Buffalo Technology has launched a new dock for the iPhone and iPod touch. The brushed aluminium and black soft touch two-tone finished device allows consumers to sync and charge their iPhone or iPod while providing simultaneous access to the included 500GB portable hard drive for backup or storage of digital assets. The HDD is HFS+ formatted for Macs by default, making it quite not so ideal for PC consumers. However, after a few tweaks, it’s possible to re-format the HDD in NTFS for a PC.
The Dualie is actually made up of the docking bit which has a two-port USB hub, and the HDD itself, which comes with one USB and one FireWire port for data transfer. The Buffalo Dualie is compatible the iPhone 3G/3GS, as well as the second generation iPod Touch, iPod Classic and fifth generation iPod Nano.
It is priced at £199 and will be available from February. Buffalo offers a 1 year warranty and free 24/7 tech support.