Samsung Desk Stand for Galaxy S II

Genuine Samsung accessory, this dock is attractive and stylish. I've bought two, one for bedside and one for my desk.

Works well in both landscape and portrait mode, and has separate volume up/down buttons, useful in landscape mode as the phone's own volume buttons are inaccessible in that position.

Even without external power, docking automatically runs your dock program... by default this is a clock with icons to access your music, gallery, e-reader and so on.

There are two ports... a 3.5 mm audio port for external speakers (NOT suitable for earphones but the phone's 3.5mm jack is always available for that) and a micro-USB port for charging. The micro-USB is not suitable for a data connection to a PC... if you want to do that you'll have to connect the phone directly to the PC, not via the dock.

Two small issues: First, there is no front bezel or edging, so someone could damage the connector by pulling the phone forward instead of up when trying to undock, and I've found that not having a bezel to guide how it slides in makes it a little awkward to dock the phone at bedside in the dark.

Second, the charging indicator is a horrible bright blue LED light that's very uncomfortable at night. You may want to cover it with a small piece of electrical tape.

But otherwise I would recommend this kit.

I bought this for my Samsung Galaxy S II, which I use at work mostly to listen to music. I was expecting this desk-stand to allow me to do the following:

1. Charge my phone while docked
2. Listen to music while docked, via the headphone socket at the back of the dock
3. Keep the screen on indefinately so I can see album art, and trivially pause/skip tracks
4. Sync data with my PC while docked, via the USB connector at the back of the dock

Here is how it measured up to my expectations:

1. It does indeed charge when docked (so long as power is supplied to the USB socket at the rear of the dock, naturally)
2. The "headphone" socket at the back is actually a line-out, which means the sound produced by it sounds pretty awful on my earbuds: very tinny, a bit quiet.
3. The screen turns off after a period of inactivity, as per usual (subject to the application - some keep the screen on).
4. You cannot sync data with this dock! The phone somehow detects that it is docked, and displays a special (and frustrating) home-screen replacement. I believe this is sometimes called the "Car dock" on Android forums, but I'm not sure (I don't have a car dock..). So long as the phone knows it is docked you cannot enable USB mass-storage mode, or MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) mode, etc. If you manage to get the real home-screen and then the phone's settings to manually enable USB mass-storage mode, you are polietly asked to disconnect the USB cable first. If you do so by undocking, when you redock the USB mass-storage dialog/mode is dismissed because it launches the home-screen replacement application.

2a. I suspect that if used an amplifier with line-out the sound would be fine.
2b. Even after fiddling with the equaliser (a lot) I was not able to match the warmth, volume, and general fidelity of the headphone socket at the top of the phone. I have since given up using the dock's line-out, and plug my earphones directly into the phone.

3a. By installing an application called "Caffeine" I have been able to configure my phone to keep the screen on indefinately when it has an external power source (e.g. charging, syncing, or docked)

So this dock has failed to fufill my two primary reasons for buying it:

* Allowing me to listen to music without the fuss of plugging earphones in and constantly turning the the screen on to skip/pause tracks as work demands.
* Allowing me to sync data with my PC
____

If my points above don't affect your plans, here's the good:

* You can literally drop your phone into the dock, and it will mate with the connector at the base. Removing the phone is like-wise as easy. My friends tell me it is much slicker in this respect than their iPhone's and their iPhone-docks.
* It is as pretty as it looks in pictures, and has a certain "wow" factor when your S II is sitting in it.
* It does not muffle the sounds from the phone's built-in loudspeaker, thanks to a small gap in the back plane. A nice touch
* It works well in all 3 orientations (2x landscape + 1x portrait).
* The dock has its own volume buttons, and these work flawlessly (although they ramp/lower the volume faster than the phone's own...) The phone's own volume buttons are still accessible on the opposite site from the dock's, so you have volume controls in any orientation.

** However, it only has rubber feet on the base in portrait mode, and their are not big enough to stop it sliding around the plastic surface I want it to sit on. (But a rubber mat has solved that for me).

Overall, I think I would have prefered a very cheap "dock" that is little more than a USB cable - it would allow me to sync data, charge, and wouldn't replace my home screen (very frustrating!). In either case I'd still have to attach my earhpones directly to the phone.

This dock is finished to a high standard and the Galaxy S II fits into it very very well it has a built in speaker and turns your phone into a Desktop/Bedside clock while charging it over night This is a must buy even though it's not cheap.