's a custom micro USB connection that does it.

I don't have a media dock, but I did pick up a cheap (about $5) micro-HDMI to HDMI converter, and streaming Netflix to my TV works perfectly.