LG Nexus 4 gets a good car charging dock courtesy of the Samsung Infuse
Ever since I broke my ASUS Nexus 7, I’ve been hoping to integrate my LG Nexus 4 with my car a bit more. I was planning to make a custom dock for the Nexus 7 to use with my car stereo, but lately I’ve been using my Nexus 4 for navigation and music instead. However, since I don’t have any sort of car dock, I decided that it would be best to get one before moving on to NFC automation and a customized driving interface.
In searching for a good car dock, I was surprised to find that not many options exist. Google hasn’t released an official car dock with wireless charging or audio out for the Nexus 4, and most other options are generic device holders that aren’t very secure and also don’t integrate even microUSB charging. Fortunately, an older thread on XDA held a temporary solution.
The Samsung Infuse 4G was never a great smartphone, but a few months ago AT&T began selling off old car docks for the device for $5. Users noticed that the dock would actually fit a few different devices, and quickly bought them up. While the price of the dock is now no longer such a good bargain, it costs only $20 on Amazon, which is lower than many lower quality generic docks. Most importantly, however, the dock is of OEM Samsung quality, grips the Nexus 4 quite securely, and includes an integrated microUSB port that will charge the Nexus 4. (However, USB audio out does not work at this point, and charging is slow with the stock setup, although the dock can be modified to charge the device faster.)
While it isn’t a hugely important discovery, I’m quite glad to have found a higher quality car dock for my Nexus 4 at a decent price. It may not have wireless charging, but it integrates microUSB without forcing you to fumble around and plug the cable in, and with an NFC tag on the back, it will be a good start to integrating my Nexus 4 into my car for both functional and fun reason.
It probably wouldn’t be as important if Google had released an official car dock for the Nexus 4, but since the company has a history of trouble with releasing accessories, I’m going to go ahead and begin using this dock made for a completely different smartphone while I wait for Google to get its act together and release some Nexus 4 accessories.
[xda-developers]
