Recently launched on Kickstarter a few days ago, the Mutator is a tiny piece of hardware that plugs into the headphone jack of your iPhone and mutes nearly all sound coming from the smartphone. While the iPhone has a mute switch on the left side of the device, it doesn’t silence sound from video, music and games as well as sound within applications like the built-in camera or the voice memos function. A piece of hardware used to silence all these distractions would be ideal for areas such as the library, a place of worship, the workplace during meetings, a courtroom during a trial or the movie theater.
According to the developer, the Mutator will silence Siri, mail alerts, text message alerts, calendar alerts, camera sounds, Web audio, video, music and games. However, the Mutator will not silence manually set alarms within the iPhone’s clock application. In addition, the user will have to engage the mute switch to silence the ringer for incoming phone calls.
As small as the hardware is, you won’t have to worry about losing it since the Mutator can stay plugged in at all times. In order to activate sound on the iPhone, the user simply turns the Mutator 90 degrees until it clicks. Turn it again and the phone is silenced.
At this time, the current prototype of the Mutator has been designed to work with iPhones without a case or using a slim profile case. Available in white and black, the price of a single Mutator for Kickstarter backers is $16. However, there’s an additional charcoal black version built with aluminum for $28. There are also a couple more funding levels for limited edition models.
According to the details on the project page, funding will be spent on production prototypes, tooling, molding, machining, packaging and delivery. The target delivery date for the Mutator is currently October 2013. As with all Kickstarter projects, be aware that manufacturing issues can delay delivery of the product weeks or even months beyond the original date.
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