FWIW: I finally got this the other day after they were mentioned on Gizmodo a couple weeks back. Exogear sold out, Amazon sold out, and I got back ordered for week.
This is my second car mount, I also have one of the HK shipped ones that you can buy on eBay with the X10 specific mount which will let you use programs like DailyRoads Voyager to record your trips or take photos through the mount.
The main problem with that ebay mount is that it could only be mounted on the windshield, and with some cars, it's impossible to mount low without the phone being more than an arms length away, and if you mount it high, you block your view (like adding another rearview mirror) and risk a stop and ticket by a police officer for 'blocking your view' which is one of the old rules now being enforced. Additionally, your car charger may not be long enough to reach and/or adds an additional distraction.
Anyway, Exogear had a video of this new universal car mount and Giz put a link up on the Exomount. They claim that this is the stickiest mount and can stick to pebbly/leather textured dash and frame panels as well as smooth glass without an additional pad or double stick tape. Additionally, since it has a clamp at one end, as well as the suction cup, you can suction cup your phone and clamp to the air ducts which might be a necessity with the battery overheating problem during Summer.
Well, in short, Exomount does everything it says it does. It's a very short form factor (a couple inches shorter from screen to mount than my Chinese car mount), it will clamp to the airducts, and suction cup your phone (extremely well) that you may pull the back off when you try to release it and it will stick to pebbly dash. Just make sure that your surface is CLEAN. The material will pickup all the dirt/dust and have reduced suction as a result. The suction cup can be washed in the sink. The mfgr says it's better after washing.
You may want to keep the cardboard ring to put on the unit when not in use.
It does not come with one of those 'keep the louvers open' clips, but it's clips are very long and I didn't have a issue with the louvers closing once I had it in position since I spread the clip to span several louvers. I didn't see any warping of the vents.
Related
Again, I have no financial interest in this device.... except I really want to see it get funded cause I really want one. It is the PON phone holder.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/riselee/pon-finally-a-killer-smartphone-mount
I have about 8 different plastic phone/ tablet holders laying around the house at least 3 are in some way broken. The PON is milled from a solid piece of aluminum. It aint gonna break. It mounts to a standard tripod mount 1/4-20 screw. It has 3 mounting locations on the holder so you can choose a variety of directions to mount it in. In comes in three different sizes for your phone, your phtablet and your tablet. If you go to the page you will see that the phone is pretty much never going to shake out of the holder... the holder isnt going to crack..... I think this maybe the best universal phone in otterbox holder ever made.
I live in canada, and therefore, have to deal with below freezing temps. The issue I have right now is trying to find a car mount that does not utilize that cheap plastic tab in the middle of the sgs2 to hold it in the mount. I have purchased 2 different types on ebay, and both have had that tab snap off due to the cold weather making the plastic brittle. Does anyone know of a product somewhere that has that clip either on a spring hinge, and one that uses a metal clip that wont break in cold weather?
colinlinton said:
I live in canada, and therefore, have to deal with below freezing temps. The issue I have right now is trying to find a car mount that does not utilize that cheap plastic tab in the middle of the sgs2 to hold it in the mount. I have purchased 2 different types on ebay, and both have had that tab snap off due to the cold weather making the plastic brittle. Does anyone know of a product somewhere that has that clip either on a spring hinge, and one that uses a metal clip that wont break in cold weather?
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I used to own a classic Mini, anyone that has owned one will tell you there is not really any protection inside unlike a modern car.
I used a exogear - exomount in it over winter (-6c for a week was the lowest where I live) and no cracking/snapping or loss of suction.
Its a really great mount, someone posted up about it in here somewhere and Ive loved it ever since.
Here, in Poland, i had a maybe similar issue, the temperatures get from freezing cold to melting hot, always any holder gets broken or just falls off from the window due to the temperatures deforming the sucker. Now im using a Spiderpodium and i can totally reccomend it, if you got a vent near enough to allow you to see the screen without any trouble then that might do the job for you. As an additional pros the vent with air conditioning keeps the phone cool all the time. About a traditional car mount then you could maybe try a universal mount, phone doesnt need to be squeezed into such so there are zero parts that could break off.
Hi,
im using this product ordered from eBay, this is by far the best holder i had, and i tried about 4:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Universal-C...685656?pt=PDA_Accessories&hash=item27c9391418
didn't try it in a cold weather. i live in Israel and i bought this product this summer. during summer the temperatures can get to close to 40 degrees in the place i live (probably higher inside the car).
in a few occasions my car was in direct sunlight all noon, when i got back to the car the suction cup was a little bit loose, but after a few moments when the car cools down the suction cup is strong again.
it can be rotated 360 degrees, it doesn't wobble and make noise during driving and the suction cup is very strong, never fell of the windshield.
