The paper clip solution
Published by Steve Litchfield at 18:58 UTC, November 9th 2008
Call this a quirky weekend item if you like, but the humble paper clip came to my rescue today and I thought I'd share what happened. After a week trialling the Nokia N96, I'd become really attached to its kick stand, enabling it to prop itself up for comfortable 'by your side' video watching. How could I apply this to my other S60 smartphones? Read on...
My gut feel was to go low-tech and I instinctively reached for the paper clip tray.... Here's the result for my N82 (watching Cream on Mobitubia, if you're interested):
After having applied my 15 second paper clip solution, the thought occurred to me that I'd seen this sort of thing before, a long time ago. And I found it, with a guy using a slightly more elaborately bent clip to prop up an N95. I did try his technique at the time, but the N95 kept swivelling over.
What I'd done differently was use the fact that the N82 (and the N95, for that matter) have a covered lens and so the paper clip couldn't damage the glass. In fact, the loop would nestle rather neatly in the camera lens recess:
The paper clip holds the N82 at the perfect angle for watching video. I'm sure this can't be the only low tech solution to other common S60 phone problems. Do please comment if you can add something with similar lateral thinking!
"Microsoft's Clippy finally gets himself a worthwhile job"....
Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian
Categories: Hardware
Platforms: General, S60 3rd Edition
News Discussion
Neat trick though.
symbian-freak.com/news/008/03/nokia_n95_desktop_stand.htm
If you look closely at the ingredients list though, it's actually made up entirely of "Sodium Chloride", which is of course common salt. They were charging four times the price of salt in a normal packet though! :-)
Maybe someone should do the same trick here, put paper clips in some smart packaging and call them "portable smartphone multimedia stands" or something along those lines. They could make a mint.
I don't want to get you into trouble with the wife. But did you try the/a wedding ring? :-P
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KU36zTVkOTY
It'd for the iPod but I bet it works for any phone.