The iPhone Screen Enlarger – it’s real

As the holiday season looms upon us once more, we're left desperately scrabbling around for last-minute gift ideas – and while the iPhone Screen Enlarger probably won't be making too many peoples' Christmas lists this year, it's an interesting device nevertheless.At first glance, the iPhone Screen Enlarger by Hammacher Schlemmer looks like a joke: a netbook without a keyboard, the casing where the primary user interface would normally be found has been hollowed out to provide a docking station into which you can connect your iPhone or iPod Touch. It's no joke, however – and Hammacher Schlemmer has put a price tag on the device that might just make your hair curl.Featuring a 7-inch low-resolution TFT display running at 480 x 234 pixels with 400:1 contrast ratio, the iPhone Screen Enlarger allows you to output the video of a compatible iPhone or iPod Touch device to the integrated screen, while audio is channelled through the included 1 watt stereo speakers. If you get sick of watching things on the built-in display, cables are included for passing the video through to an external TV as well.





It's designed as a portable device, featuring an integral lithium-ion rechargable battery that can run the display and speakers for around two hours from a four-hour charge cycle. In fact, Hammacher Schlemmer isn't even including iPhone 4 support in this variation of the gadget – instead, you're limited to iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, and all current iPod Touch models.Although the gadget could possibly make a decent gag gift for the iPhone fan in your life, there's one little issue that makes us wonder if Hammacher Schlemmer will actually be selling many of the devices this holiday season: the iPhone Screen Enlarger retails at an eye-watering $199.95.While this is far from the most expensive iPhone accessory we've seen here at Geek With Laptop, it's a hard item to recommend – but if you're buying for the Apple fan that has everything, and money's no object, you can put an order in yourself over on Hammacher Schlemmer's official web store.Copyright © 1999-2010 Geek With Laptop. If you need longer, the included AC adapter allows the device to be run while the internal battery is charged.If you're thinking that the display seems a little low in the pixel stakes, especially when compared with Apple's much hyped retina-scale display on the iPhone 4, you'd be right – it's pretty low resolution. The GeekWithLaptop.com RSS Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact legal {at} geekwithlaptop {dot} com so we can take legal action immediately.More Information: