iPhone speaker systems will play, but not charge, your iPad
April 3, 2010
If you’re hoping to be able to use your existing dockable iPhone stereo system with your iPad, there’s good news and bad news: based on our preliminary hands-on tests, you’ll likely be able to dock your iPad and play its music through its speakers (if you can physically get it to fit into the docking station in a stable and safe manner), but charging your iPad’s battery appears to be another story.
In something of a repeat from 2007, when many dockable iPod stereo systems could play an iPhone’s music but not charge it, it appears iPad users may need to wait until iPad-specific (or at least iPad-optimized) dockable stereo systems make their way to market, as none of the handful of iPhone stereo systems we’ve tested thus far have been able to charge an iPad. This is complicated, of course, by the fact that the iPad’s docking port is occupied and thus the iPad can’t be charged from an alternate power source while docked in the stereo system. A workaround would be to connect your iPad to the speaker system via the unit’s aux-in port if it has one, which would keep the iPad’s docking port free for charing via another method.
We’ll keep testing, and if we happen to find a dockable iPhone stereo that can charge the iPad, we’ll let you know – but our hopes aren’t high, as the iPad is obviously a very different device from its three inch cousin.
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