Let me tell you a story. Many years ago, I was a cocktail bartender in a busy London bar. I had just gotten a brand new dumb-phone (a Siemens if I remember correctly), a little silver candy-bar of crap, but it was my candy-bar of crap, and I’d owned it only a few hours.
On shift, I switched the phone to silent and put it in a rocks glass on the backbar, behind my station. The bottom shelf of the backbar had a small lip at the front. Partway through the busy shift I needed some Kahlua (for a Vodka Espresso, not a White Russian). I grabbed the bottle and the base caught the shelf-edge and sheared clean off. The Kahlua – of course – was dumped into the glass with my brand new phone.
I was lucky: this was before the days of moisture sensors and a quick wash later and I got a new handset from the store. Today, you might not fare so well.
Which is why I have mixed (no pun intended) opinions of the Cube.
The Cube is a $35 polycarbonate cup for your phone. It won’t charge it, nor will it hook the phone up to your stereo, screw to a tripod or otherwise adds features. Functionally, it is almost exactly the same as the ill-fated rocks glass I used a decade ago, only it’s square and has a hole in the bottom for letting a USB cable enter (and – presumably – a Kahlua flood to escape).
The Cube will amplify the sound of the iPhone’s speaker very slightly, and it will also keep it standing mostly upright, but it’s hard to see why you’d bother with this when you could head to the local dime store or kitchenware emporium and find something equally functional for a fraction of the price.
Still, should you decide you want one, and that you are prepared to wait 34 days for the Kickstarter project to wind up, plus another few months for production to start (if it does), then go ahead. Just be careful where you’re waving your liquor bottles.
Source: Kickstarter
