dotty blah: Lightning to 30-pin Adapters hands-on

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Lightning to 30-pin Adapters hands-on

While Apple managed to ship the iPhone 5 to dozens of countries within the span of a couple weeks, it's taken almost a month to get the 30-pin Dock to Lightning connector adapters shipped and into stores. So, now that they're here, how are they?

Okay. Pretty much exactly what you'd expect.

30-pin Dock to Lightning adapters hands-on

The dongle isn't really small enough to avoid being annoying, but that's what you get when you need something to translate the new, all-digital Lightning signal into the old, partly analog Dock signal and vice versa. If all you have is an old legacy cable, either stand-alone or as part of an in-car system, it works fine. Anything that's cramped, however, or relies on wrapping around the base or back of the iPhone for stability, probably won't work.

That brings us to the cable. It's the same as the dongle but includes a short length -- 20 cm or 7.8-inches -- of USB cable as well. So, for example, you could attach it inside a battery case or even some types of media docks and still, awkwardly, use them with your iPhone 5, iPod touch 5, or iPod touch 7.

Both are expensive, neither is ideal, neither supports video, and they took far too long to get into stores. That said, if you have a legacy accessory that absolutely needs a 30-pin Dock port to work, it's something you're going to have to pick up.

I tested both out with the iPod connector kit in my car and they both worked fine, exactly how the iPhone 4S worked with the traditional, direct Dock connector. My music played out through the car, and the car controls were recognized by my iPhone 5.