Folding Pocket Tablet Stand 3D print model

As smartphones and tablets are becoming more and more the main access people use to the internet, both at home and out in the big wide world, there obviously are times when you need to have your hands free. There are a lot of tablet and phone stands on the market but most of them are fairly large and bulky and may take up too much room in your bag. And obviously you couldn't carry something like that in your pocket. But now you can.

To be completely honest the inspiration for this tablet stand was..... my Shopping Bag Handle (available elsewhere in my store). I realised that my iPhone 6 Plus would fit snugly into it and I wondered if there was some way that it could be adapted to serve a dual function. That wasn't really a particularly good idea (I hadn't had a lot of sleep and I'd drunk a LOT of coffee that day), but it gave me the germ of an idea to try and design a proper pocket phone stand which also would work with tablets (because they're mainly the more likely thing to need a stand). The result of that idea is this, which I'm posting here today.

This stand consists of a thin body with retainers at the front to hold the tablet, with fold-out arms to make sure the stand stays in place (without them folded out it'll just tip backwards). I've tried it with my iPhone 6 Plus and it works fine, I've also tried it with my older-model iPad 4 (larger and bulkier than the latest iPads of course) and again it works just fine. I haven't got an iPad Pro to try it with so I can't comment there but it SHOULD be okay for larger tablets (although I can't guarantee that of course as I haven't personally tested it). The upper arms technically aren't really needed, but I always believe it's better to have something and not need it rather than need it and not have it. Engineers call that 'redundancy', and I like to err on the side of caution.