Congratulations! You’ve made it through January, the drabbest, most depressing month of the year. The first pay cheque of 2014 is in, so it’s time to treat yourself to a little something. Or rather, treat your iPhone 5s. Here’s a list of our top five accessories for your iPhone 5s this year:
#1 – Eye TV W
The long commute home or into work can be made that much brighter with this tiny little gadget. The Eye TV W is no bigger than a box of matches and is compatible with both the iPhone and iPad. Simply turn it on (it’s wireless, so you don’t even need a cable or connector of any kind) and it turns your device into a portable TV, giving you up to nine hours of telly on a fully-charged iPad and four hours on an iPhone. It provides you with access to Freeview channels, and even works for high data-rate programmes, giving you a high-quality viewing experience on the go. Oh, and you can also use it to tune into radio stations too. Small, sweet and very nifty, it’s a great accessory if you just can’t bear to miss your favourite soap when your train home is delayed.
#2 PopSLATE and Plastic Logic’s EPD display cover
This was launched last year and is proving to be a quiet success story. Anyone in the know is raving about PopSLATE and Plastic Logic’s EPD display cover. It combines the very latest EPD technology from Plastic Logic with slick styling from PopSLATE that effectively gives you a secondary electrophoretic display (EPD) that’s shatterproof and daylight readable. It’s super-thin (thanks to Plastic Logic’s flexible plastic screen technology) and uses the ‘always-on’ principle of EPD technology. That means it only draws power to create a new image, so as long as you keep the same image on the display, you won’t suck the life out of your battery.
You simply install the case, log on to the PopSLATE app, and customise your case with your favourite image. Alternatively you can create dashboards and fill them with your favourite apps. It’s intuitive, simple and great fun.
#3 Griffin Powerdock 5
You’ve got a drawer full of chargers and a tangle of cables, wouldn’t it be easier if there was just a single docking station that would take all of your devices, including your iPhone 5s, and charge them all at once? There is, it’s called the Powerdock from Griffin and it’s the must-have charging dock for device divas. It’s a powered USB dock that can charge up to five iOS devices at once and takes up as much space as an iPad on your desk. How neat is that?
#4 Belkin WeMo Switch
You’ve got a smartphone, so why not use it to turn your home into a smarthouse? App controls for your home are becoming more commonplace – you can turn the heating on or off when you’re out simply by using an app, or get messages from your fridge telling you to buy milk. The days are numbered for physical switches, and this adapter brings their ultimate demise that little bit closer. The WeMo Switch can be remotely activated on or off from your iPhone, and you can add as many as you want to and then turn them off and on when you want to. It cost under £40, but as with all tech we’re betting that as time goes on that price will drop.
#5 XiStera
Kickstarter has funded some great ideas and projects in the last year, and the crowd-funded XiStera is no exception. This is essentially a Swiss Army Knife for your iPhone. It’s chock full of accessories (although there is no ‘thing for taking stones out of horse’s hooves’, as far as we can see). It mounts on top of your device and can work as a landscape or portrait mount. It’s also got (in no particular order) an LED light, a kickstand, a capactive stylus, a keychain attachment, an earbud wrap and a lens adapter. Oh, and a bottle opener too.
