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What Can you Connect your Mobile Phone to?

By: Thomas Muller - Updated: 12 Sep 2012 | comments*Discuss
 
What Can You Connect Your Mobile Phone To?

What Can you Hang on a Mobile?

Not surprisingly the most popular accessories for the mobile phone currently are: Bluetooth headsets; hand free car kits; mains chargers, car chargers and battery backups; with the inevitable hang-in of memory cards.

Wireless signal boosters are also proving popular. These come as £200 fitted units for a room where the mobile is used, or as is considerably cheaper, internally placed, flat antennae that can boost weak signal reception.

At the more exotic hang-on level for a mobile, there is a printer available using specialised paper for photographic prints. Micro projectors for showing holiday pictures, or making quick sales presentations can also be linked to mobiles, and these may yet be overtaken by an early breed of mobile emerging, with a built-in projector facility.

For mobile users with built in cameras, there are available distortion, macro and kaleidoscope, or angle camera photo lenses available.

And on a mobile storage and cosmetic level, you may want to own a branded case, a carrying holster, a designer pouch perhaps, or a protective and identifiable “exotic skin” which fits round the mobile, or even a phone charm!

But logic of course says that without a charged, functioning mobile, add-ons are rather redundant. So the most important hang-on item has to be the charger for your mobile. Though many people can live with the charger that comes with the mobile, most people tend to invest in another unit so home and work is covered. And it is worth acquainting yourself with yours, and trying to discover how fast or slowly it charges.

There are at several approaches to mains chargers at the mobile phone end, but it is usually a plastic tipped steel pin of varying thickness, (you can also buy an adaptor for that) which plugs into the circular inlet on the phone’s edge. Linked by a plug to the mains, your phone will recharge at varying speeds, depending on the type of mobile and charger that you have.

If you ambition to charge your mobile from your laptop or PC, and your mobile has a USB type B port (small and square) it is possible with an adapter to connect to the computer USB port, which is thin and rectangular shaped so that PC power transfers to the mobile.

Alternately for the driving community, a car charger adapter will power your mobile, though be warned that often these are often slower than a mains charger and you may find your phone, if used continuously for say, satellite navigation help, may not be able to keep up with the power demands. It is worth investigating voltage delivery of both the car charger and the cable delivery capacity.

An emergency solution to a flat mobile battery is either carry a spare charged battery (quite an expensive route) or alternately a battery backup kit, which can contribute at couple of hours of talk time, but again with modern, Internet access phones, these will drain this backup fairly quickly.

Many phones currently sold come complete with earpieces for the music listening fraternity. These mobiles are also mostly equipped with Bluetooth transmission facilities, that allows you to downloads pictures to your PC, or can send messages and pictures to other mobile phones over short distances, and is invaluable for taking calls and talking hands free while driving. Bluetooth headsets come in a huge range of sizes, colours and prices.

If you don’t have a Bluetooth phone, but have a port on the phone, Bluetooth transmission is available through the use of the quaintly named Dongle. Some service providers will offer this free with a broadband contract which will allow Internet access, but the Dongle can also be bought independently for upwards of £10.

Hands free car kits, which involve some form of cradle to hold the mobile, are fastened to the car dashboard. This can be costly (around £200) if they require fitting, though there are do-it–yourself versions, and that investment means the mobile can then double as a route mapping facility.

Anyone who is venturing overseas with their mobile should not forget that other invaluable hang-on, namely a travel plug. But if it does slip your mind, don’t panic as most countries can probably sell you a phone charger that compatible with your model and that country’s power system.

For the environmentally friendly mobile phone users, solar mobile phone chargers (at least one offering 9 adapters for 99.9% compatibility) are available on the market, and there is even a wind-up battery charger.

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