Does it help with the undocking? Major improvement?
I gave in and ordered the Lightning adapter after seeing the picture above, and did a similar mod (though with a
very tiny file, because my Dremel is hiding somewhere), and it does make a considerable difference. Whether it's worth it to any given individual is sort of a judgement call...
The
primary thing locking the phone in is the pins/bearings/whatever in the socket in the phone latching into the dimples on either edge of the plug. Lessening the steepness of the drop into dimple makes it not lock in as tightly. The flip side is, the more you file off, the greater the chance of the connector not aligning properly in the phone. That would be bad. So, the more you file off, the more you benefit, and the more you risk. Your call where to stop.
I played it fairly safe, left a little bit of the dimples showing, didn't file the sides all the way down. It's to the point where, instead of using two hands to remove the phone, I can grab it with one hand and use the pinkie of that hand to keep the base in place while lifting the phone up. I can live with that.
Had I found my Dremel, I likely would have ground tiny channels from bottom of the dimple up off the end of the connector, so the sides of the channel would still be full height, still fit in the socket the same way, but there would be much less tension on the socket's pins; they would just slide down the channel to the dimples. I may still do that at some point in the future (a $19 experiment).
Another thing to keep in mind is, the connector is a fairly close tolerance fit, and is tilted back at an angle that matches the tilt of the phone, leaning against the backrest. So lifting straight up doesn't work so well. Need to pull "up" in the same plane in which the phone is resting.
Also, while the Lightning plug is a fairly precise design (and manufactured to Apple-monitored tolerances) and the Elevations Labs Lightning adapter is a lovely engineered piece of aluminum, it's still easy to get them a tiny bit out of alignment. And half a degree off is hard to see when it's just the plug screwed into the adapter, but is much more obvious when you get everything screwed back together and the phone touches the back cushion of the stand on one side, but not on the other.
Getting the plug set to the right height in the stand is easy if you sort of put it together just friction fit, with the plug set way up, then push the phone down onto it in whatever case you use (if any; I've got a
Noot iPhone 5 Bumper on mine), letting the combined phone/case push the plug down to its natural height, then disassemble and tighten things down. I didn't have any problem getting the cable to fit inside the base of the stand, BTW. It does need to do a right-angle-ish bend but it wasn't a problem. I suppose, if one wasn't using a case and thus was setting the plug lower (thus with the back of the plug intruding further inside the base), things could be a lot more cramped. But check the height you need, before just setting the plastic case of the plug flush with the red aluminum adapter. With a case, it works better raised up a bit.
One more tip, if you do remove metal, be
really careful to thoroughly clean off all the microscopic metal shavings. Getting metal shavings pushed into the phone would be
bad.
And
that is far more than I'd intended to write...