Accessory Review: Seidio Desktop Charging Cradle Kit for the HTC EVO 4G LTE, One X, or One S
The Seidio Desktop Charging Cradle Kit allows your HTC EVO 4G LTE, HTC One X, or HTC One S to be upright while syncing or charging. Besides the dock itself, the kit comes with a small power adapter and charging cable if you’re not interested in using your computer’s USB.
The USB connector that plugs into your phone pivots slightly allowing for phones with cases or without, and can accommodate a fairly wide-range of phone case sizes.
In the past, Seidio Charging Cradle Kits for other phones generally put the phone into dock mode, which would alert the phone to display whatever your dock mode program was (for me on the EVO 3D, it was the built-in Accuweather program). This particular kit, however, does not seem to trigger a docked mode. Now, there is no dock application on my 4G LTE, however on other phones that do have a dock application and fit into this cradle, they don’t trigger either. More on that later.
Previous Seidio cradles that I have enjoyed for the EVO 3D and the original EVO 4G had one thing in common: they were wider than the phone. Being wider than the phone allowed you to one-handedly remove a phone from the charging dock as you could lift the phone up with two fingers and press the base down with two or three. With the new kit, the phone is larger than the cradle, requiring a two-handed operation to remove the phone. The cradle hangs on for dear life.
The cradle is a lot more solid feeling than previous ones for the EVO line. It feels like a mini tank and is also a lot smaller, taking up roughly 2/3rds of the space the phone takes.
The cradle being open with a pivoting connector, I discovered that the HTC EVO 3D and the original EVO 4G also fit into it, although not quite as nice looking. When I plugged in the EVO 3D and EVO 4G, neither of them spawned dock mode, but they did start charging. I’m guessing that whatever triggers dock mode is not included in this charging cradle. Considering that none of the phones it’s made for come with dock mode apps, perhaps that’s the reasoning. I do not know.
I tried adding Smarter Alarm to my EVO 4G LTE, but it screened off, not sensing dock mode. Sadly, even a landscape version of the phone’s launcher seems to be denied to add usefulness to this, unless you’re rooted.
Putting an HTC EVO 4G LTE into the cradle is a bit of a chore, I never seem to quite get it lined up. That was one of the things about the previous cradles I liked. You just drop the phone in and it was lined up perfectly. I’m guessing that when you’re attempting to make a kit for this many phones of slightly different sizes, some things can’t be perfectly fitted.
Sadly, nothing special happens with this dock when you plug your phone in. It’s no different than charging. The dock does look nice and makes the phone look less like clutter on a desk or beside a bed, but that added functionality is gone by design from HTC.
I think Seidio might have been better off repeating the plastic cradles they had for their phones before and breaking this out into three separate products, but considering that HTC evidently removed all docking programs, I don’t think that would have benefited the idea of the product much.
The product is well manufactured, and makes a nice bedside dock if you want to use your phone as an alarm, or a desktop dock if you just want to keep your phone up and visible.
The cradle is available from Seidio Online for $39.95, and you still have a few day left to enter to win one in our giveaway.
