tripod mount & stand for your iPhone 4
Exclusively for you we tested a small and inconspicuous looking gadget which may be quite useful for owners of an iPhone 4.
As good as the iPhone’s camera might be, especially in video situations, it still is very vulnerable to camera shake. Until recently there wasn’t any practical way of getting the iPhone attached to a tripod. Studio Neat, a fairly small New York based start-up took advantage of the situation and developed the glif. The financial backing of $137,417 came from Kickstarter, a crowd-based funding platform.
The tool comes along with the standard tripod socket and allows you to fix it on basically any tripod available. The phone is slid into the notch and kept there by the tight fit of the material. It sounds and looks a bit flimsy but works extremely well as the glif is specifically developed for the iPhone 4. It might be useful to keep in mind that this works with a “naked” phone only, so any bumpers or cases need to be removed.
Surprisingly the stability doesn’t harm comfort and handling at all. The tool is ingeniously designed, so that for every orientation of the phone you’ll definitely find a way to attach the glif without covering display or buttons.
However, the glif isn’t only a tripod mount. A little notch beside the socket allows using it as simple stand or dock-substitute. This makes watching movies on long train rides or flights a lot more comfortable.
Overall it’s quite obvious that the guys behind the glif invested a lot of thought in their product. It basically does one thing for only one product but this it does extremely well. At $20 (€15) plus delivery it isn’t exactly cheap but for mobile camera “artists” and serial video watchers this is definitely a worthy investment.
The glif currently isn’t available outside the USA but ordering it directly from the company’s homepage worked like a charm.
Update: A comment on our German blog pointed us to another iPhone tripod holder mount. It’s a bit bulkier and serves as tripod holder only but it has options to accomodate all previous iPhone makes, which is quite nice. It also comes quite a bit cheaper at $9.95 + delivery.
MO/SdP
All images are Copyright © Studio Neat: The Glif 2011
