GDome Mobile Instructions
Thank you for purchasing the GDome Mobile
The world’s first universal dome housing for smartphones!
Please ensure you go through the following instructions from start to finish.
Warning! ⚠️
It is the users responsibility to ensure the GDome Mobile is properly sealed and waterproof before use in or around water.
The GDome lens must be protected at all times, never leave it lying dome down on any surface.
When traveling please ensure that it is kept in the GDome carry bag.
The GDome is waterproof to 5m / 15 feet do not exeed this depth.
The GDome Carry bag has been designed for your dome, do not allow sand, salt or any other debris to get inside this bag as it will scratch your lens.
Please rinse your GDome Mobile with fresh water immediately after every use.
If you do manage to scratch the lens, it is not a big problem as they polish out extremely well.
Take a look at our YouTube channel with videos showing how to polish your lens.
The rear screen is made with an extremely flexible rubber material, this material has little to no memory meaning that it will stretch and come back its original position.
While it may seem extremely thin, it is extremely strong with remarkable stretch ability without tearing.
Do not use the wrong length screws when changing domes or using the flat lens element!!
Please take extreme care with sharp objects or anything that could puncture or damage the screen membrane.
We have been using the GDome Mobile in some seriously rough and tough environments and do believe that there should be no way for the membrane to break during normal use.
Important note a damaged membrane will result in the dome not sealing so please treat it with care and inspect the screen before use.
Spare screens will be available from our online store if you ever need a replacement.
Unboxing the GDome
Awesome, this means you have got your GDome Mobile!
Open up the box and remove the unit
Take the bag out of the box place it on your lap or on a table. Place the GDome with the lens facing up on the bag.
Go through the rest of the contents in the box to familiarise yourself with what exactly is included.
Next up is a basic pressure test.
Open the back of the GDome, remove the blank foam insert.
Check to ensure the membrane is clear from any obstructions and always try to keep the sealing area lubricated with silicone spray, Vaseline or O-ring lubrication.
Close the backdoor. Ensure that all holes line up directly, there should be no offset, if there is any offset, apply a small amount of (pulling) pressure away from the hinge and it will line up perfectly.
Start putting the thumb screws in place and tighten until the screw bites. Start with the top two opposite the hinge and work your way down the backdoor tightening opposite screws. You should not tighten these to a point where they are causing a seal just yet.
Once all the screws are in begin to tighten them up, when you can no longer see any metal between the back plate and the housing, you know that you are perfectly tightened. Make sure you tighten the bottom two thumbscrews with the provided tightening tool, these have to be fully tightened to ensure a proper seal.
leave two screws on the same side not fully tightened, now pinch the membrane with your fingers and pull back. The unit should suck in air, if it doesn’t then loosen another thumbscrew. Once air has been sucked in, keep pinching the membrane and tighten up the remaining thumbscrews on the unit, until you can no longer see any metal between any of the thumbscrews on the back plate and housing. You can now release the membrane. The membrane should have a convex shape.
Take your hand and press firmly on the membrane for 20-30 seconds, air should not be able to escape (leave the housing) at all. This means that your housing is sealed and waterproof.
If in the extremely unlikely situation that you see the convex shape change at all when you push it down. You need to check that all screws have been tightened correctly if they have been centred correctly to start. If you have any questions about this, send us a message on our live chat on our website
www.getgdome.com or drop us a mail at
Alright so the first test has been passed and you are ready to get your GDome Mobile wet! Grab your foam insert.
Open up the dome, remembering to keep the dome on the carry bag if you want to put it down. Put the foam insert into the dome housing
Take a pen and mark the center of your phones camera lens to the center of the dome housing.
You can now take the foam insert out of the housing.
Push the pen through this mark and double check you have got the center.
Place the phone on the foam and stencil the outline, make sure to make where buttons are as you can add in extra space so that you finger can get to the side buttons if need be. The foam is there to hold the phone in place. If you would like you can also cut a space out for the Bluetooth remote, we have used it without a hole with success.
