How to fully integrate your Parrot car kit into your car

The Parrot MKi range of Car Kits are still the best car kits on the market. They’re fully compatible with just about every handset out there and no other Bluetooth Car Kit can come close to them on the number of features. With them being this great, you’d think that it’s not possible to make them much better, but Parrot have raised the bar again and introduced the Parrot Unika to further enhance the MKi Car Kits and allow you to fully control them using the controls already fitted to your steering wheel.

Parrot Unika integrates your Parrot MKi Car Kit with your Steering Wheel Controls

As standard the MKi car kits include a wireless remote control that will let you answer and end calls, activate voice dialling, control music playback and adjust the volume of calls and music which is great, but finding somewhere to mount the remote in car can be a little bit tricky.

Parrot Remote can be mounted on steering wheel

The MKi Car kits come with a couple of mounting options for the remote control – an adjustable strap that lets you attach it to your steering wheel or an adhesive plate that you can stick to the dash of your car. Both of these mounting options are good, but you can’t beat the stereo controls built into the steering wheel of your car. I’ve had the MKi9000 in my car for about a year now and I still try to adjust the volume with the stereo controls instead of the Parrot Remote.

Since the launch of the MKi series last year, the technical team at Parrot have been working hard to fully integrate the kits into cars and have just released the Unika – an additional control box that allows you to connect the Mki & RKi Car Kits to the stereo controls on your steering wheel, completely eliminating the need to use the remote control.

The Unika can be fitted to most vehicles, and if you’ve already got an MKi car kit fitted you can retro-fit one to your car without too much hassle. If you’re technically minded you should be able to fit it yourself, although you will probably need to remove some parts of your dashboard, I’ve just changed my car and didn’t fancy pulling it apart, so I got AutoTec to fit mine for me. The cost for the Mki9000 car kit, Parrot Adapter Cable, Parrot Unika and fitting worked out at £279. The kit and accessories on their own add up to about £210, so fitting was only about 70 quid which I think is more than reasonable.

Unika is compatible with Vauxhall, BMW, Ford & Honda Steering Wheel controls

Once installed, the Unika will use the the buttons on your steering wheel to control the kit instead of the remote control. The buttons that you use for each function will vary depending on your vehicle, and you don’t need to have any phone buttons on the steering wheel as the Unika will ‘re-map’ the functions of the steering wheel controls when connected to your phone or iPod. When you’re phones’ not connected you’ll be able to use the controls to operate your radio or CD player as normal.

You can check to see if your car is compatible and find out which buttons perform which function in your car on the Parrot Unika Support Site.

At the time of writing this post, these were the prices for the kit and accessories:

• Parrot Unika- £89.99
• Parrot MKi9000 – £89.99
• Parrot MKi9100 – £122.35
• Parrot MKi9200 – £159.95
• Parrot Accessory Harness ~ £30 (varies depending on car)

I’ve had mine in for a couple of days now, and I’m still getting familiar with the controls, so I’ll update this post in a couple of days time to give you an idea on how well it works.

Review: Clip & Talk Bluetooth Car Kit – Solar Edition

Solar power has been making an appearance in more and more mobile phone accessories over the last year or so. Initially only available as stand alone Solar Powered Chargers, the technology has now found it’s way into mobile phone cases, Bluetooth Headsets and Bluetooth Car Kits.

Of all of the accessories available, Bluetooth Car Kits are the most logical accessory to make use of solar power – after all, they do spend most of their time either on your dashboard or sun visor.

Clip and Talk Bluetooth Car Kit - Solar Edition

Until recently there were only a couple of Solar Powered Bluetooth car kits available – the LG HFB-500 and the Drive Solar Pro. The latest car kit to join the range is the Clip & Talk Solar Edition. The Clip and Talk range has always been a popular kit that offers great value for money. Mobile Fun recently asked me to write a review for them so I thought I’d put the latest addition to the Clip and Talk family to the test to see how it performs. Read more »

iPhone Accessory Error Message – What does it mean?

Pop-Up Message

With so many iPhone accessories available , compatibility issues are bound to crop up from time to time. We carefully check every iPhone accessory that we sell to make sure that they work with the phone, but an warning message that is sometimes displayed on the handset when some accessories are connected can cause some confusion about whether the accessory will work or not.

If you see the warning message “This accessory is not made to work with iPhone” don’t panic. It doesn’t mean that your accessory won’t work, it just means that you might experience some interference if your phone connects to the internet, a call is made or a text message sent.

The reason that you see this message (normally when you connect to Speakers, Car Kits and other music devices) is that by default, the iPhone will enter ‘Accessory Mode’ when connected by the Dock Connector. This would then lock out all controls on the iPhone as it thinks that commands for music playback will come from the connected accessory.

