I have had my Galaxy S3 phone for close to a year, but have not given much thought to getting a docking station for it before. I had supposed that it would just be another fancy charging accessory, which may improve the mess on my work desk, but would otherwise not have much additional use. However, it turns out that Android devices have a lot of additional functionality that lays hidden without access to proper peripherals.

This dock is relatively well built and functional. It’s not made out of the most sophisticated and stylish materials out there, but it looks and feels sufficiently durable and stylistically adequate. It has a very workmanlike look and feel to it.

When it comes to charging, the dock performs as well as one would have expected. It would have been really hard to mess up this aspect of the dock, so I am not surprised that it worked as advertised. You plug one end of your micro USB charging cable into the wall outlet power supply, and the other one into the dock itself, and you are all set. Charging will take as long as it does with the direct connection.

Docking the phone is pretty straightforward. I am not the biggest fan of the micro USB connections, and this dock is no exception. Micro USB can be pretty finicky when it comes to aligning the male and female outlets. The docking area is pretty slim, and it’s hard, if not impossible, to dock your Galaxy device if it has a protective shell.

Connecting my GS3 to TV via HDMI was really straightforward. The TV immediately recognized the HDMI input and displayed the smartphone’s screen. The GS3 screen was directly mirrored onto the TV, which did not look all that great as it only covered about the middle third of the TV’s visual real estate. Flipping the phone and the dock on their side too care of that, but this is far from technically elegant solution.

The most effective way of using the smartphone while connected to TV is via an external Bluetooth keyboard with an integrated trackball/trackpad. USB keyboard/mouse are also supported, and they work about as well if not better, but they force you to be within the reach of your phone and have a stable flat surface on which to use them. There are intriguing possibilities of using your smartphone as a desktop replacement, but Android OS is far from adequate right now for that kind of use.

The dock comes with two regular USB ports in addition to the micro USB port used for charging. The two ports can be used for above-mentioned USB mouse and keyboard, or they can be used for mounting USB drives. I’ve been able to mount two different flash USB drives simultaneously, and was able to access and manipulate files stored on them. This feature comes in really handy when watching large HD videos.

The HD video playback on TV was excellent. The video looked crisp and was rendered without any glitches. The same goes for sound. Using this dock as an entertainment center device will however require that you have a proper Bluetooth controller. Either that or you’ll have to get off the couch every time you want to pause the video or rewind, which is such a 1950s way of watching TV.

This is overall a pretty solid dock that performs all the functions it’s designed for more than adequately. It’s not the shiniest peripheral you’ll come across, but I have not found any serious issues with it so far.