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I fitted this in my car today. It is a car phone holder without the phone (I’m using the phone to take the photo). I looked quite hard to find one I wanted.

carphoneholder

It needed to clip onto the dash of my car without needing to cut any holes. Sticking onto the windscreen did not appeal and hooking onto the air vents seems like a way to get a phone too hot. This one came in two parts. There’s the bit that holds the phone and the bit that clips to the dash. You get them separately, because not all Galaxy S4 owners drive Renault Meganes, and screw them together. Obvious, eh? That’s so often true of clever ideas.

Anyway, it took about 10 minutes to fit. It would take about 2 minutes if I went around again, I was slow because I didn’t want to screw it up. But it came with good instructions and it holds the phone firmly, yet allowing it to be swivelled a bit for fine positioning.

The one downside is that it fits the phone exactly. I have a case on my phone and the phone + the case doesn’t fit. Not a big deal. The case pops off easily. I’ll talk about the case in a moment.

You can see the white and blue square on the holder? That’s a tectile. A bundle of them came free with the phone. They are little NFC squares you can program to hold commands for the phone when it passes over it. This one makes sure bluetooth is turned on, switches the mode to hands-free and a couple of other things. It means once in the holder the phone is all set up for the car, S Voice wishes me good morning, I tell S Voice to play some music and, maybe, navigate somewhere and I’m set to go. Sometimes it launches the music without being told, I haven’t worked out the pattern on that yet. I’m still impressed S Voice can understand my accent.

Back to the phone case. I like a lanyard on my phone and the S4 doesn’t have a loop for one so I got a Targus case, bored a hole in it and attached a lanyard. I also stuck some velcro all over the back. I made a strap for my wrist and put enough velcro on that to stick the phone to. This is so I can manage the shopping trolley in the supermarket as well as the shopping list on the phone as well as reach stuff off the shelves. Mrs tells me (affectionately) that it makes me look ridiculous.

case

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