Transportation

Logitech Finally Made a Useful, Sexy Phone Dash-Mount

LogiTech's new phone mount and app make any vehicle with a dashboard a connected car.

Despite federal and state lawmakers' best efforts, Americans just won't stop messing with their phones while driving. This nasty habit kills about 3,000 people in the US every year and injures another 431,000. So, with no official fix in sight, at least in the near term, the answer has to come from drivers themselves. Logitech's got a clever new weapon for our arsenal.

  • Available today, LogiTech's "ZeroTouch" system uses a mount that weighs just one ounce and is the size of half a golf ball—if a golf ball could make duckface. Those "lips" clip onto the car's air vents, and a thin magnet you stick on the back of your phone holds it onto the back of the mount.

    The vent mount costs $60 and works in concert with an app that makes ZeroTouch more than just another way to put your phone where you can see it.

    Image may contain Tape
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  • If you're not into the vent mount, LogiTech also offers a dashboard setup for $80. Either way, you get the same app, which lets you make and pick up calls, send and receive texts, use Google Maps, Waze, Spotify, and location-sharing service Glympse, all with voice commands instead of finger pushing and swiping.

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  • The system's marquee feature merits a high-five: To trigger the app, just hold your hand about two inches away from the phone for a moment. As long as the phone's on the mount, the app knows to watch for your signal. When you see the cartoonish purple microphone, speak your command, be it "text Steve," "play Hamilton! The Musical," "navigate to 123 Smith Street," or "call Mom." The app will always ask you to confirm it heard right before doing anything.

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  • ZeroTouch is only for Android so far. LogiTech says that's partly because it plans to go after European drivers, and Google's system is quite popular on the continent. And it has some initial flaws. Depending on your infotainment system, the app can get tripped up if you're not using Bluetooth audio, so its replies to your commands don't reach the speakers. Then you're texting in the dark.

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Alex Davies is a senior editor at Insider and the former editor of WIRED’s transportation section, where he specialized in covering autonomous and electric vehicles. He is also the author of Driven, a book chronicling the origin of and race to create the self-driving car.
Senior Associate Editor
TopicsDistracted Drivingdriving
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