Grab a very sharp blade or craft knife and start lightly cutting out the outline, this is called scoring, don’t try to cut to the bottom in one go, take your time and make it neat. Once correctly cut out you will be able to place your phone in and it should hold your phone in place without activating and buttons.
Don’t throw any of these cut-outs away, they are still useful.
Open the back of the GDome up, insert the foam into the housing with the cut-outs (they will act like your phone) - it’s time for your first water test!
Check to ensure the membrane is clear from any obstructions and always try to keep the sealing area lubricated with Vaseline or O-Ring lubrication.
Close the backdoor, please ensure that all holes line up directly, there should be no offset, if there is any offset, apply a small amount of (pulling) pressure away from the hinge and it should line up perfectly. Start putting the thumb screws in place and tightening them up, start with the top two opposite the hinge and work your way down doing opposites, you should not tighten these to a point where they are causing a seal just yet.
Please ensure you use the tightening screw for the screws closest to the hinge, these must be fully tightened in order to ensure a good seal.
Once all the screws are in begin to tighten them up, when you can no longer see any metal between the back plate and housing, you know that you are perfectly tightened. Make sure you leave and two screws not fully tightened, now pinch the membrane with your fingers and pull back. The unit should suck in air, if it doesn’t then loosen another thumbscrew. Once air has been sucked in, keep pinching the membrane and tighten up the remaining thumbscrews on the unit, until you can no longer see any metal between any of the thumbscrews on the back plate and housing. You can now release the membrane. The membrane should have a convex shape. Take your hand and press firmly on the membrane for 20-30 seconds, air should not be able to escape (leave the housing) at all. This means that your housing is sealed and it is time to put your GDome in the water!
For the first use try to take the unit to the maximum depth you plan on using it to (up to 5m) for as long as possible. The dome should take in absolutely no water.
You are now ready to put your phone in the housing! Make sure the GDome is perfectly dry and open it up taking care to not get moisture in the housing (this will result in the dome fogging up).
Mounting the Side grip to the GDome Mobile
Remove the two bolts on the opposite side to the hinge.
Find the longer bolts included in the spare packet. Face the handle with the arc going away from the dome, line up the top hole and insert the longer bolt, make sure you don't push out the nut. Loosely tighten so it can still swivel.
Move the other handle so that it lines up with the hole (you will need to flex it slightly), drop the bolt in and tighten up both bolts fully.
Please triple check that the front dome seal is in its groove and fully compressed all the way around the dome.
Attaching A Flat Lens Element or Extension Tube to the GDome Mobile
- Remove the existing bolts
- Take note of the 3 shorter screws and where they go in (do not use longer screws, it could puncture your housing or cause the dome not to seal correctly).
- Keep the seal in the seal groove, make sure the seal does not slip out or get pinched out of place.
- Place the flat lens or extension tube down and finger tighten the screws (do opposite sides so the lens does not push up).
- Make sure the short screws are used in the correct holes!!
- Tighten down all screws using the Allen key provided.
- make sure that you can see that the seal has been properly compressed.
Some PRO tips before you get going!
On your phone find “Guided Access” in settings, we use this to lock the phone in a certain apps. We find this extremely useful. One this is activated you will triple -click the side button in the app you want to use. Make sure you keep the volume button activated as it is what fires the shutter with the Bluetooth remote. We like this as we can lock in all the setting we want to use when in the water.
The latest Android phones (specifically, handsets running on Android 5.0 "Lollipop" or better) make it easy to lock—or as Google puts it, "pin"—an app onto the screen, disabling the Home, Back and multitasking controls until you tap the right combination of buttons.
Please remember to turn off all functionality other than the volume button (this must be turned on!) You can play around with using different camera apps our two favourites are Moment & Lightroom available for IOS and Android. We have also played with the Watershot and DiveHelper app - feel free to give these a try.
Feel free to use a bluetooth remote in your housing!
How to prevent reflection
There are several shooting tips you should keep in mind to help you get that perfect eye-catching split shot!
Avoid shooting into the sun. We love capturing light rays, but any dome housing is prone to reflections.
