The Griffin AirCurve Acoustic Amplifier for the iPhone is a neat little accessory for the iPhone that at first glance seems like a gimmick, a piece of nice looking plastic, no batteries, cords, or buttons. In reality it works pretty well and will be quite useful for some users. I often wish I could listen to a podcast using my iPhone's speaker while I'm working at my desktop or on a small job on a workbench. Unfortunately, I find that my iPhone's speaker is not quite loud enough, especially if there's much background noise. I end up straining to heard the audio, taking the fun out of listening to the iPhone. Sure, I could use the headphones, but sometimes I don't want to be encumbered by headphone cables, and/or I want to be able to hear whats going on around me. I could use a powered speaker dock, but that's overkill, I just want a few more decibels, and a dock takes up more space than I usually have in a small work area, and requires batteries or a power cord.
The Griffin AirCurve Acoustic Amplifier is a largish docking stand for the original and 3G iPhone, about 1.5" high, 3.5" deep, and 4.75" wide. Its made out of clear polycarbonate plastic, held together with four stainless bolts. The attractive design will look good on a desk, table, or nightstand.
Your iPhone sets in a slot "top and center" of the AirCurve dock (dock adapters for both versions of the iPhone are included). Griffin describes the internal configuration of the AirCurve dock as a coiled waveguide "horn' that collects the sound from the built-in speaker of your iPhone, amplifies it (by about 10 decibels), and projects it into the room. The clear polycarbonate design hilights the coiled, expanding shape of the waveguide horn which routes the sound from the speaker on the bottom of the iPhone towards the listener, amplifying it along the way.
Using the AirCurve The Griffin AirCurve comes in a box along with two docking adapters, one for each version of the iPhone. It is important to for the iPhone to set firmly into the AirCurve dock, both to ensure the sound is routed correctly through the AirCurve, and that your iPhone is supported adequately. The docking adapter-iPhone fit is a close fit, if your iPhone is in any kind of case, you'll have to to remove the case to use your iPhone with the AirCurve dock.
Putting your iPhone into the AirCurve dock amplifies the audio to become approximately twice as loud and somewhat focused in a direction leaving the waveguide outlet on the front face of the AirCurve dock. To the listener, "waveguide horn" built into the AirCurve amplifies or intensifies the audio and directs it toward the listener, though it is is probably more accurate to say the AirCurve is improving the efficiency of the iPhone's speaker, rather than amplifying it.
Audio is amplified cleanly, which can be good or bad, depending on your viewpoint. Since you're not amplifying the audio electronically, you don't have to worry about the hiss and electronic noise that the iPhone causes in most speaker docks. There's no need to put the iPhone into "airplane" mode to improve audio quality. But the audio being amplified is only as good as what the tiny iPhone speaker can provide. The quality is pretty good for a phone speaker, but its decidedly low fidelity, like listening to an AM transistor radio. While the AirCurve does a good job of amplifying spoken word podcasts without any distortion, amplifying music is less satisfying. The iPhone's speaker audio quality just doesn't provide much to work with. Listening to music with the AirCurve is, at best, a mediocre experience.
Griffin provides a path to route an iPod charging cable through the AirCurve dock, allowing users to sync and charge their iPhone while listening. Unfortunately, this works poorly, the charging cable/dock connector sits loosely in the dock, rather than just set your iPhone in the dock to plug in the dock connector, you have to pull part of the cable through the dock, plug the dock connector into the iPhone, and then pull the cable back through the dock as you dock the phone. The slot that the USB end of cable fits through on the dock is small, so small that one 3rd party cable I tried doesn't fit. The Apple supplied USB docking cable does fit. Conclusion
If you're looking for a simple, inexpensive way to amplify your iPhone's speaker to listen to podcasts, you'll likely be happy with the AirCurve. The AirCurve will cleanly double the volume of what you hear. My wife owns the original iPhone, and I have the 3G iPhone, and we both use this dock with good results. The AirCurve also works for music, but keep in mind that the AirCurve only boosts the iPhone's speaker. The experience will be like turning up the volume on an inexpensive transistor radio, with low fidelity, sharp, tinny sound.
While users can use their docking cable while their iPhone is docked in the AirCurve, this feature doesn't work well. The docking connector fits loosely in the AirCurve's docking slot. Docking the iPhone into the AirCurve with your docking cable is a doable, but multistep process. This is something done with one step on most docks.
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