Why not get a proper mount for your phone ? I'm using a Brodit one and it's very tough even when offroading (not mounted on windscreen, but mounted with screws). It fits and holds the phone just great.
All variants for the S2 are here, there's even an adjustable one in case you use a skin case.
So I have a pro clip (http://www.proclipusa.com/) and have been using it for a few years now (since my iPhone 3GS) and every time I swap out the Holder for my new phone (obviously).
I really like their style because it's pretty minimalist and doesn't involve suction cups. HOWEVER, the latest one I have been using for my iphone 4s (with bumper) was less than stellar (This: http://www.proclipusa.com/?sectionp...r=false&have_mount=true&p_pageid=16488&dtype= )
They started using a 'one size fits all' type of product where you basically size your devise and screw in the adjustable sides. The sides ALWAYS slip and I have to re-tighten them. It's really a pain.
It also appears that they don't have support YET for the HTC One (another bummer).
I want to keep Vehicle mount and I am wondering if there is a way to hybridize the custom vehicle mount with something like this: http://www.amazon.com/GreatShield-Windshield-Dashboard-Universal-Holster/dp/B0090SB1CE/
Again, trying to stay away from the window suction cups which seems nearly unavoidable.
Anyone find a good solution to the proclips problem? Really unfortunate that they chose to skimp on quality and haven't updated for the ONE...
I've been checking the proclip website for an HTC One mount as well. As you said, no such luck so far.
One possible (but not very elegant) solution involves the HTC One official car dock (D160 or whatever the model number is). HTC dock uses a suction cup and comes with a flat plastic disc with a sticky pad on one side. The normal use for that disc is to stick it on your dashboard to create the flat and glossy surface ideal for the suction cup at the bottom of the actual dock. It should be possible to stick this disc to the proclip vehicle mount and suction-mount the official HTC car dock on top of it.
As I said, not very elegant, but it is one way to convert your proclip vehicle mount to a suction mount point. And you can probably go back to a proclip device docks by removing the sticky disk in the future.
ardabey said:
I've been checking the proclip website for an HTC One mount as well. As you said, no such luck so far.
One possible (but not very elegant) solution involves the HTC One official car dock (D160 or whatever the model number is). HTC dock uses a suction cup and comes with a flat plastic disc with a sticky pad on one side. The normal use for that disc is to stick it on your dashboard to create the flat and glossy surface ideal for the suction cup at the bottom of the actual dock. It should be possible to stick this disc to the proclip vehicle mount and suction-mount the official HTC car dock on top of it.
As I said, not very elegant, but it is one way to convert your proclip vehicle mount to a suction mount point. And you can probably go back to a proclip device docks by removing the sticky disk in the future.
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Hmm, that may be something to look into. At least for the time being until ProClip comes out with something...
Wonder how long it takes for them to announce a new device mount...
Grumpy Bob said:
Hmm, that may be something to look into. At least for the time being until ProClip comes out with something...
Wonder how long it takes for them to announce a new device mount...
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Personally I haven't been too impressed with ProClip in the last few years. The holder they had for the Galaxy S3 was really expensive. Too expensive for what it was...
I'm happy that we have an official car dock from HTC.
The ProClip holders for the HTC One are in production. Within 1-2 weeks they will have them in stock. Just send them an email to get on the notification list. [email protected]
Attached is an image of their HTC One holder with a USB/Car charger. The other standard ones they will have as well.
Proclip sells a suction cup disc: http://www.proclipusa.com/brodit-de.../suction-cup-dashboard-disc-710643-14367.aspx
I'm not sure if it just uses two-sided tape to attach or if there are screw holes so you can attach it properly. Unfortunately the link for the install instructions is broken so I can't really tell.
EDIT: Just sent an email to Proclip to see if it uses adhesive or a screw.
EDIT 2: Got a response, there is adhesive on the back so it's no better than any other disc out there.
http://www.amazon.com/TechMatte-Eas...389641448&sr=8-1&keywords=techmatte+car+mount
http://www.amazon.com/TechMatte-360...389641448&sr=8-3&keywords=techmatte+car+mount
TechMatte Easy-Touch Universal Windshield Car Mount
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Dash Disks
With all the features of smartphones (GPS, Streaming music and much much more) a car mount is a must have.
