Review of SmartphonePedia docking station

[jpd]

HTC Droid Incredible Desktop Charger & Sync Cradle
I've had this charger for about 4 days. It's a nice charger and seems to be a quality piece of construction. Having a charger that charges an extra battery at the same time as the phone is a nice feature. Below are the answers to a couple of questions I had about the charger before buying it and some observations.

1. Your phone will not fit into the cradle with a case on. Fits perfectly without a case. Not a big deal but was a question I had before I bought it and could not find the answer to.

2. The Incredible's stock launcher will not switch to landscape mode with this cradle or any other cradle for that matter. I did know this before hand. Someone on one of the forums I check out pointed out that some after market launchers will go into landscape mode. I downloaded LauncherPro and love it. It is extremely customizable and does go into landscape mode.

3. The docking station comes with two USB cables which is nice. It has two ports in the back which you can plug the cables into. One is for a wall charger and charges both the battery and phone at the same time. The other port is for charging with a computer. It will only charge the phone (not the battery) and allows the phone to communicate with your computer so you can download pictures, music and such.

4. One strange thing happens when I use the dock with my phone and have it plugged into the wall. The screen loses its responsiveness. If I try to activate any apps or swipe from one screen to another it does not work very well at all. Edit: I got to play around with the dock today and found out the problem is not with the charger. The problem was with the a/c adapter I was plugging the usb cord into. Not sure why it caused the Incredible to lose its screen responsiveness, but everything works fine with my other 2 a/c adapters.

5. One thing to think about, the volume button is on the same side of the phone as the power port. That means that when you put the phone into the docking station you do not have access to the volume button. Just something that can't be helped.

6. Along with the stock launcher, the stock phone dialer will not go into landscape mode. You can download other dialers that will go into landscape mode. I downloaded a dialer called "dialer one" that works just fine.

Overall the dock works fine. It is nice to be able to connect it to my computer and use it in landscape mode with LauncherPro. The ability to charge an extra batteryis nice. The only drawback is that you do have to do some customizing to be able to use the phone in landscape mode (because of the phone, not the cradle).