Samsung sells some of the most popular Android phones and tablets on the market… but if you don’t feel like spending your money on both a Samsung Galaxy phone and tablet, there may be another option.

Chinese company Shenzhen Migoal has developed a tablet dock called the TransMaker for Samsung Galaxy S3 and S4 phones. The dock doesn’t do much on its own, but slide your phone into the back and you can run your Android apps on a larger touchscreen display. The tablet also has its own battery which you can use to recharge your phone. Migoal also plans to offer dockable keyboard options.

Migoal started showing off the TransMaker concept in August, 2013. Now the company has launched a crowdfunding campaign in hopes of bringing the device (and additional accessories) to market. Update: The Indiegogo campaign seems to have gone missing.

TransMaker

The team’s hoping to raise at least $100,000 through Indiegogo. Backers of the campaign can reserve hardware at discounts. A 10.1 inch tablet dock is just $99 for early bird backers, for instance.

One thing to note is that this is a flexible funding campaign. That means even if Migoal doesn’t reach its goal, the company gets to keep all the cash… with no guarantee that the product will actually make it to market. So proceed with caution.

Also make sure to read the entire Indigogo page before pledging — there are some interesting caveats, such as the fact that automatic screen rotation is disabled when your phone is docked, and the home screen will always show up in vertical mode with big black bars on the sides.

Since this is a third-party accessory it’ll probably never work quite as well as an Asus Padfone (where the phone and tablet dock are made by the same company). But with prices starting at $99, a TransMaker is a lot cheaper than a Padfone.

It’s also kind of a neat option if you don’t want to have to sync data between your phone and tablet, since all the data is on your phone when you use this type of dock. The larger display and keyboard are just accessories.

transmaker_005

There are two basic TransMaker tablet models. The TR10 has a 10.1 inch, 1280 x 800 pixel IPS display and a 5000 to 6000mAh battery. The TransMaker TR11 has an 11.6 inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel IPS display and an 8000mAh battery.

Both models will work with optional keyboard docks, which means you can insert your phone into your tablet dock then slide that into the keyboard to run Android apps on a notebook-style contraption with extraordinarily long battery life. The keyboards have batteries with up to 10,000mAh.

There’s also an optional Bluetooth dialer which looks like a small cellphone. You can use it to make or receive phone calls even when your phone is docked — so you don’t have to remove the phone from the tablet to talk.

If all goes according to plan, the first TransMaker devices could ship in March, 2014.

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11 replies on “TransMaker is a tablet dock for the Samsung Galaxy S3 or S4 (crowdfunding)”

  1. This is a nice idea!!!! But what happens when you buy a different phone then the dock becomes useless as a paper weight!!!! Now if they made it universal that might be something!!!!

  2. I couldn’t justify having an S3 and a tablet, it just felt too redundant, and I would never use both at the same time. Hopefully we’re moving to a point where an Intel Atom x86 runs full windows and that can get a tablet and keyboard dock, along with a dialer app.

    I think using an alternative launcher that supports landscape mode homescreen might take care of the black bars. Hopefully the IPS gives it better viewing angles than the one Skywood was making.

    Also in their video they said they’re moving forward with it no matter how much funding it gets, so I had no qualms putting my money down.

    Also the speaker in the video reminded me of sean connery, idk why.

  3. By the time this gets built I think we’ll see a full tablet at 1920×1080 at 8 or 9 inches with similar speed to an S3 for $150. I would rather have that than have to dock my phone.

  4. I am going to file this under wait-and-see if it gets close to its funding goal then I’ll throw my money into the ring. I have been looking to replace my awesome though aging HP Touchpad…I was extremely excited for the Padfone until the price was announced. It looks like it is at 10% already so i have some hopes for this. What does it use to output to the display? I might be able to get away with the Galaxy Light…which would most definitely cement my purchase although by then i bet I could probably find an S3 for next to nothing on Craigslist…so for $100 more I get a full working tablet with a user-replaceable battery WIN!! as for the black bars I am betting dollars to donuts that someone develops an app for horizontal mode..

  5. You can dock a phone to the Motorola lapdock using Miracast for video and wired or Bluetooth for keyboard/mouse input using your favorite adapters. It’s not a tablet but it’s not limited to a specific phone either.

  6. If this does get built (Shirley) it won’t be in that hideous lavender (157,62,156)!

  7. Pass. I’m waiting for a full desktop OS when docked. Something Canonical is/was trying to provide with their Ubuntu on Android and I think is part of Ubuntu Touch. Hopefully, when such a thing is stable, phone hardware are powerful enough to run the desktop well.

  8. I am so sick of crowd funded projects. Most are just selling dodgy Chinese cheap junk by re-branding and doing some flashy marketing and making promises they cannot keep. Take the omate truesmart for instance which is still not shipping in the USA and is just a rebranded Chinese smartwatch umeox or something with some rubbish ui made by omate on there.

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