LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – It’s pretty unusual to see a major headset manufacturer’s brand-spanking new flagship phone soaking in a goldfish bowl. Then again, if that phone is the new waterproof Sony Xperia Z, maybe a fishbowl is exactly where one would expect to find it.
We’re continually seeing examples of how the iPhone has exploded its horizons to become much, much more than just a phone. Case (ha) in point: Why shell out $300 for an action cam when you already own a video cam with stellar optics and image-stabilizing, a big, beautiful screen and the ability to upload your exploits whenever you damn well please? All you need to turn your iPhone from video cam to action cam is a rugged, weatherproof case with a wide-angle lens, and the ability to stick the whole thing onto a helmet or such. And that pretty much describes the $150 Mophie OutRide system.
Unlike some of the other newcomers to the quickly growing action-cam party (Sony, we’re looking at you), Drift has been making robust little video cameras for a while now. Their latest incarnation is the 1080p Drift HD Ghost, which looks like it’s been packaged with everything but the kitchen sink — including a large built-in screen and a wearable remote.
I have a plan for trouble. When it rears its ugly head again, I’m grabbing my all-hell-has-broken-loose list, dumping the items on the list into my trusty backpack and hauling ass. I figure there’s still the zombie apocalypse and the Mayan whatsit (which may well be the same thing) to worry about, so I might as well be prepared.
I’ve populated the list with things I would need in a disaster scenario: things like a sleeping bag, first-aid kit and rum. Of course, my iPad is also on the list. Oh, I’ll be taking my phone for sure — but the iPad’s large screen will be invaluable in any disaster situation as a navigation tool, for work (yes, even in a zombie apocalypse, blogs must be updated) or just keeping up with current news; mine’s a wifi+cellular, so I suppose wifi-only versions would be somewhat less useful in that last role.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: “A disaster zone, Eli, is no place for an iPad.” That’s true only if you don’t have the right gear to accompany it. The following list will show you how to turn your iPad from a liability into an asset when things go very wrong.
The Patagonia MiniMass commuter bag ($69) is my first taste of Patagonia’s gear, and I’ve always wondered if their stuff was worth the hype. The company has a bit of a reputation — perhaps fair, perhas not — as the outdoor industry’s bourgeois player, probably due to generally higher prices than the competition, an innovative design ethic and the use of green materials throughout their line.
But Patagonia has also spawned a fanatical following. I once worked with someone who literally camped outside the company’s Southern California headquarters (it sits literally right aross the road from the beach) in the hopes she’d be hired. She wasn’t, but toting around my tablet in the the fantastic little MiniMass let me grasp why she tried.
The MiniMass is the smallest sibling in Patagonia’s family of courier bags (all of which end in “Mass” — a nod to the Critical Mass bicycle movement). This makes the MiniMass a perfect tablet carrier. And even though it isn’t explicitly to ferry tablets, it excels in the task.
LifeProof has definitely made an impact with the digital outdoors; seems I run into their sleek, modular, waterproof iPhone cases everywhere (we love them, btw). Now, the company is focusing on their new Nüüd iPad case, and the second available accessory for the case is the LifeJacket, a flotation device that fits around the waterproof Nüüd case and keeps the iPad from sinking into the murky depths after you’ve, say, calculated your dive profile.
Pelican made a name for itself making tough cases for the military, firemen and other hazardous sorts who generally place their delicate gadgets in harm’s way. Now they’ve taken their extreme-environment case technology and built four new backpacks around it — two of which have crushproof/waterproof compartments.
There’s an important list every serious outdoor junkie has at least heard of — it’s called the Ten Essentials, and it lists gear no adventurer should journey into the wilds without. But it was codified long before the digital age arrived; now that power-hungry electronic gadgets are a part of adventuring, a relaible backup fuel tank is pretty important. It could even make the difference between life and death.
That’s where Mophie’s Juice Pack Powerstation Pro ($130) comes in. It’s a monstrous 6000 mAh chunk of a battery guarded by a ruggedized, military-spec housing — and it’ll charge practically anything short of a laptop.
You’re an American, and you’ve just watched your athletes come away with a barrel full of gold medals in London. Maybe you’re feeling a little patriotic; maybe a little like you want to go out and train for Rio de Janiero. If so, then Monster has created the perfect earphones for you: A special edition “USA” version of their impressive, washable, iSport IEMs.
Mophie, the JuicePack company, has flipped out and gone in a totally new direction, head first into an equally crowded market: iPhone sports camera enclosures. Mophie’s version is called the OUTRIDE, in ALL-CAPS.
If there were ever a medal for Most Staggering Misnomer, the iPhone would find itself in serious contention for gold; the little glass slab is so stuffed with useful functions it makes the “phone” element of its name ridiculously misleading. Consider the action-packed roles my iPhone has filled over the years: Bicycle computer; running partner; navigator; wilderness scout; survival guide; weather advisor; and visual story-telling tool, not to mention being able to score all these adventures to music. And yeah, it makes calls too.
The iPhone is the most indispensible piece of hardware since man discovered sharp rocks. Problem is, the iPhone is also a fragile weakling, easily damaged by sharp rocks, gravity or water — things that exist in copious amounts around precisely the places you’d want to use the iPhone to adventure with.
The people at LifeProof, however, have recognized this paradox, and they think they have a solution. They’ve come up with a quiver of clever, well-designed, mission-specific exoskeletons that work as a seamless, modular system, all designed around the core armor: a lithe, shock-resistant, fully sealed (yes, waterproof) iPhone 4/s case. And for the most part, it works brilliantly.