I've used cheapo car mounts before from ebay and its safe to say they didn't stay in my car for long. I decided to try out another one when I got my Nexus 5 and glad that I did.
This mount is made purely out of ABS plastic I believe. Simple, sturdy and lightweight. Being that it'll hang from your windshield, Lightweight is a good thing. There are a couple things to note here.
First; It has a really, really strong suction cup. This is probably due to the lever style suction cup and not the type that you press onto glass. I've yanked on this pretty hard when it was on my windshield and it didn't budge.
Second, there is a lot of different angles that this can be set in it. First is the verticle angle adjustment. It's set by a simple knob that loosens or tightens the hinge.
Next is the swivel joint of the phone cup/claw/base holder. It's a ball joint and NOT hinge so it can be moved up, down, left, right and any combination of them. The cup/claw/base can be removed I don't know why you would remove it but it can be.
The phone is held in place by the "Claw" that squeezes together via a spring. The "claw fingers" are lined with a cushion so no scratches and to have a better grip on the phone. As shown in the picture, it can open up pretty wide and would accommodate most if not all phones.
Some people don't like having the mount on the windshield so there are these rotating disks that meant to be mounted on the dash. At the bottom is a sticky pad to placement. The disks can be locked into place or unlocked to rotate around when the mount is suctioned on them
Pulling the pin out allows for rotation e.g. facing the driver or passenger seat. Here is a picture showing with a line where it actually rotates on the disks. It's important to note that it can rotate 360 degrees around.
The dash disks comes in a two pack so it can be placed in two cars. So transferring the actual amount from one car to another is simple and easy.
Conclusion
Nice, simple, sturdy and affordable mount.
Hi guys,
I've gone through a few generic mounts of eBay and unfortunately none have lasted me more than a few months. I've tried the design that consists of the round suction area and round mount, and the cheap claw style mount.
I know there must be a perfect one out there. What I'd like is one that has minimal vibration, strong suction, great build quality and NFC would be a nice bonus.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
What exactly has failed with the previous mounts?
surprising nobody responded to this one, anybody got a good experience with mounts?
I asked for more details about his previous experiences, without any reason... What else could I have said more? Maybe you, @sam008 could add something and we could continue the discussion from there.
PS: I have some experience with mounts.
Well the issue I've had and most people see as well is the suction has a very short life. In a few months, when driving, the phone just falls off and you have to re-attach it
That behaviour is rather normal. It's rather hard to create a plastic (rubber, silicone or whatever it is) that can resist in the sun. Even the suction cup that came with a Garmin (which might be considered above generic suction cups) fell down after a few weeks. Imagine that that suction cup is constantly pulled on and the longer the arm (I've seen 20-30 cm or almost one foot long arms) the worse it is. Not to mention that the phone will balance more.
That is why I tend to avoid suction cups and prefer vent or CD slot mounted holders, with as short as possible arms.
Vent mounted holders also have the advantage that during summer the phone will be cooled down by the car's A/C.
One of these days I'll come back with a few opinions about what I tried until now.
Even my iOttie dock couldn't handle the Texas heat! Not only did it keep falling off, whatever the suction cup is made of came apart and left a sticky goo all over my windshield. Now I use a CD mount that is below the dash and gets cold AC blown on it to help keep the phone cool.
At first I used a cheap suction cup holder. It was OK, but the phone was a little bit too far away from me. It used to fall every now and then, but not too often. But then again, Eastern Europe is not Texas. Some venting would have been welcome anyway.
Then I used a CD slot holder. It was pretty OK, A/C was blowing on the back of the phone (small clamp). But it used to resonate sometimes with the car at around 110 km/h.
Then I switched cars and broke the CD slot holder so I could use a vent holder and I did. The clamp is a bit big on this one, so the A/C is not that efficient, but it goes. Actually this one is made up of two holders, the clamp from one and the claws (that go in the vent) from another.
I tried a very small one for a few minutes (bought it from a mall and promptly returned it after I tried it in the parking lot) but it looks like it doesn't even have a chance of being stable.
Now I am using the amazon bought combo, but I might switch back to CD vent.
The linked pictures are as example only. The amazon links are the actual products.
In the end I recommend something that can easily enjoy the A/C and with a very short arm. Be careful that some car brands (like my old Fiesta) don't allow the air flow to be turned off while the vent's fins are used for the phone holder.