iPhone car charger?
November 18, 2008 2:13 PM Subscribe
What's a good iPhone car charger that won't make my music noisy?
I have a 3G iPhone. I have a car with an aux input. I enjoy playing iPhone music over my car stereo via this input. It's all spiffy.
Until next week, when I have to drive for twelve hours (instead of the usual max seven) to a relative's house for Thanksgiving. I also need to use the phone for navigation, occasional phone calls to update worried parents on progress, and so forth. When I switch off with my co-driver, I may also want to play games on the phone. We may also use the Pandora app to stream some music when we're in 3G areas. All this points to serious battery draw.
So: I want a car charger for the phone. The problem is, I had one of the Monster combination FM transmitter/charger things for an older iPod that I plugged into my old first gen iPhone, and it charged, but any music played over the aux input to the stereo while the charger was plugged in was horribly static-y. I'm not sure if this was a problem with putting something designed for an old iPod into an iPhone, or if the charging itself interferes with the music playback, or what, but it was pretty craptacular. It wasn't GSM noise -- it was serious static.
I don't have any friends with car chargers I can try out to see if iPhone-specific chargers work better, and I'd rather not drop the money on one that isn't going to work. Has anyone had experience with an iPhone car charger that doesn't interfere with the output to a car stereo (via a cable, not over FM transmission)? What do you recommend? (I've found reviews of chargers, and I've found reviews of connections to aux inputs, but nothing really combining the two to see if there are noise issues)
Again, this is a 3G iPhone, and I've got a built-in aux input to my car stereo.
I have a 3G iPhone. I have a car with an aux input. I enjoy playing iPhone music over my car stereo via this input. It's all spiffy.
Until next week, when I have to drive for twelve hours (instead of the usual max seven) to a relative's house for Thanksgiving. I also need to use the phone for navigation, occasional phone calls to update worried parents on progress, and so forth. When I switch off with my co-driver, I may also want to play games on the phone. We may also use the Pandora app to stream some music when we're in 3G areas. All this points to serious battery draw.
So: I want a car charger for the phone. The problem is, I had one of the Monster combination FM transmitter/charger things for an older iPod that I plugged into my old first gen iPhone, and it charged, but any music played over the aux input to the stereo while the charger was plugged in was horribly static-y. I'm not sure if this was a problem with putting something designed for an old iPod into an iPhone, or if the charging itself interferes with the music playback, or what, but it was pretty craptacular. It wasn't GSM noise -- it was serious static.
I don't have any friends with car chargers I can try out to see if iPhone-specific chargers work better, and I'd rather not drop the money on one that isn't going to work. Has anyone had experience with an iPhone car charger that doesn't interfere with the output to a car stereo (via a cable, not over FM transmission)? What do you recommend? (I've found reviews of chargers, and I've found reviews of connections to aux inputs, but nothing really combining the two to see if there are noise issues)
Again, this is a 3G iPhone, and I've got a built-in aux input to my car stereo.
Response by poster: Aggh, friggin grounding issues. Story of my life. Okay. I'll check one of those out. Thanks for pointing me to that thread, steveminutillo -- I'd looked for "iPhone" but not "iPod" in the tags.
posted by olinerd at 2:38 PM on November 18, 2008
posted by olinerd at 2:38 PM on November 18, 2008
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by steveminutillo at 2:30 PM on November 18, 2008 [1 favorite]