advertisement
Facebook
X
LinkedIn
WhatsApp
Reddit

Meet the Bluejay, a smart phone dock for your car

With many new cars (and fridges, and mirrors) being computerised, you seem to be out of luck if you have an older vehicle. Luckily, there’s the Bluejay smart phone dock, and it’s looking to quickly and cheaply give your car some brains.

At its core, the Bluejay is a suction cup at the bottom, a Bluetooth hub in the middle, and an adhesive pad at the top. The suction cup sticks to your dashboard and your phone sticks to the adhesive pad. So far so simple.

What’s really interesting is what happens between your phone and the middle bits of the unit. So top-level features include parking assistance, integration with music apps and navigation.

Of course, this is all on the extras list you can tick off at the dealership. But, again, this looks to be a better – and cheaper – option.

Well, it's certainly pretty.
Well, it’s certainly pretty.

Kiwi Factory, the London-based company creating the little dock, also promises little “quality of life” features such as shortcuts to use your phone without being distracted, a plethora of notifications and stats concerning your driving and environments, and integration into other smart devices. Control your smart house from your smart car? Yes please, Tony Stark.

Unfortunately the Bluejay isn’t a product you can up and buy, as its being kickstarted at the moment. This isn’t just an idea, as the timeline for it has been laid out below. As of today, it’s at the “final prototype testing phase”, with delivery (to South Africa included) of the final product pegged for July 2016.

Bluejay-Timeline

All we want to know now is price, which will be revealed when the Kickstarter campaign goes live later this afternoon. As soon as it does, we’ll update the story.

 

//Update: The campaign on Kickstarter is now live. Here’s the important info:

  • The campaign has a goal of $80 000 (R1 247 500)
  • The cheapest you’ll be able to get a Bluejay is at $79 (R1 231) for the Super Early Bird. But there’s only around 20 left, so you’ll have to be fast
  • The next tier up is the Early Bird for $99 (R1 543)
  • The Custom Edition is $119 (R1855) which allows you to add your own logo
  • The Bluejay will be retailed at $119 (R1 855), will the Custom Edition will retail at $149 (R2 323)
  • The Kickstarter has shipping worldwide, including South Africa. Shipping here will set you back $12 (R187)
advertisement

About Author

advertisement

Related News

advertisement