Here's a simple, cheap and ingenious little iPhone accessory that won't change the world, but will probably do what it says at a reasonable price. It's the SoundClip from Ten One Design, and it clips over your 3G iPhone speaker hole to slightly boost and clarify the sound. It does this by firstly directing the sound towards you, which will obviously help a little, but also by containing a tuned 'port' of some sort, to boost the sound, they claim, between 6 kHz and 20 kHz. That's a somewhat ambitious claim as there is no way the iPhone speaker will produce much audible at 20kHz. Nevertheless, a boost around 6kHz is believable, and will increase the clarity and focus of the sound somewhat.
The real benefit of this little clip may well be in gaming, where your hands tend to cover up the speaker. On the down side, however, I don't think you'll be able to fit a Soundclip when your iPhone is in its case, though I might be wrong there. If I am right, I can't see that most people will bother going to the effort of de-casing their phones to put on the SoundClip. So there's a challenge to you, Ten One--get this to work with thin cases like my lovely Seidio so I can have it permanently attached and I might be a convert.
Also, qudos to Ten One for the honest explanation of the device they give on their website. They don't overhype it all, but are frank about the small improvement it will make, and they have frequency response graphs and audio clips to back up their very reasonable claims. At the reasonable price, who could complain? Of course, if they'd like to send me a review sample...
The real benefit of this little clip may well be in gaming, where your hands tend to cover up the speaker. On the down side, however, I don't think you'll be able to fit a Soundclip when your iPhone is in its case, though I might be wrong there. If I am right, I can't see that most people will bother going to the effort of de-casing their phones to put on the SoundClip. So there's a challenge to you, Ten One--get this to work with thin cases like my lovely Seidio so I can have it permanently attached and I might be a convert.
Also, qudos to Ten One for the honest explanation of the device they give on their website. They don't overhype it all, but are frank about the small improvement it will make, and they have frequency response graphs and audio clips to back up their very reasonable claims. At the reasonable price, who could complain? Of course, if they'd like to send me a review sample...
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