The Verge: dock ships within 2 weeks

[Diknak]

Nexus 7 dock will be priced at $39.99 in US, to ship within two weeks | The Verge

 

[pbelfi]

Sorry, but I personally cannot justify $40.00 for this dock. I have a nice case that sits up and works fine for me. I just set the N7 on my nightstand, plug in the charger, and I basically have the same thing! If I need an external speaker or headphones, I just plug it into the audio port......So I see nothing that I need to spend $40 on.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Android Central Forums

 

[Minkey1]

Apparently confirmed at ?24.99 in the UK.

 

[jdauria]

Sorry, but I personally cannot justify $40.00 for this dock. I have a nice case that sits up and works fine for me. I just set the N7 on my nightstand, plug in the charger, and I basically have the same thing! If I need an external speaker or headphones, I just plug it into the audio port......So I see nothing that I need to spend $40 on.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Android Central Forums

I am really surprised no one else has came out with a dock since the N7 debut. Very discouraging actually. I wont be spending $40 either (+shipping... )

Apparently confirmed at ?24.99 in the UK.

Still roughly $30 US for a piece of plastic.

I think the price will drop to around $20 shortly after it comes out

 

[Minkey1]

Umm, 24.99 UKP is around 40 USD so pretty similar each side of the pond. It may well be discounted later though. If ASUS UK gets it at that price I'll get one. I've got a 10% voucher for registering my N7 with them. Expires Jan 31st though :-\

 

[jdauria]

Why is it that we haven?t seen an official announcement of this dock from Google? And exactly what will this dock do? Will it keep the unit at full charge while we use it? And I suppose this means that in order to use the dock, I will have to remove the Nexus from the fancy cover that I bought for it. Are there any other ?advantages? to using the dock?

Not sure as to why its been so delayed, but yes you'll have to take it out of your case (have it commando) for it fit into the dock - this is my guess

I think its basically a charging station, possible night time clock, (nice to look at? LOL), easy for viewing with a keyboard/mouse is in use, etc

 

[mathelm]

Umm, 24.99 UKP is around 40 USD so pretty similar each side of the pond. It may well be discounted later though. If ASUS UK gets it at that price I'll get one. I've got a 10% voucher for registering my N7 with them. Expires Jan 31st though :-\

Google!, How much is 24.99 pounds in dollars.

40.2939 US dollars....

It was $30 before obama fix things......

 

[Minkey1]

Google!, How much is 24.99 pounds in dollars.

40.2939 US dollars....

As I said

 

[mathelm]

Why is it that we haven?t seen an official announcement of this dock from Google? And exactly what will this dock do? Will it keep the unit at full charge while we use it? And I suppose this means that in order to use the dock, I will have to remove the Nexus from the fancy cover that I bought for it. Are there any other ?advantages? to using the dock?

Posting from the future?

Can you PM me who won the super bowl an hour before the game ends?

 

[Minkey1]

Hang on, there's some post editing going on here

 

[Minkey1]

What's going on? Back to the future? Am I a tea-pot?

 

[alazose]

Why is it that we haven?t seen an official announcement of this dock from Google? And exactly what will this dock do? Will it keep the unit at full charge while we use it? And I suppose this means that in order to use the dock, I will have to remove the Nexus from the fancy cover that I bought for it. Are there any other ?advantages? to using the dock?

 

[Diknak]

Why is it that we haven?t seen an official announcement of this dock from Google? And exactly what will this dock do? Will it keep the unit at full charge while we use it? And I suppose this means that in order to use the dock, I will have to remove the Nexus from the fancy cover that I bought for it. Are there any other ?advantages? to using the dock?

The dock connects via the pins on the bottom. It also has a usb port and an audio out port, so if you have speakers, you could connect them to the dock so you just put the tablet in and not have to mess with the speakers and the jack. It also allows for charging and USB hosting at the same time.

