Mobbed Up

One of the minor annoyances I have found with the Prius C is the windshield angle.  The massive rake means its about two million miles away from reach which means something as simple as a phone mount doesn’t work very well.

I tried this as a temporary solution:

Honestly it wasn’t spectacular. Even worse than the awkward look was the long term damage it would have done to the seal at the CD player entrance.  Still at least it was reachable while the vehicle was in motion.   My original plan was to draw up something and 3D print it.  I wanted to go above the steering wheel, but I couldn’t really figure out a great way to attach it without it being permanent.  I had contemplated putting a 1/4-20 Captive Nut in it, and using a tripod adapter, but hadn’t actually gotten around to it.

Then a couple weeks ago we were walking through the Goodguys show and found the Mob Armor booth.  I’m not usually the guy that stops by these places, but I took a chance and gave them a look.

 

The Mob Armor solution wasn’t cheap, but it did actually look quality.  The biggest problem I had was that being a magnetic mount it meant you had to either stick a piece of metal on your phone, or spend more on the holder they offer.  I liked the holder for their intended use.  Off road trails probably won’t end with this throwing your phone at you like a lot of mounts would.  This however is a Prius.  Off road trails aren’t in its future, so quick in and out was a necessity.

 

Anyway I bought the basic kit and started playing with options.  I really didn’t want to have anything visible on the car itself when the mount was removed.  I tried the Mob Armor “pogs” below the plastic panel, and another random chunk of metal, before settling on a magnet I had laying around.

 

 

 

I used some Devcon HP250 Plastic weld to attach the magnet to the bottom of the steering column cover and moved on to the phone while this was setting up.

 

I really didn’t want stick this thing on my phone, but my other option was to stick it to a plastic holder of some sort. I decided this was probably the least intrusive option.  Even if I’m not a fan of the look, the Sony phone’s performance (since new) meant it probably wouldn’t be around too long anyway.

A couple of days with this set up It was problematic at best. The phone stuck great to the mount, but the mount didn’t stick great to the car. The plastic was just too slick so even though the magnets held strong together and the phone never fell off, it did like to rotate.

I gave in and stuck a pod down.  At the end of the day it’s not all tha noticeable when the mount is removed, and now the mount is 100% solid.  I have yet to see the phone move no matter how big the pot hole we hit is, or no matter how hard I take a curve.

This may seem like a ridiculous amount of information and length to go through for a phone mount, but being a daily commuter means I depend on the traffic info pretty much every time I’m in this car.  Looking down at the cup holder or fiddling with some cheap POS that falls or flops around isn’t just an occasional annoyance to deal with.  So far this really has been a great solution.