$30 Infra-Red iPhone Dongle Marred by Hideous Interface

Ri is a perfectly good IR dongle for the iPhone, with a perfectly ugly companion app

Apptwee?s Ri is yet another device that promises to turn your iPhone into another universal IR remote. Unlike the slick $100 Peel, though, the Ri distinguishes itself by being cheap ($30), small and sporting one of the ugliest interfaces ever to appear on an iOS device.

You can probably guess how the dongle works. Like the Square credit card reader, it is a tiny white plastic chunk which plugs into the headphone socket. Once configured, software tells it to beam an IR signal out to your various home entertainment machines. And therein lies the problem.

What is the point of a touch-screen universal remote if not to toss away various physical remotes and consolidate their functions into an easier to use and prettier interface? None, which seems to be the aim of the Ri. After using some menus to tell the device which IR ?drivers? to download, you are presented with an interface that looks like the IR remote app I had on my early 2000s-vintage Sony Ericsson P900 ? only uglier. Check it out, if you dare. Skip to a minute in to see the horror begin:

Ugh, right? You get all the buttons you need, but the interface does nothing to take advantage of the iPhone?s multitouch gestures.

Still, the app is free, and presumably you could grab any number of other IR apps and use them with the device instead. At $30, it?s not much more expensive than making your own.

Ri product page [AppTwee]

Ri app [AppTwee]

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