Joy of Gadgets

I really tried to like the Tritton Technologies AXVisor, which is a bluetooth handsfree system that clips to your visor and provides speakerphone capabilities while you’re driving. I found the device relatively easy to pair with my Nokia handsets and the controls were pretty good. Unfortunately, the device falls apart in the most important feature: being able to hold a conversation.

While I can certainly hear people loud and clear, the same cannot be said for my voice to the caller. Being a Nokia boy, I’ve tried a number of my Nokia handsets with this device. None of them provided adequate voice quality while driving or in my house at home.

The scary thing is that this is the second device the Tritton folks sent me. The first one I was not heard at all. I think it was a defective unit. This one is clearly working, but not well.

Aside from calling my friends and annoying them with voice quality tests, the best “automated” test I can come up with for voice quality is the Tell Me service (800-555-8355), using it to play Blackjack or even use the other voice activated services. Using my Nokia handsets and the AXVisor, the Tell Me service was rarely able to correctly identify what I was saying.

I’m really not sure if it’s this device or an endemic problem with Nokia’s bluetooth stack as I have yet to find a single bluetooth headset that sounds good enough that I’d actually want to use it for more than a few minutes. I’d much rather use the built-in speakerphone on the Nokia handsets or simply use a wired headset than use anything bluetooth.

I certainly can’t recommend this device with a Nokia handset. Maybe it will work better with a different handset, I don’t know.

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I recently signed up for the T-Mobile @Home service through the folks that support voice services at Nokia, where I work. I was sent a Nokia 6301 along with the Hotspot @Home router. The draw? Free calls on the home WiFi, or in earshot of any T-Mobile Hotspot. Why not?

Normally, I would not be buying–or necessarily wanting–a phone like the Nokia 6301. I am quite firmly a smartphone user. The Nokia 6301 is most certainly not a smartphone, but if you want the free calls over WiFi, this is one of the handful of phones T-Mobile sells that permits you to use the Hotspot @Home service.

The technology behind T-Mobile @Home is called UMA. I won’t get into it in detail here, but in short, it allows seamless transitions between your home WiFi and the mobile phone network. I cover UMA in a little more detail on phoneboy.com.

Now, onto the phone hardware. It’s a pretty run of the mill S40 5th Edition FP1 device. Has the usual assortment of keys on the front, power button on the top, volume control on the right side, a 2.5mm headset jack, power, and a not-very accessible USB port. On mine, I basically have to take the back cover off in order to be able to get the port cover off.

Once you take the battery cover off, you can also access the MicroSD slot. The device comes with a 512mb MicroSD card that you can load with music or use to store pictures taken with the 2 megapixel camera.

Unfortunately, I have been spoiled by the two variants of the N95 that I currently have as well as the older N73 and the newly arrived N96, which I will cover later. The 2 megapixel camera on the Nokia 6301 certainly won’t win any awards, but it takes servicable pictures, as shown on my Share on Ovi account. The one feature the Nokia 6301 camera DOES have is the ability to take pictures in landscape mode, giving you a 960×1280 picture. You have to manually put it in that mode, but it’s a nice touch that it has that feature.

The phone has an Active Standby screen like my Nokia smartphones have, but it is disabled by default. Once it is enabled, you can have a number of icons display along the top–you can choose as many as you want among the pre-selected choices. There’s also sections for Music/Radio, Calendar/Notes and more. You can even customize in which of these sections–if any–these will show.

The features are nice, but the real test for this phone is the sound quality–particularly over WiFi. I called someone today and talked with them for an hour on my Nokia 6301 using my home WiFi. They had no idea I was on a mobile phone, much less over WiFi. The audio quality–for both of us–was that good.

I also tested the phone handoff between WiFi and GSM. I started a call with 800-555-TELL (a.k.a TellMe) and played the blackjack with the lovely Sean Connery impersonated voice. The call didn’t miss a beat, though there was an audible “thunk” when the call handed off.

I tried the web browser, which is a fairly basic XHTML/WAP browser. It’s functional, but it’s not the Webkit-based browser that’s on my Nseries devices. Of course, when you’re not in WiFi range, you really don’t want to be web browsing much since the phone only supports GPRS on T-Mobile’s US network–not even EDGE.

