(Nokia's BH-903 Stereo Bluetooth Headset)

Remember the mystery package that I received the other day? Well, one of the contents of the package was the Nokia BH-903 Bluetooth Stereo Headset, sent to me all the way from the UK by WOMWorld. I’ve been using it for the past few days and the little power packed device has left me impressed. 

Packaging:

I might be a little nit-picky here, but Nokia wastes a lot of resources on the packaging their products. By that, I don’t mean they make it look expensive. Rather, they waste a lot of precious space around the product. Ever since I’ve moved onto Apple products, I’ve understood how much the packaging of the product matters and Nokia needs to get its act together on their products. For a device as small as above, there was no need to pack it in a bog that’s almost as big as a box for the E71. And yes, that’s the other device that was in the mystery package from DHL.

Build and Design:

I strongly believe that Nokia’s designers have put it a lot of thought into this device. The heart of the Nokia BH-903 is the main unit, which has been made to appear as a medallion, as the earphones hand around your neck when you wear it, making the main unit hang just below your face. The unit is small enough to hold in your hands.

The unit features an OLED display which lets your browse through the various features offered by the device. The unit is strongly built and doesn’t feel delicate in any way. It sports a rubber D-paid with two other buttons on the front, along with the power button on the top. The D-pad itself has several keys including music-player buttons (Play, Pause, Previous Tract, Next Track) and Front and Back for browsing through the menu. To increase or decrease your volume, one needs to move around the central ‘select’ button, just as you would do it on an iPod. However, it is not as smooth as it is on the iPods.

Specifications:

Weight:

• 32g.

Operating times:

• Talk time: up to 11h.
• Music time: up to 11h.
• FM radio time when connected to phone: up to 11h.
• Standby time: up to 150h.
• Charging time: 45 min to full charge.
• Talk time, Music time,FM radio time after 20 minutes of charging: up to 9h.

Interfaces:

• Bluetooth v2.0 with EDR specification.
• Headset Profile (HSP) 1.1.
• Handsfree Profile (HFP) 1.5.
• Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP).
• Audio Video Remote Control Profile (AVRCP) 1.0.
• Phonebook Access Profile PBAP.
• Nokia charging interface with 2 mm jack.

Performance:

The audio performance of the device was better than I expected. It has a good sound quality and certainly does better than most other headsets in this category. However, if you’re that audiophile kind, you’d want to get your hands on something better. But for the everyday listening enthusiast, this device does its job well.

What’s not so good?

• The D-Pad controls could be a little more finger-friendly and smooth.
• The earphones are not comfortable in your ears and I often find either or both of them falling off my ears while in the middle of a call or music.

Conclusions:

The Nokia BH-903 is a solid bluetooth headset and is feature packed to the rim. However, the price may be a little dampener to most of us at USD 99. 

You can view more pictures of the device on my Flickr Stream here.

If you’ve been a subscriber of my blog for over a year now, my long absence from the blog might not be anything new for you. to others, however, I owe an apology. 

You see, usually when I’m away from the blog, it’s neither because ‘God has come calling‘ nor because the ‘Bubble Burst‘. It’s neither because I’ve grown fed up of writing long posts nor is it because I’m just too bored. Believe it or not, I’m just too occupied in other things, that writing something here finds no place in my weekly schedule (not that it exists anyway)

Wait. Occupied? In What?

Umm…. lot’s of things. They may seem less enough for you to count them on your fingers, but when you’re actually working on them, each one seems like a monumental task. These days, I hardly even find time to tweet. Yes, I’ve scored over 10,000 tweets so far and I may just be one of the most popular Indian kid member on twitter. Here’s what’s keeping me busy these days.

1. College:

Sucks. I hate the Indian Education System. We spend over 4-6 hours in college everyday learning nothing but BS. Yes, I agree that what we’re being taught are the basics and we need to know them. But why oh why do they have to limit it there? Are frames or tables in HTML really going to help us in our day-to-day activities or our career? I don’t think so. 

I usually find myself staring at the blackboard with a blank look on my face either because my personal knowledge about that subject is either far better than what’s being taught or the subject is so far off from my interest that there seems to be no connection that links us together.

I’m really hoping that I get to pursue further studies abroad.

2. WATBlog.com

For those still living in the dark ages, WAT stands for Web, Advertising and Technology and WATBlog covers the happenings of the Indian and International WAT space. So far, I’ve been staying away from the ‘Advertising’ space, focussing mainly on the Web and Technology. 

It has been a great experience so far, working with all the fabulous and experienced people there. No matter how much you think you know, there’s always a lot left to learn and getting a job usually completes what’s missing.

Here’s what I’ve authored all these days.

3. Mobile Industry Review (formerly SMSTextNews)

MobileIndustryReview covers all the latest happenings in the international mobile space. I’ve just started contributing my articles there. These are some really cool guys and their video podcast is something one mustn’t miss.

Here’s what I’ve authored all these days.

4. ExperTrio Web Services

Yes, there’s a lot happening at ExperTrio too. Although the Duo from the Trio is mostly lost in the cyber space, I’ve managed to gather a team of some awesome people in this field and they’re each doing a splendid job. We’re trying to come up with a few promotions in the coming days and will be giving out FREE hosting, domains and even T-Shirts. 

5. SmokingApples

*Music from Star Wars plays in the background*

This is the baby of 5 Macboys viz. Aayush, Aditya, Ashwin, Milind and Myself and the love for all things Apple is what binds us together. We launched on the August 15th, 2008 and it’s been great so far. I’m managing the ‘behind-the-scenes’ stuff for the site. Even if you’re not a Macboy, I’d request you to check out the site. We’ve got enough content to have you hooked to the site. Oh, we have a competition going on where all you need to do is leave a comment and you could win a FREE T-Shirt for yourself. Simple, no?

