Flickr find: Homemade iPhone Amplifier

The iPhone has a tiny speaker that distorts at high volume. To listen to music without headphones or external speakers, you'll need an amplifier. If you're a cheapskate with disdain for hygiene, check out this homemade version, rigged up by camh. The benefits include:

1. Security. No one will walk off with an iPhone that's been stuffed inside this thing.
2. Eco-friendly. Instead of putting a used, tattered roll of toilet paper into the trash, it goes on your desk.
3. Economical. Enjoy a memorable audio experience at a fraction of the cost of decent headphones. John Williams via a 5 inch cardboard tube stays with you.
4. Chick magnet. Nothing says "I have expendable cash" like an iPhone...in a roll of Charmin.

Enjoy your enhanced iPhone.

Update: Erica Sadun tested her own TP iPhone Amp against a cone made of stiff paper and a non-enhanced iPhone with a Radio Shack sound level meter (part 33-2055) at both the 60 and 70 dB base settings. Here are the results:

At 4 feet line of sight, there was no difference at all between any of them. They all measured pretty much the same 65 dB for the same segment of song played at the highest volume.

At 2 feet line of sight (yes, she used a ruler and tape markers), the same procedure yielded:

• No enhancement: 68 dB
• Toilet paper: 70 db
• Stiff cardboard cone around iPhone: 75 db

A final test with no enhancement and the iPhone turned 45 degrees away from the sensor at the same 2 feet distance yielded 65 dB.

Now you know.
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