Apple doesn’t make a standup dock for the iPhone 5, which sucks. Normally we’d turn to our friends in China to do what Apple can’t (or won’t), but in this case, no: purported Lightning docks are complete broken fakery.
Our connector maven pal Peter from Double Helix Cables just got a copy of a purported iPhone 5 dock, and has some bad news:
“This… is a piece of shit.”
Opening up the box and out pops this stinker. I did a double take because it looked like a prank, prop, or placeholder of some sort. The lightning plug on the dock looks like a damn piece of cardboard, if you can even call it that. Because it’s a cardboard-like chunk of circuit board that supposedly is going to fit into my iPhone 5.
The back of the dock has a reasonable-looking Lightning female jack that seems to fit a Lightning cord. Inside there’s a few integrated circuits and a few resistors performing God knows what purpose, technically you could make a Lightning extension cord with no chips on it if you’re just extending the pins as this thing out to be doing. The “lightning” plug is a chunk of circuit board connected to a ribbon cable, going to the strange board in the back. There’s a weight inside the dock as with Apple docks in the past for a weighty feel that is a stark contrast to the home brewed lightning plug.
The dock cutout isn’t remotely close to being iPhone 5 shaped, but its lack of precise fit pales in comparison to the “lightning” plug, which 100 per cent doesn’t fit — it is too big. In fact, the lightning plug does not fit into the jack on the back of the dock (if you cut it off and try to get it in there). Further effort to make this non functional dock would probably damage my iPhone.
So don’t fall for it. Wait for a semi-reputable company to churn one out, or at least an anonymous Chinese bootleg mill that bothers to make a fake dock that your iPhone can at least fit onto.