Sony Ericsson LiveDock

THE LiveDock from Sony Ericsson is an example of a product with great potential that falls short of meeting expectations. At an expected price of less than €30, according to Sony Ericsson in Dubai, around Dhs 150, the LiveDock should arrive in the market soon and provide a table-top stand for Sony Ericsson smartphones.

By Magnus Nystedt

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Published: Sat 17 Sep 2011, 11:29 AM

Last updated: Tue 7 Apr 2015, 8:03 AM

The LiveDock is about 8cm in diameter and rises just a few centimeters above the surface. You place your Sony Ericsson smartphone on the top and with a pull-out flap you can adjust the viewing angle. Plug in the attached Micro USB cable and you’re set. The dock itself connects to a charger using Micro USB and a to peripherals like keyboard, mouse, and flash drives using full size USB port.

With your smartphone placed on the LiveDock you get a comfortable viewing angle for slideshows, movies, or just a clock displayed on the smartphone. If your device has HDMI port you can also connect it to display on a TV, monitor or projector.

With keyboard, mouse and display connected, you have in effect a personal computer. However, no matter how big a display you have connected, the Sony Ericsson smartphone won’t show you any more pixels. So everything gets bigger but not more detailed. Using a mouse and keyboard with Android also takes some getting used to as the operating system was created with touch in mind, not the traditional types of computer input.

With the full size USB port you can connect a flash drive and access files stored on it. I plugged in a 32GB flash drive and my Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc had no trouble reading from and writing to it.

One neat little trick the LiveDock and compatible smartphone can do is to launch certain apps on the phone when you connect the LiveDock. The LiveWare app on the phone can be configured to launch different apps depending on which compatible accessory is attached. Since each LiveDock, and other accessories, have unique identifiers, it can launch one app when it’s connected to the LiveDock at home, and another app when it’s connected at work.

As much as I like the idea of the LiveDock, there are two things that, for me, means it is a lost opportunity. For one, that you have to manually connect the Micro USB cable each time is not how a dock should work. I understand that to have connections that the smartphone slides in to would mean a redesign of Sony Ericsson smartphones. That may not be feasible but nonetheless it seriously detracts from the usability of the LiveDock. Second, and this is related to the first point, the LiveDock doesn’t hold the smartphone in a secure position. It slides around and it happened many times for me that it just fell off the LiveDock altogether.

I am usually a big fan of docking stations, whether they are for smartphones, tablets or computers, but the LiveDock doesn’t live up to its potential. My advice to Sony Ericsson would be to go back to the drawing board and redesign it. If I would have to pay more for a redesigned, but useful, LiveDock, I would. There is great potential here for Sony Ericsson, it just hasn’t been fully realized with the LiveDock.

· Magnus Nystedt talks and writes about technology as much as he can. Follow him on Twitter as @mnystedt for the latest on consumer technology in the Middle East.


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