iPhone Writing Stand

As part of my ongoing Legend of Zelda style quest to create an ultra-portable writing setup, I decided to buy an iPhone stand to prevent neck strain.

In the end, I opted for the Ulanzi Foldable Magnetic Phone Tripod, the main reasons being the height of the stand and that it’s low weight.

Initial impressions are good, it gets the phone to an ergonomically pleasing eye height for writing with a keyboard. The drawback of this is that you have to reach up to use the touch screen, which isn’t a problem if you’re focusing on writing, but it’s annoying if you’re moving between apps. Also, due to the weight of the stand, the phone does move unless you’re careful to touch the screen very lightly. Maybe the lack of task switching is an advantage in disguise as it will increase focus my forcing me to mono task.

Instinctively, I decided to use the phone in portrait mode. Switching it to landscape also provides a good writing experience in Obsidian, increasing the width of lines provides a better writing and reading experience. However the iPhone Home Screen does not support landscape mode, apparently it used to. So again, this layout is only good if you are purely focused on writing.

The device is a little bit stiff to unfold, I’m wondering if this will become easier over time or if it needs something to loosen it up. Overall, the build quality feels good, it’s definitely small and light enough to put in your pocket and not really notice, also the magnet appears to hold the phone very securely.

I also bought a sleeve to put my Apple Magic Keyboard in, it’s a little baggy, but it should do the job of protecting it. Once in the sleeve, there’s a huge size difference between the Moko and the Apple Keyboard.

An observation I have is that editing on the iPhone is fiddly, in particular moving between different parts of an article , and adding to this, copying and pasting sections is a bit of a faff. Really, this set-up is good for doing in the flow writing, rather than editing or multitasking.

If you'd like to contact me then you can email writing@petegraham.co.uk or message me on BlueSky petexgraham.bsky.social.