One note about the WiFi on this phone: it is only provided for use with the T-Mobile @Home service, or whatever UMA service provider you buy the phone from. It will not work independently of UMA. The good news is that while you’re in range of a configured WiFi access point, the data transfer is much faster.

One downside to S40 devices is that contact and calendar sync are a little more of a challenge. T-Mobile has a (presumably subscription) service where you can sync your stuff to the cloud. Since I have no interest in that, I set up PC Suite on my work computer and am syncing my calendar and contacts over Bluetooth. The phone also, surprisingly, has Nokia’s “Phone switch” application, which makes it possible to sync information between phones.

All in all, the phone is not a bad little device. It’s probably something I’ll carry alongside something more functional and with an AT&T SIM, but for a voice-centric device, it does the job.

Until I heard how good my Nokia BH-604 stereo bluetooth headset sounded, I didn’t think anything resembling good sound was possible on Bluetooth. Most bluetooth headsets I’ve used, however, suck. Not only for me, but for the person on the other end. I have a hard enough time understanding my children when I talk to them over a mobile phone. Add a bluetooth headset to the equation, and you might as well be speaking underwater.

Needless to say, when I found out that Ditech Networks is going to license their voice quality algorithms for use with Bluetooth headsets, I was excited. Maybe someday, a normal bluetooth headset won’t sound like crap. Maybe.

The one question I have with this is whether or not these technologies have to be employed on both the handset and the headset in order to get any results. What are the licensing terms? Will it be cheap enough that mobile phone manufacturers sign up? Questions, questions.

Edit: I got some answers from Ditech’s PR firm: it will likely only add about 30-50 cents to the cost of a bluetooth headset and it doesn’t need to be implemented in the handset, but it can also be implemented there as well.

I’ve been wanting a pair of stereo bluetooth headphones for a while now. I finally got the opportunity to order a Nokia Stereo Bluetooth Headset BH-604 from the internal purchasing at Nokia.

Unlike a lot of their bluetooth stereo headsets I’ve seen, the cans are the transmitter. They are a bit “old skool” big, but I like that. They are well padded and feel reasonably comfortable. The sound quality is respectable, but I think that has more to do with A2DP not being nearly as good as a wired connection than the overall quality of the headphones.

The controls are on the right earpiece. The only one I find I have a huge problem with is the volume control on the bottom. It’s a bit sloppy in comparison to the other controls, which seem more solid.

I am pretty impressed with the range. I was able to walk a good 30 feet away from my Nokia N95 8GB before I experienced any dropouts. Considering that some regular bluetooth headsets have problems with anything farther than 3 feet, this is amazing!

The headset is a bit pricey ($149 or so) compared to many of the stereo bluetooth headsets I’ve seen, though for similar can-type headsets, it’s in the same ballpark.

The folks at TRITTON Technologies sent me one of their AX Micro Bluetooth Headsets to review for The Gadgets Weblog. I got around to giving it a good trial a while ago, and while I generally liked how the headset felt in my ear, I later uncovered some nasty issues with echo on at least one of my Nokia handsets.

The headset has an odd looking earpiece. It “grips” to your outer ear, doing away with the usual clip around the ear to hold it in place. Having managed to drain the four hour talk time battery in one day–had a lot of meetings that day–it was still fairly comfortable, yet secure. Perhaps the most comfortable headset I’ve used yet.

Unfortunately, comfort doesn’t make up for some awkwardness of manipulating the headset. Turning it on and off involves holding down a button for too long–5 seconds. By 3 seconds, I think something is wrong. Also, the tone that plays when you mute the headset–by holding down both the volume up and down keys simultaneously–is the same tone as when the headset is low on battery.

When I asked Tritton about the echo problem, which was basically that the remote person would hear me “echo,” they told me that some phones overdrive the bluetooth audio, which causes the echo cancellation to have issues. In theory, if I crank the volume down, the echo problem should go away.

The headset comes with a little stand to put the headset in and it can be charged with a mini USB cable. It actually kind of snaps in. A wall wort with a mini USB plug is also provided. For comfort alone, the headset is worth trying, and is competitively priced at $59.99 (retail, might be cheaper elsewhere).