One area where iDevices have a clear advantage over the competition is in terms of the accessories that are available. In particular, I've long been jealous of my Apple-toting friends and their speaker docks. Wherever they want music, they just pop in their phone and they've got instant access to a large part of their music library. Great for parties, and lots of other situations.
Ever since Philips announced their Fidelio line of Android docks last year, I've been thinking about buying one. A few months ago I saw that Makro was selling them locally, and this week I finally took the plunge. The model I chose was the AS351 - the second-biggest speaker in the range, and the only one that can use batteries to play without a wall socket.
While I was deciding whether to buy one, I read lots of reviews of Fidelio docks on different tech sites. And I noticed that they varied wildly: some heaped on the praise, while others were quite negative. After having used the Android dock myself, I have come to the conclusion that both sets of reviewers have a point, but they're coming from different perspectives. Essentially, the positive reviews are comparing the Fidelio to the (largely non-existent) alternatives on Android, where as the negative reviews are comparing them to the experience on iOS.
Things are much simpler in the iOS world. All the iDevices (with the exception of the iPad) are approximately the same shape and size. All of them have the same standardised connector port, located in the same place, which they can use to output music. For the end user, using a speaker dock is easy: just pop in your device and hit play. Nothing could be simpler.
Now compare that to the situation on Android. There are two big problems that immediately present themselves. The first is that Android phones are much more varied in terms of size and shape, and while they all have micro-USB, those ports are located in different places on different phones. To solve this, Philips created an ingenious docking system that can be adjusted to fit almost any conceivable phone. It's actually pretty easy to customise it to fit your phone, and once you've done it once you shouldn't have to fiddle with the connector settings again. That said, if you have two or more phones that you regularly want to put in the dock, it might be annoying to switch between them.
The even bigger problem is that Android can't actually output audio through the micro-USB port. To solve this, Philips built a Bluetooth receiver into the speaker, so the phone actually connects to the speaker wirelessly. This was my biggest concern about the Fidelio. In general, I find Bluetooth to be a pretty crappy technology, and I expected that the process of having to pair the phone to the speaker would be slow and irritating. But in practice, I've found the process to be painless. Android's integration with Bluetooth audio is actually really good. You pair it once, and from then on it will automatically connect to the speaker whenever it's in range and Bluetooth is enabled. Then you just play audio through any application, and it outputs to Bluetooth instead of the phone's internal speaker. Awesomeness.
(Note that there's a Philips Fidelio app in the Play Store that can automatically enable Bluetooth and switch to your music app whenever it's plugged into the dock. But I've heard bad things about the app, so I haven't bothered to install it at all. I just do it the manual way - I switch on Bluetooth using the Power Control widget, and open the music player. If I really wanted to, I could probably create a Tasker script to reduce this from two taps to one, but I really don't see the point.)
There are, in fact, several advantages to using Bluetooth. Much like Android itself, using Bluetooth creates a speaker dock that is very flexible. Philips markets it as a speaker dock for Android, but you can play audio from any device that supports Bluetooth - Windows Phone, and even many dumbphones. It also means that the phone doesn't have to be physically plugged in to the speaker to play music. You can unplug the phone and effectively use it as a remote control. You can even do things like plug one phone into the speaker (in order to charge it) while streaming audio from a completely different device.
You may be wondering: in that case, why does Philips even bother with the USB dock at all? Why not just make a speaker with a Bluetooth connection? I suppose the answers are 1) because it gives you a convenient place to put your phone while it's playing music, and more importantly, 2) so that it charges while it plays. Sustained Bluetooth use is pretty heavy on the battery, and the last thing you want is your phone dying in the middle of a party.
Are there some inherent compromises in this design? Yes: most significantly, the audio quality through Bluetooth just isn't as good as through a cable connector. The Fidelio docks all support support audio input through line-in, so you can connect your phone through a provided audio cable rather than Bluetooth if you really want to. This adds to the versatility of the dock. However, in my case it didn't really help much, since on my phone (the Galaxy Nexus) the audio-out port and micro-USB port are both at the bottom. This means that I can't charge the my phone on the dock *and* connect the audio cable simultaneously; I have to choose one or the other. This is just one of those phone design eccentricities that Philips couldn't really have foreseen - it's just an inherent problem with trying to design a dock that fits such a wide variety of hardware.
The other big problem with the Fidelio docks is that they're expensive. The AS351 sells for R1,500 at Makro. Its bigger brother, the AS851, sells for R2,000. In all fairness, this is pretty much in line with the typical cost of speaker docks for iOS devices. But some reviewers feel that the somewhat reduced convenience of the Android docks (having to use Bluetooth and so on) makes the value proposition less compelling. I leave it to you to assess the validity of this argument.
I will say this, however. Is there any other speaker are there, from any other company in the market, that:
- Is this compact (27cm across, according to my tape measure);
- Is sufficiently loud that I could actually envision throwing a house party and using the AS351 as the sole source of audio - it wouldn't be ideal, but it would be feasible;
- Plays pretty decent quality audio, even taking into account the Bluetooth limitation;
- Can connect wirelessly to any Android phone, or any other device that supports Bluetooth audio;
- Charges your phone while you're playing music;
- Can play without a wall socket;
- Looks good in terms of industrial design?
