Motorola Atrix Vehicle Dock

[horto]

I just got the Moto Atrix. Fantastic phone, and a big change from my years of using a Blackberry. The GPS navigation is outstanding, and I noticed there's a vehicle dock available (http://www.amazon.com/Motorola-Vehicle-Charger-Retail-Packaging/dp/B004LRO7N4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1307992550&sr=8-1) that enables the "Car Mode" UI and features.

I was thinking about custom fitting the dock into the top of my dash to hide the wires.

Just wondering if anyone has experience with the dock and would recommend it? Or has done that sort of custom fitment before?

[Fuyuzora]

I have the Motorola Milestone (Droid) with the corresponding car dock.

TBH, it's not all that different, although it is still useful. On the Milestone it remaps the Home button to instead go to the Car-Home screen, which has the six most common functions ready-at-hand with large buttons (Music, Map, Bluetooth, Contacts, Voice Dialer, Home). The latter brings you back to the "normal" home screen.

One stupid thing about it is that there isn't a readily-accessible toggle for screen brightness or enabling the GPS receiver from the car home screen... Have to go 'Car-Home' > 'Home' > Then toggle it on the control widget (if you have it enabled). Of course, if you leave it on dynamic brightness with the GPS enabled (or remember to toggle both beforehand) it's not a problem.

On the Milestone, it's actually simply a small magnet at a specific location on the back of the phone which triggers the change to Car mode (same method but in a different location for the Multimedia dock mode). So if you wanted to integrate it into the dash, you could get your own USB Micro-B cable and a small magnet and do it yourself.

EDIT: Agree re: the quality of Motonav. It's fantastic having a full-function GPS with your phone which can operate regardless of cellular service, and which doesn't use cellular data to operate. (although in the GTA, Google Maps' Traffic Layer is pretty handy!)