The GDome has a matte finish on the front to prevent reflections, but occasionally I'll see the reflection of the camera lens(s) in the center of your shots with certain angles and light conditions. Always try to shoot with the sun directly behind or above.
Below are two photos from the same day while shooting the tidepools in New Zealand. As you can see from the two photos, you can clearly see the reflection of the lens when shooting directly into the sun. One technique to combat this is to have a subject block out the light source.
You can also make a custom matt sticker or use a water based matte paint that will prevent reflection from your cameras reflective surfaces.
With the GDome Mobile, some clients have drastically offset their camera lens away from the centre point of the dome, this can actually drastically reduce reflection when shooting in non ideal light conditions.
IMPORTANT THING TO NOTE:
Do not allow any gap between the phone / action camera and the foam - this is a sure way to get reflection in your footage. Other than these tips, you will need to play with angles if you want to shoot directly into the sun or in poor lighting conditions.
Phone Over Heating
In some extremely hot destinations the phone can get hot in the sealed off environment, we suggest keeping the GDome out of direct sunlight until you are ready to put it in the water, you can also close all apps and turn the phone onto flight mode.
Best shooting modes
Some essential shooting modes for the GDome Mobile are Slow-Mo, Burst Mode and Portrait Mode.
It is all about playing around with your GDome Mobile, learning what works, what doesn’t for the shots and video you are trying to achieve.
Now it’s time to get onto the good stuff!
There are a few ways to put your Phone into the GDome Mobile.
You can obviously have the phone in the foam that you cut out, you can also cut a hole out of the foam a little bigger than the camera lens to the size of your camera this must be big enough so you don’t get any black around the corners of the images - we have had great successes with this but make sure that you use the Pro Touch Insert or the “Guided Access” trick to lock the whole screen as water could create false touches.
This is awesome as little to no cutting of the foam is required.
It’s important to not have any gaps between your phone, the phone and the open lens area as it can lead to reflections in the dome.
If we cut out the lens and there is a gap we plug it up with Prestick or putty to stop light getting in the dome. Pair the Bluetooth remote with your phone and place it somewhere in your housing.
Now you can seal the dome up as mentioned above, make sure the holes line up and no metal is showing between the back plates and housing. Once sealed up, to see if the unit is sealed you can grab your phone or remote through the membrane and pull it back, there should be a vacuum, no air should be able to get in and the shape should not become convex or let air in at all, it should be as tight as when you first sealed it up. This means that your housing is sealed and you are ready to go. This may sound strange but give it a try
If you cut out the shape of your phone
Follow the instructions above
Once your phone / remote and foam is in place.
Close the backdoor, please ensure that all holes line up directly, there should be no offset, if there is any offset, apply a small amount of (pulling) pressure away from the hinge and it should line up perfectly.
Start putting the thumb screws in place and tightening them up, start with the top two opposite the hinge and work your way down doing opposite screw tightening, you should not tighten these to a point where they are causing a seal just yet.
Once all the screws are in begin to tighten them up, when you can no longer see any metal between the back plate and housing, you know that you are perfectly tightened.
Make sure you leave and two screws not fully tightened, now pinch the membrane with your fingers and pull back. The unit should such in air, if it doesn’t then loosen another thumbscrew. Once air has been sucked in, keep pinching the membrane and tighten up the remaining thumbscrews on the unit, until you can no longer see any metal between any of the thumbscrews on the back plate and housing.
Make sure the two screws closest to the rear hinge are fully tightened with the included tool. You can now release the membrane. The membrane should have a convex shape. Take your hand and press firmly on the membrane for 20-30 seconds, air should not be able to escape (leave the housing) at all. This means that your housing is sealed and you are ready to go.
In the case of an emergency.
You will notice that we have added internal grooves to the grip area, you will also see that we added ribs in the back plate, in the case of an emergency if you spot any moisture in the dome, you can turn the unit dome facing downwards with the grip low. The ribs have been designed to keep the phone away from the surface of the back plate and allowing water to run and get trapped in the internal grip grooves.
If you have any questions please send us a mail sales@getgdome.com
Please watch these videos before using your GDome Mobile.