We sell a lot of great mobile accessories, but sometimes you don’t need a fancy product in a box – you just need a few household items and some time on your hands. Here are our 8 favourite DIY smartphone accessories!
8. Stylus
Styluses are great for taking notes, drawing or just keeping your grubby hands off your phone’s pristine screen. You can make a simple stylus using a variety of materials, but an ordinary sponge is one of the nicer options. It’s soft, cheap, and even cleans your screen while you’re using it! Normally it’s a bit too floppy, so tuck a 7 x 1 cm strip into a metal pen barrel (or some other metal tube). Keep 1 or 2 cm outside, and trim it into a more rounded shape for more accurate results. Remember the sponge needs to be very slightly wet to work, so you’ll need to wet the sponge from time to time.
Other good DIY stylus alternatives are generally made of meat or metal – frankfurters, batteries, foil and the like. Experiment with different materials (or Google) to find out which works the best for you!
7. Charging stand
Paper folding is a fun hobby, and with sufficiently good stock it’s quite possible to create an elegant-looking smartphone holder. French designer Julien Madérou created this example, which requires only a printer, paper, a ruler and a knife. The stand even includes space for a charging cable, which is quite nice. It’s for an older iPhone, but you can use the basic design with other phones of a similar size and weight.
6. Pouch case
Phone socks are now a legitimate type of case, but you don’t have to buy them online. You can also just take one of your odd socks, cut off the curvy bottom part, and sew up the hole you’ve created. You’re left with a simple pouch that will protect your smartphone from getting scratched or dented when it’s not in use. Best of all, the design is only limited by the socks that you have – so find your favourite colour or pattern and get started!
5. Reinforced charger cable
Reinforced charging cables are useful, but often they can be quite expensive. Instead, take your existing cable and wrap it in tape. You can use normal duct or electrical tape, but more colourful tapes (like the Japanese deco tape above) does the same job and looks much more interesting. If you’re willing to invest a bit more time, you could even make your own braided cables.
4. Speaker dock
This simple speaker dock is constructed only from loo roll and a couple of push pins. Any cylindrical chamber will work well, so use what you have on hand. Crisp tubes are particularly good for this, but remember to wash them out first or your phone might get a little greasy!
3. Macro lens
This is one of my favourites. Take the focusing lens from a laser pointer, place it within the jaws of a hairpin, and tape the result over your phone’s lens. You’ll have made a simple macro lens which performs a fixed magnification of whatever you’re looking at. This is great for taking photos of tiny things. Try reversing the lens too, to get a different perspective.
2. Antenna booster
Mobile data dongles can be lifesavers for working away from Wi-Fi, but they also can suffer from weak signal strength. Improve reception with a homemade booster, which redirects nearby signals to the antenna inside. You can use a cut can of soda, or any metal food bowls you have. This is also great for making directional Wi-Fi links; I used a similar system to send a WiFi network across the road in high school.
1. Selfie stick
Selfie sticks are all the rage, but newfangled inventions with Bluetooth connections and extending poles aren’t always necessary. Instead, tie your phone to whatever long object you have (shovel, stick, etc.) and use the self timer function as it was intended. Another alternative is to make friends with a long-armed person. I’m available for this purpose for very reasonable rates, so please contact me on Twitter if you’re interested.
Conclusion
We hope you enjoyed our favourite DIY accessories! If you have your own suggestions, please share them in the comments below.
The cheapest car holder for a phone is a Velcro sticker, the hook strip glued on a suitable place on the dashboard and the non-sticky part on the back of the phone. Pick the color of your choice to fit the car interior.