Worried about leaving your iPhone or iPod on the front seat of your car to tempt thieves?
A new car stereo from Parrot has a 'secret' compartment to hide your tech from envious eyes and recharge it at the same time - although it won't help much if you want to use your iPhone for navigation, too.
The removable front panel of the Parrot RKi8400 is equipped with magnets for simple insertion/removal of the front panel with one hand.
Smaller screen than Apple's
The RKi8400 is an FM/AM RDS car stereo that comes festooned with Apple-friendly features. A large dial and full colour 2.4-inch screen lets you view album covers stored in your iPhone (or iPod) and enables easy navigation of playlists, while Bluetooth enables you to play music sent from the iPhone 3 (or other mobile phones and players), via Bluetooth Stereo A2DP.
Training-free voice recognition lets you make a call from the phonebook by just saying your contact's name, there are two microphones to help eliminate ambient noise and when your phone rings, the system automatically switches to hands-free mode.
There's also a USB port for portable hard drive or USB key (including software updates), an SD card reader and a double line-in socket for analogue sources. The Parrot RKi8400 will be available shortly for around £300.