It is kind of like the iPod docks except it doesn't come with speakers. If simultaneous charging and USB hosting isn't needed for you, then you would really just be paying for the convenience of not having to worry about connecting it to a stand since it connects for you when you sit it in the dock.

That is why the $40 is rather high, because the lack of the speakers make it almost pointless.

 

[pbelfi]

Why is it that we haven?t seen an official announcement of this dock from Google? And exactly what will this dock do? Will it keep the unit at full charge while we use it? And I suppose this means that in order to use the dock, I will have to remove the Nexus from the fancy cover that I bought for it. Are there any other ?advantages? to using the dock?

Actually the only thing this dock does is charge the N7, and there is an audio out plug so that you van plug in external speakers or headphones.....I basically do that now with my existing case....that's why I won't be spending $40.00 on this.



Sent from my Nexus 7 using Android Central Forums

 

[sparksd]

As noted earlier, it does free up the on-board USB port so if you are streaming video from a flash drive you can power/charge the N7 at the same time.

 

[bigtroutz]

As noted earlier, it does free up the on-board USB port so if you are streaming video from a flash drive you can power/charge the N7 at the same time.

Nobody has confirmed that you can use the USB data connection while pogo pins are in use. In fact, in the case of some home made pogo pin chargers, you can NOT use USB data in or out while charging so we will have to wait for some confirmation posted someplace. Also some have found that when docked w pogo pins, you can NOT use the headphone jack.

 

[mathelm]

After reading a lot of this thread on XDA, it would seem that the side pins are on a separate charging controller *from the USB port" and are controlled via software (ie. their not active until...). I haven't read far enough in yet, but it's looking like at present, it would take a special ROM flash to be able to use both at the same time.....:'(


Post 111 by ben1066:

Right. Let's stop the guessing.

I checked out the LATEST branch of the tegra android kernel, it's called android-tegra3-grouper-3.1-jb-mr1-fr at this point in time and you will have to get it from androidsource.com I think. This branch may have bugs but it also fully supports the docking functionality. Upon applying 5V to the bottom pin and ground to the top you enable "dock mode". This shows as AC charging and cuts out the speaker. This also enabled the audio pins on the side, and though I didn't use a pair of powered speakers, I used a piezo element to confirm there is output, there was. Pin 2 is the right audio channel and pin 3 is the left. In this mode if you have headphones plugged in too they will be used over the dock connector output.

This branch also contains a "bach" and "nakasi_3g" variant, which appear to be more or less the same. The nakasi_3g variant is also called ME370TG. The bach and nakasi_3g variants appear to be identical as in the enum they are listed as the same. It would appear this kernel supports the ril fully as upon boot it attempts to initialize it, but doesn't since we have the wrong variant.

Finally the sound driver references a UART mode though I am yet to find how to trigger it. It appears to rely on having a Nexus 7 using the TI PMIC however I don't quite see why, I think it may be to stop it enabling normally. It's commit references a "line-out" pin, I'm not quite sure what they are referring to. If anyone knows I'll be happy to hear.

I've posted my compiled kernel at newkernel.zip . It is a stock kernel other than the branch it's taken from and so it has no special modifications or optimizations. I have provided it as an initrd.img and zImage suitable for starting with fastboot boot. The initrd.img is taken straight from the latest CM10 nightly and will not work with most other ROMs. You can always take their initrd.img from their boot.img. It's to do with the class path.

 

[sparksd]

Interesting about USB availability - I had assumed that this would free up the built-in port for use. Really makes this nothing more than a fancy stand (not very fancy for $40, though).

 

[bigtroutz]

yep, that was my take as well, mathelm - everybody tells a different story and every factoid is squishy with tar. so far it appears that the dock may or may not be more useful by allowing additional functionality.....without rooting or with

We definitely need a straight answer.... one thing is FOR SURE and confirmed - if you root, you can charge while using the microUSB for data xfer, keyboard, mouse, etc at the same time by incorporating a kernel by Timur and perhaps by other devs.