Right. Okay. I get it. But what did we miss?

Oh, lots of things. So much has been happening around me. Although I’ve been tweeting about it, there’s a lot more to say.

1. Health

I’ve haven’t been keeping well lately. Period.

2. The Mystery Package

Remember the mystery package that arrived last month? It’s the Nokia E90. I’ve been using all this while and it’s a great phone on the inside, but totally wasted on the outside. I’ve been wanting to write a detailed review of the same, but…

3. New Camera

I bought the Canon PowerShot S5 IS. Two words – Awesome Camera

The photos have been uploaded to my Flickr stream here:

http://flickr.com/photos/preshit

The days ahead are going to be really exciting. 

MICAF, short for Mobile Industry Crime Action Forum is an organisation set up by the United Kingdom mobile telecommunications industry, including mobile handset manufacturers, to address the issues of mobile phone theft.

According to a report published by MICAF, 98 percent of all the mobiles that are reported stolen in the UK are blocked within 48 hours of the theft. This is done by blocking the phone’s IMEI across all the networks present there, effectively rendering the phone useless.

The only alternative would be to use the phone outside the UK.

Now, going by the number of cell-phones stolen here in India, especially in the metros, it is high time that this is made a law in India. It would certainly help in cutting down, if not totally abolish the crime.

[via]

( Also posted on the IndiaGSM Blog )

Which is the world’s best selling mobile handset ?

The iPhone ? Nope. The Nokia N95 ? Nope.

Come one ? That’s all you could guess ? Come on… two more guesses..

Communicators ? Errr… nope. Still not close.

Motorola / Samsung ? No dude !!

Apparently, its Nokia’s Entry level handsets that are the world’s best selling handsets.

They are the Nokia 1100 and the Nokia 3310. Both the handset were the companies’ entry level products in the age where camera phones either didn’t exist, or were just beginning their phase.

I’ve personally used both the handsets and if you intend to use the mobile for talking and SMS’ing, these are gem of phones.

Even today, if you ask me, I will still use the 3310 happily.

I was reading the Textually Blog, where I came across this entry. Go ahead and read the article here.

After the recent tragedy, I had absolutely no access to internet on my phone. I just couldn’t afford paying 450/month for GPRS and neither did it make any sense paying such a HUGE amount. So, I had deleted all the applications that I had installed ( after a lot of searching and finding ).

However, a few days back, maybe the Gods were impressed by something, that they gave me the thought to buy myself a new number ( reasons for which are a totally different story. I bought a new Airtel number, and along with it, I was offered a totally fantabulous GPRS package ( 99/month for unlimited data access on a postpaid connection ). With this, I had good access to internet and so I began to look for some really interesting and useful applications for my activites. Unbelievable as it may sound, I _need_ to have access to my Gmail Inbox atleast every 30 minutes ( Yes, I get more than 75 emails a day ), so I was specifically looking for applications that would help me do the following.

• Read my Gmail Inbox
• Let me chat with my Yahoo, MSN, Gtalk and Skype contacts
• Push Email ( if possible )
• Web content uploader ( to services like Youtube, flickr etc )
• other, if useful.

Now, let me begin describing what I have on my phone now.

1. Emoze:

This, is a super-fantastic application which I’m sure is not NOT leaving my phone ever. Emoze has made my phone just as those friggin costly blackberry solutions. Emoze is a push-email solution for any series-60 3rd edition phone. For those who do not know what push email is, wikipedia describes it as e-mail systems that provide an “always-on” capability, in which new e-mail is instantly and actively transferred (pushed) as it arrives by the mail delivery agent (MDA) (commonly called mail server) to the mail user agent (MUA), also called the e-mail client. Emoze works with Gmail and Outlook Express currently, where all your incoming emails are checked by their servers and pushed to our phone. So instead of you checking whether any new email has arrived, emoze pushed the email to your phone as soon as it arrives.

If you have a Gmail account, Emoze will push the emails directly to your phone. For other accounts, Emoze takes the help of Outlook express for which ofcourse you need to keep your computer running all the time.

Emoze integrates as a Inbox into your phone, Menu >> Messages >> Emoze ( becomes the third option, after your SMS/MMS Inbox ). Once any new mail arrives, you get a notification message just as any other SMS / MMS. You can either choose to view the message, or cancel and see it later. The great thing about Emoze is that it runs in the background and does not interfere with other applications, uses very little memory, gives you the option to delete emails only on the phone too. Emoze however, supports only one email account.

System SEVENTY is another Push-email client, details about which you can read on Sebastian’s Blog, where I first came across Emoze.

2. Gmail App:

This is the official application from Gmail, which works in Sync with your Gmail account. You can read messages, send them, add contacts, mark your messages, delete them etc. I use this as a back-up solution. You can get it from www.gmail.com/app from your mobile.

3. ShoZu:

ShoZu is an application that lets you upload stuff from your phone ( photos, videos ) to web services like flickr, YOUtube, Vox etc automatically. Good if you click a lot of pictures and are addicted to flickr, youtube. However, my favourite site viddler is still missing from it.

4. Fring:

Fring is another application that is sure to NOT leave my phone ever. Fring is another multi-protocol chat application, but it also lets you update your twitter statuses. Not only that, you can make VoIP calls to your fring or skype contacts too. You can also make SkyeOut calls to US/UK and other countries using your skype credit. Nice way to save some GSM bills.

5. NimBuzz:

NimBuzz too is a multi-protocol client, but has some promising features that are currently being built, such as the ability to make ringtones online and send to the phone, sending files to the phone and so on.

Someone also suggested me to use Palringo, but Im yet to give it a try even though I have it installed.

All these above applications make the Nokia E50 a true, easily affordable Executive phone.