The SmartDock for the Xperia ion was announced at the start of the year during the CES tradeshow. It is a sleek looking docking station that fits the Xperia ion perfectly and has an HDMI output, microUSB as well as two normal sized USB ports. It was sexy enough to win a 2012 red dot design award, so it’s good to see that the dock is starting to hit retail.
RingHK managed to get hands-on with the SmartDock and has unboxed the accessory. It doesn’t look like you get much in the box, just some documentation along with the dock itself. To connect the device, you simply need to pull back the protective cover for the microUSB and HDMI ports and we assume this doesn’t get in the way of fully connecting the handset.
You can connect a variety of USB peripherals to the dock including keyboard, mouse and even a USB stick to access media content. The SmartDock looks like a great accessory if you own the Xperia ion, we just wish Sony didn’t decide to gimp the Xperia P SmartDock and replace it with the ‘Xperia P TV Dock’ that strips out the useful USB ports. The Xperia P version is due to hit retail during this quarter.
Via RingHK.