The Jolly Gamesman and His Many Toys
The Power-A iPhone Universal Remote Case
During the big iPhone 3.0 firmware keynote, great hype was created about the connectivity potential of the 30-pin dock connector sitting on the bottom of all our phones. On display that day was a diabetes blood sugar tester, a guitar tuner and an air pressure gauge experiment. Up until then, it was used primarily for syncing your iDevice to your computer, and in some instances, connecting it to a television to watch TV shows, movies and YouTube. In day-to-day use, I personally hadn’t take advantage of this feature. That was until I purchased a Power-A iPhone Universal Remote Case.
No thicker than a standard iPhone slider case, and only an inch longer, the Power-A Universal iPhone Remote Case fits comfortably in your hands while using it. Now, since the IR transmitter is in the portion of the case that fits on the bottom, you need to hold your iPhone upside down. Luckily the designers of the app that accompanies the case have programmed it to switch orientations when flipped.
When you slide your iPhone into the bottom portion of the case, you are prompted to download the Universal Remote app automatically. You can store up to 20 individual remotes in memory, or you can customize one master remote with the most common commands on it. Programming the remote is super easy. I have combined my Sony receiver, LG television, Motorola PVR and AppleTV into one master remote. This did take a bit of time, as to program the device you need to teach it what each button does. For example, I wanted the main power button to control my TV, but the volume buttons to control my Sony receiver. To do this, I set up my iPhone and TV remote to face each other. Pressing the Power button on the on-screen universal remote caused the Power-A Remote to glow blue. Once this started glowing, I pressed the Power button on the TV remote, and voila, my iPhone can now turn my TV on. Doing the same thing with the volume controls of the Sony remote has now eliminated two remotes from my coffee table.
For those of you looking to control your PlayStation 3 using this device, I’m afraid to tell you that since Sony decided to go all Bluetooth rather than IR, you will have to keep at least one controller around.
In total, I was able to combine four remotes into one. It does take a little bit getting used to as the programmed buttons on the iPhone app are not re-nameable, so you have to remember which does what.
While there are other options on the market ranging anywhere from $99 to $500, the Power-A Universal iPhone Remote Case is a great deal for those of us with an iPhone looking to minimize the amount of remotes for our devices. If I could make one request for a future version, it would be the capability to download programming codes from the internet. Aside from that, I foresee myself using this for a very long time.
~The Fine Print~
Price: $59.99 CDN / Coming soon for the iPod Touch
