The Supply Index is a design-led record of everyday products, selected for the quality of their design decisions — what each prioritises, what it sacrifices, and what those choices say about who it was made for.

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Mobile Tripod

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The Mobile Tripod is Peak Design's attempt to make a phone tripod small enough to actually carry. Folded, it is about the size and flatness of a phone itself, a machined aluminium slab that slips into a jacket pocket where conventional phone tripods are awkward sticks. Its legs and centre column fan out from that flat form, and a built-in clamp with a ball head grips the handset and angles it to any position. A magnetic version holds a MagSafe iPhone without jaws at all. It sets up in seconds and holds a phone steady for calls, timelapses, low light or group shots. It suits the creator or traveller who films on a phone and wants a genuinely pocketable support, and accepts a high price for the engineering and a load rating built for phones, not cameras.

Design intent

  • The defining decision is to fold flat to phone size: by collapsing the legs and clamp into a slab barely thicker than a handset, it solves the reason phone tripods get left at home, and is the whole engineering achievement of the object.
  • The integrated clamp and ball head remove the usual two-part fuss: the phone mount is built in and articulates to any angle, with a MagSafe variant that grips magnetically, so setup is one motion rather than assembling a mount onto a head onto legs.

Trade-offs

  • It is expensive for a phone tripod, and the flat-folding engineering that makes it pocketable is exactly what commands that price over a cheap plastic stick that does the basic job.
  • It is rated and sized for a phone, so it will not steady a real camera, and at its compact size it stands fairly low and can be less stable in wind or on uneven ground than a full-size tripod.
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1 Jun 2023
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