CableJive’s dockBoss+ gives your phone an Apple connector
The amount of accessories for Apple's 30 pin dock connector is ridiculous. This is partly because it's Apple, and partly because the connector has more or less the same across devices for many years. When I look over at my Samsung Galaxy Tab's 30 pin connector and then at my Samsung Galaxy S II's microUSB connector, I can't really blame accessory manufacturers for not focusing on a device group where connectors aren't even the same within the same brand and year.
CableJive's dockBoss+ is a new cable that aims to help this issue at least a little bit. It has a female 30 pin Apple dock connector in one end and a microUSB charging plug and 3.5mm audio jack in the other end. The purpose of this is to let any device with those two ports (almost any non-Apple phone at this point) charge off Apple docks while at the same time feed audio to them. I've seen similar adapters before, but most of them only do audio – not charging.
This won't let you use any of the more advanced features of Apple accessories, such as browse playlists and see song info on an audio dock, or utilize something like the Camera Connection Kit or anything like that. This is purely charging and "dumb" audio input, nothing else. Still, that's useful enough in itself, and it allows you to use that speaker dock you bought for your old iPhone or your new Android phone. $30 isn't the cheapest for a simplecable, but it isn't the end of the world either. What I would like to see though is all this functionality in a simple adapter that makes the phone dockable in the dock as well – something like this, but with a microUSB male plug and separate audio cable.
[CableJive]