My first decision is easy when heading out on an outdoor adventure: Take the iPhone with me? Oh, you betcha. The next one is much more difficult. Since the iPhone requires a boost in both protection and juice when playing Indiana Jones, I’m forced to choose between slipping on a battery case and worrying about my iPhone shattering on a rock, or (painstakingly) wrapping it in a rubber case and hoping it doesn’t run out of power.
But Mophie’s new $130 iPhone 4/S battery pack — sort of a cross between a tank and a tanker — says “COMPROMISE IS FOR THE WEAK.” And also, the poor.
The new Timbuk2 Command Messenger 2012 ($140) is nothing like the first Timbuk2 bag I ever owned, some 11 years and 20 pounds ago, back when I was heavily commited to the world of cycling. Timbuk2 called it the Bolo, and it was a real messenger bag — though messengers almost always opted for it’s larger sibling, the Tag Junkie — crafted from a single piece of vinyl and Cordura; just a massive main compartment with not much more than a small pocket sewn on the outer face for coins and maybe a patch kit.
Although it’s just about as tough, the Command Messenger is light years away from my Bolo (and is really as much a messenger bag as a Chevy pickup is an ox cart): It’s sophisticated, uses several advanced materials, has loads of pockets and a trick feature that makes air travel easier for laptop-toting jestsetters. My how you’ve grown, Timbuk2.
Till January of this year, the Wahoo Key for iPhone ($80) dongle pwned fitness on the iPhone. Why? Because the tiny, ubiquitous dongle gives the iPhone access to dozens of ANT+ sensors, and more fitness apps than any other system — turning your iPhone into a fitness-tracking powerhouse.
Then in January, Wahoo one-upped itself and introduced the Wahoo Blue Bluetooth heart-rate strap, which completely bypasses ANT+ and instead communicates via low-energy Bluetooth v4.0. Does this mean the Key is obsolete? Not by a long shot.
Some gadgets love the rugged outdoors; the iPhone, with its sensitive, water-fearing innards, is more of a house gadget. Awww. Then LifeProof stepped in to change that when it launched its $80 water-, dirt-, snow- and shockproof case last summer. Now, the company has unveiled a line of four modular mounts that fit the LifeProof case, turning the iPhone into an electro-Leatherman.
Fitness buffs love Runkeeper (and its accompanying iPhone app) for its ability to gather data from a wide variety of cloud-based services and gadgets they might use, so it can be stored and viewed in a central location; we haven’t exactly counted, but it’s a good bet that the all-knowing fitness service can import data from more fitness apps, services and gadgets than any other cloud-based fitness service on the planet. But with the nine more they added today, well, now it’s just getting ridiculous.
The Pentax WG-1 GPS ($350) is a waterproof, shockproof location-aware camera.
If you’ve never tried a waterproof camera before, it can be quite a jarring experience. Every fibre of your soul tells you that you shouldn’t put electronic gadgets in water, so immersing this beast feels decidedly like the wrong thing to do.
As soon as you’ve done it, though, there’s a rush of delight as you press the on button and the screen lights up, and everything just works as if it were out on dry land.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 — Those studly hex bolts, that rubberized exterior, the thick mass of battery — Mophie’s new Power Station Pro was obviously designed with one idea in mind: keeping your iDevice-laden butt juiced out in the middle of nowhere.
Wahoo’s popular ANT+ Fisica dongle, which allows the iPhone to read signals from fitness gadgets like heart-rate monitors, pedometers and bike sensors, is probably most widely used fitness iPhone accessory since its release a little over a year ago. And today, Wahoo took the first step toward killing it.
Everyone knows that OS X has code names, and how they work: each version of OS X comes branded as a carnivorous big cat, ranked from smallest to largest. Likewise, Android’s got code names up their wazoo, twee little monikers taken from the realm of desserts like Gingerbread, Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich.
But did you know that iOS has code names too? They aren’t publicized, but internally, Apple refers to the latest version of iOS by a number of cool monikers.
Timbuk2 says its new “aerodynamic” (their words, not mine) Mission Cycling Wallet was inspired by the gearheads over at San Francisco-based Mission Cycling Club — one imagines its inception resulting from a cacophony of complaints about sweaty iPhones and the absence of holes to stash a credit card for that post-ride latte.
Sometimes all it takes is a little tweaking to turn a decent gadget into one that makes the corners of your mouth curl up in a grin every time it’s pulled out and powered up.
That’s exactly what happened with the Logitech Wireless Boombox for iPad ($150), a portable six-speakered dock based off Logitech’s S715i dock, which we reviewed earlier this year.
So we’re all pretty aware by now that the iPhone has regressed back to it’s 3GS days and become a bit of an energy pig again. Battery-maker Mophie is appealling to a group of people who’d feel this most keenly — namely, the outdoor set, who tend to use the iPhone’s juice-sucking GPS — with the Mophie Outdoor ($120) battery for the iPhone 4/S.
Trident’s new A.M.S. iPhone 4/S case is edgy. And maybe dangerous. It’s probably what Q would give Bond to protect his iPhone, except it doesn’t come equipped with rocket launchers or a laser.
If you’ve got a bicycle and an iPhone/iPt, here’s a pretty interesting development: iBike, who earlier this year introduced a $200-plus kit that turned the iPhone into a sensor-linked cycling computer, has just released a $70 iPhone cycling package for riders who aren’t Gu-fueled cycling nuts; and it includes what looks like a stellar — and free — cycling app.