I can't think of a single alternative that can do all of these things. Basically, if you're in the market for a speaker dock for Android, Philips is your only option right now. Fortunately, they've been able to work within the constraints of the Android hardware ecosystem to produce, in my opinion, a pretty solid product.
Ever since Philips announced their Fidelio line of Android docks last year, I've been thinking about buying one. A few months ago I saw that Makro was selling them locally, and this week I finally took the plunge. The model I chose was the AS351 - the second-biggest speaker in the range, and the only one that can use batteries to play without a wall socket.
While I was deciding whether to buy one, I read lots of reviews of Fidelio docks on different tech sites. And I noticed that they varied wildly: some heaped on the praise, while others were quite negative. After having used the Android dock myself, I have come to the conclusion that both sets of reviewers have a point, but they're coming from different perspectives. Essentially, the positive reviews are comparing the Fidelio to the (largely non-existent) alternatives on Android, where as the negative reviews are comparing them to the experience on iOS.
Things are much simpler in the iOS world. All the iDevices (with the exception of the iPad) are approximately the same shape and size. All of them have the same standardised connector port, located in the same place, which they can use to output music. For the end user, using a speaker dock is easy: just pop in your device and hit play. Nothing could be simpler.
Now compare that to the situation on Android. There are two big problems that immediately present themselves. The first is that Android phones are much more varied in terms of size and shape, and while they all have micro-USB, those ports are located in different places on different phones. To solve this, Philips created an ingenious docking system that can be adjusted to fit almost any conceivable phone. It's actually pretty easy to customise it to fit your phone, and once you've done it once you shouldn't have to fiddle with the connector settings again. That said, if you have two or more phones that you regularly want to put in the dock, it might be annoying to switch between them.
The even bigger problem is that Android can't actually output audio through the micro-USB port. To solve this, Philips built a Bluetooth receiver into the speaker, so the phone actually connects to the speaker wirelessly. This was my biggest concern about the Fidelio. In general, I find Bluetooth to be a pretty crappy technology, and I expected that the process of having to pair the phone to the speaker would be slow and irritating. But in practice, I've found the process to be painless. Android's integration with Bluetooth audio is actually really good. You pair it once, and from then on it will automatically connect to the speaker whenever it's in range and Bluetooth is enabled. Then you just play audio through any application, and it outputs to Bluetooth instead of the phone's internal speaker. Awesomeness.
(Note that there's a Philips Fidelio app in the Play Store that can automatically enable Bluetooth and switch to your music app whenever it's plugged into the dock. But I've heard bad things about the app, so I haven't bothered to install it at all. I just do it the manual way - I switch on Bluetooth using the Power Control widget, and open the music player. If I really wanted to, I could probably create a Tasker script to reduce this from two taps to one, but I really don't see the point.)
There are, in fact, several advantages to using Bluetooth. Much like Android itself, using Bluetooth creates a speaker dock that is very flexible. Philips markets it as a speaker dock for Android, but you can play audio from any device that supports Bluetooth - Windows Phone, and even many dumbphones. It also means that the phone doesn't have to be physically plugged in to the speaker to play music. You can unplug the phone and effectively use it as a remote control. You can even do things like plug one phone into the speaker (in order to charge it) while streaming audio from a completely different device.
You may be wondering: in that case, why does Philips even bother with the USB dock at all? Why not just make a speaker with a Bluetooth connection? I suppose the answers are 1) because it gives you a convenient place to put your phone while it's playing music, and more importantly, 2) so that it charges while it plays. Sustained Bluetooth use is pretty heavy on the battery, and the last thing you want is your phone dying in the middle of a party.
Are there some inherent compromises in this design? Yes: most significantly, the audio quality through Bluetooth just isn't as good as through a cable connector. The Fidelio docks all support support audio input through line-in, so you can connect your phone through a provided audio cable rather than Bluetooth if you really want to. This adds to the versatility of the dock. However, in my case it didn't really help much, since on my phone (the Galaxy Nexus) the audio-out port and micro-USB port are both at the bottom. This means that I can't charge the my phone on the dock *and* connect the audio cable simultaneously; I have to choose one or the other. This is just one of those phone design eccentricities that Philips couldn't really have foreseen - it's just an inherent problem with trying to design a dock that fits such a wide variety of hardware.
The other big problem with the Fidelio docks is that they're expensive. The AS351 sells for R1,500 at Makro. Its bigger brother, the AS851, sells for R2,000. In all fairness, this is pretty much in line with the typical cost of speaker docks for iOS devices. But some reviewers feel that the somewhat reduced convenience of the Android docks (having to use Bluetooth and so on) makes the value proposition less compelling. I leave it to you to assess the validity of this argument.
I will say this, however. Is there any other speaker are there, from any other company in the market, that:
- Is this compact (27cm across, according to my tape measure);
- Is sufficiently loud that I could actually envision throwing a house party and using the AS351 as the sole source of audio - it wouldn't be ideal, but it would be feasible;
- Plays pretty decent quality audio, even taking into account the Bluetooth limitation;
- Can connect wirelessly to any Android phone, or any other device that supports Bluetooth audio;
- Charges your phone while you're playing music;
- Can play without a wall socket;
- Looks good in terms of industrial design?
I can't think of a single alternative that can do all of these things. Basically, if you're in the market for a speaker dock for Android, Philips is your only option right now. Fortunately, they've been able to work within the constraints of the Android hardware ecosystem to produce, in my opinion, a pretty solid product.
