There was a time when buying a mobile device such as the Palm Pilot meant having a dock included in the package. Nowadays we’d seldom see smartphones packaged with docks until Sony started creating Android based Xperia phones.
I’ve owned a number of Xperia phones, the latest being the Xperia Z. One of the things I love with my Xperia Z is the fact that it’s water resistant. I don’t have to worry about getting it wet — I think all mobile phones these days should be at least water resistant. When I got my Xperia Z, the dock wasn’t available yet, at least locally.
At first, I thought that I could live without a dock after all, I’ve own quite a number of iPhones and Android phones and didn’t use a dock. As it turns out, it’s a bit of a hassle having to open the flap covering the USB port on the Xperia Z whenever I had to charge the phone. These days, the newer Xperia Z1 and Xperia Z2 seems to be packaged with a dock already which is a great thing!
Now that I’ll probably be looking into replacing my aging Xperia Z with a much newer phone, at this point, I thought it would be nice to just create my own dock for the Xperia Z — I thought it would be a great way to start doing some hardware/software hacking as a hobby.
The first thing I’ve decided for this project was that I wanted my Xperia Z dock in the portrait/vertical position instead of the landscape/horizontal position of the official Xperia Z dock. In case you’d want to, just buy the Xperia Z dock (DK26) at Amazon.
If you’re feeling adventurous or wan’t to spend less than the cost of the official Xperia Z dock, read on.
After giving it some thought and looking in my treasure chest of parts and accessories, I actually have everything that I needed to create my own Xperia Z dock.
After some cutting, soldering and gluing together. I have finally finished making my own Xperia Z dock — and it works!
Now that I’ve got my own Xperia Z dock, I’m already thinking of ideas on how to enhance it. Any suggestions?
The one nearer the USB port is the positive terminal.
Where is positive and negative polarity on the phone (xperia zr) ?