A handsome, sturdy phone on your desk is undeniably cool. You can slam it down in rage! And having an old fashioned, weighty telephone against your face just feels good. KEE wants to lend this sensibility to your iPhone – and it fails.
Pluses
The KEE Desk Phone Dock looks terrific. The KEE feels terrific. The brushed aluminium base is sturdy as hell, beautifully minimal, and hides away the charging and syncing cables. The white plastic dock atop looks like a pretty prop from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The handset, despite its futuristic rectangularity, is comfortable on your cheek. The scroll knob wheels gently, and clicks satisfyingly. The mute indicator lights with a subtle glow. The KEE is a looker, and a feeler.
And it’s ostensibly a worker too – it’ll charge your phone as it sits, and since it’s using ye olde 40-pin connector, you can sync and transfer via USB as well. And hey! It’s a telephone too, remember? Call quality? Well, you can hear the other party decently – or at least as well as you can on an iPhone.
Minuses
But! You sound absolutely awful on the other end of your call. Several tests resulted in people either “What? What? What? Hello?”-ing and then hanging up, or complaining about terrible sound. One test subject said I sounded like I was “in a barrel.” Thus, defeating the purpose of spending $US150 on an accessory for a phone. Also, it costs $US150. And will only work with an iPhone. And it costs $US150.