Geometrical Pocket Tripod — Amazing Engineering

When Rambod, the inventor of the Pocket Tripod from Geometrical, offered to send Steve and me two of their credit-card-sized phone holders for free, that sounded nifty. I didn’t promise to write an article, much less guarantee a favorable review, but it sounded like something fun to check out.

The basic idea of the Pocket Tripod is that it gives you a way to hold your phone up for calls, watching videos, or taking photos, but it’s so small and impossibly light that it would be easy to keep in your purse. How exactly it does this is a major feat of engineering. Because it will help in the explanation of the geometry, I chose the red and black version, while Steve chose the orange and black version. They’re both gorgeous.

I want to give a disclaimer — this is one of the hardest products I’ve ever had to describe!

Unboxing

I’m not big on creating unboxing content, but it’s this process that teaches you why this device is so unusual. When you open the front flap of the box, you’ll see a printed graphic of a phone at different angles, but you can also see the device through a little window, and the printed graphic is being held by the real device.

I know that sounds confusing, so I’m going to jump ahead. When you open up the inner flap, you can pull out the credit-card-sized device. They include a sticker on top that says “Twist” twice to make sure you don’t just start bending it.

There’s a fan-fold instruction manual and a three-pane single sheet telling you to twist it, but of course everyone just tosses those things aside, so the twist sticker is the last line of defense.

Engineering

When you twist the Pocket Tripod, that’s when you start to appreciate the engineering that went into this device. After a 180° twist, the card is no longer a rectangle — and I’m baffled how to describe the shape!

Now that it’s flat in this weird shape, you fold the two sides up. In this configuration, it reminds me of a tiny red racecar, maybe a 20° wedge, with a black bottom side.

Along these angled red sides are two semicircular cutouts where your phone will rest at a rotatable angle. You might wonder how all different-sized phones could possibly work with this idea. In the box, you’ll find 9 different semicircular plastic pieces with cutouts for different phone thicknesses. You might think it would be hard to test all 9 sizes to find the right pair for your phone, but they’ve thought of that too.

They include a “fit card”, which is a credit-card-sized piece of plastic with cutouts matching all of the different sizes from 7.0 to 12.5 mm. They really did think of everything — this fit card just happens to be printed in a light grey, so it doubles as a neutral grey card, which photographers know helps out with white balance.

To keep gushing over the engineering and product design, these little semicircular pieces rotate into the cutouts on the tripod and are securely held in place by tiny little grooves as you rotate them into it. They’re pretty snug, so not trivial to rotate into place, but that’s important because you don’t want them to slip when your phone is being positioned.

If you have a wider device, or just want more stability, if you twist the card so the legs are not in alignment, you can pull them apart. This lets you have two legs for the phone to rest on. It made me queasy to pull it apart like that, but I imagine they’ve tested to make sure it can withstand this kind of action.

In Use

I’m pretty sure I’ve made a dog’s dinner of describing the Pocket Tripod from Geometrical, but it’s so unusual I think it’s inescapable. I’m including quite a few photos, and if you see them and can come up with better ways to describe it, I’m all ears.

Now let’s finally talk about how you use the Pocket Tripod. With the correctly sized adapters, your phone will snugly slide in against the soft rubber edges of said adapters. While it’s hard to rotate the adapters with your fingers, once your phone is slotted in, you have the leverage to rotate the phone to your desired position.

They include some diagrams about how to position the phone in the Pocket Tripod, but I’m an engineer, so I ignored them. And of course, I had trouble getting the phone to stand up. Keep in mind the center of gravity of your phone. Let’s say you want the phone to lay back a bit with the screen facing you to record a video, take a video call, or watch videos. The little slots for the phone are at one end of the device, so you have to make sure the body of the phone is back towards the other end, or it will just flip over. It’s just math, guys.

Maybe you want to prop the phone so it’s looking down with the good lens so you can capture a close-up photo of something you’re holding in your hands. It’s easy to do as long as you keep the body of the phone over the folded tripod.

Let’s say you carry a “real” tripod with you, but you need a way to secure your phone to the tripod. People carry clamp devices or MagSafe mounts, which are heavy and thick. The Geometrical pocket tripod has two 1/4-20 mount holes with nickel-plated brass threads to attach to a real tripod. (Have you ever wondered what 1/4-20 means on a tripod mount? It means the post is 1/4″ in diameter with 20 threads per inch. Now you know.)

Will You Carry it With You?

One real question on something like this is whether you’ll carry it around with you. I can tell you that if you do, you won’t be able to tell you’ve added it to your bag. The Geometrical Pocket Tripod is made of carbon fiber, is 2.3mm thick, and weighs 12 grams. In Freedom Units, that’s only .4 ounces! I’m so careful about the weight of my bags that I regularly go through and throw away things like paper receipts. Hey, they’re made of wood! But I think adding this to my purse would be totally doable.

So it’s thin and light enough that you wouldn’t notice it, but do you need one? Steve and I use Torras cases with a built-in ring that flips out, and these cases give us a pretty stable way to prop our phones up for all of the uses I mentioned the Pocket Tripod enables.

If you don’t have a case with a built-in stand, and you find yourself wishing you could prop your phone up from time to time, then maybe a Pocket Tripod from Geometrical would suit your needs.

But there’s a sad trombone punchline. The Pocket Tripod from Geometrical is $ 50 US. Yeah, I had the same reaction. All of that engineering, precision manufacturing, and high-end materials cost a lot of money. At $20, it would have been a no-brainer. At $30, I’d waffle on whether to buy one. At $50, this would have to be a critical piece of kit for you, solving a real problem you have. I appreciate the design and functionality, but the price may be a barrier for what it ultimately delivers.