n00b question- do i really need the dock to charge the phone?
would it hurt in any way to plug the USB cable directly into the phone and then plug the other end into a PC USB port or the original charger?

I would hate carrying the dock arnd everywhere

no, just use the regular usb cable and connect it to ac

all i can say lol

i know thats a lol qstn ..just that when i searched for "charging" , i found quite a few post on bricked iphones due to bad charging...
on top of that, the dock seems to be big enough to house additional circuitry including charging /voltage controllers