Bosch

Holder, SmartphoneHub Universal Mount

Barely holds an iPhone 11. in a case. Phone fell out when I hit a bump on a concrete bike path. The frame cracked and the right track does not allow the mechanism to be pulled up to grip the top of the phone. Very poor design: too small for many of the phones. Depth of the frame will not allow it to firmly grip the top and bottom edges. I will take out the springs on the replacement and add 2 velcro straps to hold the phone in. I really like the smart hub concept, but it need some work and also some decent instructions for it and the cobi bike app.

Bosch Holder, Smartphone Hub Universal Mount I love the whole apparatus and what I can do with it to control the Bosch electric motor on my Gazelle electric bike. Through the COBI app I am able to have my Iphone display a lot more data than Bosch's other controller displays. HOWEVER --- The design of the phone holder is seriously deficient. For instance, it will not safely hold any of the larger phones, even if they are not in a case. Example: my standard Iphone 11 is too wide and thick. The slots in the upper and lower bracket are too narrow and not deep enough to grip the edges of the phone safely. On the very first ride, it fell of the bike when I hit a mild bump on a paved bike path. I started using my old Iphone 6 and that cracked the the upper cross bar of the upper bracket when I installed the phone!! One uses that bar to open up the bracket to an opening wide enough to get the phone into the upper and lower grooves. To charge the phone on a charger, I remove the phone holder by unlatching it from the controller so that the phone stays in the holder. It happened to fall off a coffee table on to a carpeted floor and the entire lower bar broke off. The holder is no longer useable. The entire bracket needs to be made of a stronger plastic that has some flex in the molecular structure. The springs that hold the upper bar of the frame tight against the phone are very hard to operate and this causes too much pressure on the upper bar when one has to remove or install the phone. That bar needs to be a lot stronger.

This is a very necessary item for the Bosch/Cobi system and it is horribly frustrating that it is so poorly constructed and designed. First of all, they are not designed for a phone that is in a case. My iPhone barely fits into the grooves. The springs on the moveable part of the holder are so strong that it is very hard to open. I broke one because grasping the cross bar is the only way to open it and it broke trying to open it wide enough the fit the small iPhone 8. Second and most importantly is the material it is made from. The plastic is extremely brittle and because of the clutsy design, it has several points of failure. The material has no ability to distribute stress. The corners are too angular and thin for the poor material used in the adapter. The top cross bar is too thin and: see above for what happened. On another one, I bumped into the phone and the bottom bar broke off from the two vertical pieces. taking the phone out of the adapter caused another one to break. This is my 4th one!!!! And lest anyone thinks I am alone and too ham-handed, others have had the same experience and written critical reviews. Bosch promised to fix the problems, but I doubt if they have done so. They seem to have moved on to offering their own displays and these simply do not display the information that the combination of a smart phone and cobi software does.