Sirius SkyDock Turns iPhones into Satellite Radio Receivers — Sorta

skydock_front-portrait_ipodI opted to kill my XM satellite radio subscription last year in favor of using Pandora and my own MP3 library, but this new SkyDock from Sirius has me considering a return. All Things Digital points out that the SkyDock is among the first hardware accessories to take advantage of the iPhone 3.0 operating system and will cost $119.99 when it arrives this fall. The dock includes an integrated satellite radio receiver and plugs into your vehicle’s cigarette adapter. All iPhone and iPod Touch models are supported — provided they have the iPhone 3.0 software or better — and fit in the dock. While the device charges your iPhone or Touch, it also provides control over the satellite radio in either portrait or landscape modes.

Sirius says the dock works with your vehicle’s speakers through an included cable that routes music through your radio’s auxiliary input jack. Some older vehicles and radios don’t support such a jack, so you’ll want to double-check on that before buying. When I had XM, I used a wired cassette adapter, which would likely still work — I could plug the adapter in the iPhone headset jack and pipe tunes to the speakers. The supplemental iPhone application used to control the radio can also be used to tag songs for later download via iTunes. I’m still a die-hard Amazon MP3 store shopper, so while that’s not particularly appealing to me, it probably is to the instant gratification types out there.

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