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Chris Velazco is a mobile enthusiast and writer who studied English and Marketing at Rutgers University. Once upon a time, he was the news intern for MobileCrunch, and in between posts, he worked in wireless sales at Best Buy. After graduating, he returned to the new TechCrunch to as a full-time mobile writer. He counts advertising, running, musical theater,... ? Learn More
The Swivl motion-tracking smartphone dock has always seemed like a nifty piece of kit, but its $179 price tag didn’t exactly bring the device into “I can do something cool with this” impulse buy territory.
Fear not though, you penny-pinching video buffs — the team at Satarii have just revealed that a more basic version called Swivl-it is now available, and it costs $50 less than its more feature-packed brother.
Here’s how the Swivl works, in case you need a quick refresher — once you pop your smartphone into place, you grab hold of a small marker device (which also has a built-in microphone for iDevice owners) and get to business recording yourself or video chatting. As you move around, the dock rotates and pans vertically to follow that marker, all with some pretty impressive results.
Of course, Satarii had to excise a few features to make that smaller price tag work. The new, more basic Swivl-it forces users to tilt the dock up and down by hand, and the marker that you hold on to no longer has a microphone so you’ll have to sit within range of your smartphone’s built-in mic.
If you’re really desperate for the extra bit of audio freedom that the external mic provides, you’ll soon be able to purchase a microphone-packing marker, but really — at that point you should’ve just bought the original Swivl and called it a day. The Swivl-it is available now from Satarii’s online store, and feel free to check out our Fly or Die for a few extra opinions on the unit that started it all.
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