Twelve South Curve Nano reviewed: MagSafe on a hinge

MagSafe is great for holding your phone to a charger, but Twelve South’s Curve Nano aims to hold your iPhone in place without the charger. If only it had a bottle opener, it’d be perfect.

Your phone might have a flat edge, but that doesn’t mean it can stand up all by itself, at least not without toppling over immediately. Yet these days, that’s one of the things many of us ask for our phones to do, possibly so we can watch a video, or even had have a handy way to talk to friends while leaving our hands free for other reasons.

While you can probably just lean your phone against anything, if you’re looking for a stable way of doing it, magnets could well be the answer, provided your phone has that technology built into the back, something accessory and peripheral maker Twelve South is showing in its Curve Nano stand.

What is the Curve Nano?

Off the bat, we can say the Curve Nano isn’t an iPod Nano. There’s no media player in Twelve South’s latest accessory, nor is it DJI’s Nano camera. It’s barely a gadget at all, and more of an accessory, but there is a curve in this accessory you might want to keep near you.

A piece of metal on a hinge with a MagSafe ring in the centre and some rubber to hold things is the basic description, but Twelve South’s Curve Nano is essential a fold-up compact phone stand made specifically for the magnetic ring on MagSafe iPhones and Qi2 Androids.

What does it do?

Its name doesn’t give anything away, but the Twelve South Curve Nano is a stand for your magnetically-attached phone, allowing you to easily stand the phone up and at an angle, send get on with life.

This isn’t really the first time we’ve seen a stand, and Belkin offered a smaller take on the idea a few years ago in a little MagSafe puck with a small clip at the back so you could lean your phone on your laptop’s screen. The Curve Nano is a little different, focused on a desk or table, rather than the screen.

Does it do the job?

We’ll try to make this as easy as possible, because Twelve South sure has: take the Curve Nano from its supplied felt case and angle the stand up, leaving the surface on a table. Voila, you are ready to mount an iPhone on a fairly stable aluminium accessory. Yep, that’s it.

It’ll stand up iPhones from the iPhone 12 onwards — meaning any iPhone with MagSafe from the current range that isn’t the iPhone 16e (because it lacks the magnets) — and it will even work with the few Android phones that pack in Qi2 support or a compatible case.

Testing the Curve Nano with a Pixel 10 worked (it stuck), as did the Galaxy Fold 7 when it was in a magnetic case. We were even able to unfold the phone into its 8 inch tablet, but did need to lean the phone at a pretty severe angle due to the height of the stand just not being enough for the size of the unfolded foldable Galaxy.

In fact, depending on the angle of the stand, a phone can cause the Curve Nano to topple slightly, rolling forward. This isn’t a stand for a direct 90 degree angle, but anything under that should be fine.

What does it need?

But what it desperately needs is just a little more strength, because some of the sharper angles may cause the stand to topple forwards.

We’d also love it if the stand included something equally useful in its shape: a bottle cap opener.

The design of the Curve Nano is specific that it would actually be useful here, and you could kill two birds with one magnetic stand-shaped stone: opening a bottle before standing your phone up and watching something on your phone or calling a friend.

Is it worth your money?

The problem is the price: at $65 in Australia, the Curve Nano feels way overpriced for what basically amounts to MagSafe on a hinge.

At this price point, you’re mostly paying for name, it seems. Twelve South has some great products with clever designs, but this is just a stand made more portable, and it’s not even that clever.

A quick glance around Amazon will get you some random no-name brands for similar ideas that are closer to a maximum of half the price Twelve South commands, which doesn’t exactly reinforce the idea of value from Twelve South’s end.

We’d probably max this price tag at $39, but can’t work out why it should be anywhere north of $50. It’s not really worth the cost. You could lean it against anything, or just buy a case with the stand built in.

Yay or nay?

If you’re someone who needs to keep your phone upright and hands-free, there’s something to be said for the Twelve South Curve Nano, though “slightly overpriced” is one of those things. Stands with MagSafe tend to be less, and stands without a whole lot less by comparison.

As to whether other options are as stylish as what Twelve South has produced remains to be seen, but we can see folks who love their iPhone also loving this. Frankly, the price is high but the accessory is fine, even if it’s a touch unnecessary.