As not all accessories have music controls, this would cause a problem, so to get round this potential problem accessory manufacturers have the option to tell the iPhone not to enter Accessory Mode but instead display the warning message.

If you see this message when you connect your accessory to your iPhone you will be given the choice to switch to ‘Airplane Mode’. When you see the warning message, you’ve got 3 options:

1. Press ‘YES‘ – This will then put the phone into Airplane Mode. This will temporarily disable telephone and internet capabilities while you’re connected to the accessory. As soon as you disconnect your iPhone from the accessory it will leave Airplane Mode and you’ll be able to make and receive calls again.
2. Press ‘NO‘ – You’ll be able to access all functions on your phone and the accessory will work as it’s supposed to. If your phone rings, the music will fade in/out before & after the call. With some accessories you may experience some interference just before you receive a call or text message.
3. Do Nothing – The warning message will disappear after about 30 seconds and your phone will function as if you’d selected ‘NO’

To try and help you get the best accessories for your iPhone Apple introduced a licensing system that makes it easier to see which accessories will work best with the iPhone. To check if an item is licensed by Apple, just look for the ‘Works with iPhone’ Logo.

Certified by Apple

Syncing your iPhone contacts to your Car Kit

Bluetooth Car Kits are getting smarter, and most of them now support synchronising the contacts stored on your phone to the car kit to enable faster dialling, caller display, and enabling voice control – even on phones like the iPhone 3G that doesn’t support voice dialling. As great as this is though, it’s not quite as straight forward as you’d think as there are two different ways that phones and car kits talk to each other. I’ll apologise now if this gets a little confusing, but I’ll try and keep it as simple as I can.

Although Bluetooth is a pretty generic technology, there are a number of different bluetooth profiles and each bluetooth device uses different ones. The two that are needed to synchronise your contacts between your car kit and your phone are either PBAP – Phone Book Access Profile or OPP – Object Push Profile, but in order for it to sync, both the phone and the car kit need to support the same profile.

• OPP – Object Push Profile - This is an older Bluetooth Profile, so should be supported by most phones and car kits that support contact sync. If the car kit supports the OPP profile then it is capable of receiving information that is sent or ‘pushed’ to it. In order to send your contacts to a car kit that uses OPP you will need to initiate the transfer of your contacts from your phone, either one by one or all at once. The only downside to this is that not all phones support sending your entire phonebook in one go.
• PBAP – Phone Book Access Profile - This profile is one of the more recent Bluetooth Profiles, so not all phones or car kits support it. The advantage of the PBAP profile is that you don’t need to send your contacts to the car kit, the car kit will retrieve them from your phone automatically every time you connect.

Bluetooth support is limited on the iPhone and although it’s improving, it still doesn’t support all Bluetooth profiles – in particular the OPP profile. There is no way of sending any information from an iPhone over Bluetooth. This means that if you have a Bluetooth Car Kit that only supports OPP, you’ll only be able to use the car kit for calls, although features such as last number redial should still work fine. The iPhone does support the PBAP profile though – in fact it supports it brilliantly, so if you want to be able to sync your contacts make sure that the car kit you buy supports the PBAP profile, it should be listed in the technical spec of the user manual.

I’ve got the Parrot MKi9000 installed in my car and every time the car is started and my iPhone 3G connects, the kit checks my phone for any changes and and updates itself. Like I said before, the iPhone supports PBAP brilliantly, and when paired with a compatible car kit it gives you control over the information that is synchronised with the kit. You can chose which groups of contacts to sync – if any, as well as recent calls and favourites.

iPhone Car Kit Sync Options - iPhone OS 3.1

From personal experience I’ve found that the best car kits for syncing your contacts are those made by Parrot. As well as supporting the iPhone fully, they also feature Text to Speech technology that announces the callers name when you receive a call and some will allow you to use voice dialling – even on the iPhone. It does this by matching the wave print of what you say against the Text to Speech wave prints for the contacts stored in the car kit. Most voice dialling kits require you to train your voice to them or to record your own voice tags for the contacts, and this normally doesn’t work too well. The current Parrot car kits that do all this are listed below. If you want more information on any of the kits, just click on the image or read my post on Parrot Car Kits.

Parrot MKi9200 Fully Fitted Bluetooth Car Kit

Parrot MKi9100 Fully Fitted Bluetooth Car Kit

Parrot MKi9000 Fully Fitted Bluetooth Car Kit

Parrot MK6000 Fully Fitted Bluetooth Car Kit

Parrot Minikit Slim Portable Bluetooth Car Kit

Parrot Minikit Chic Portable Bluetooth Car Kit

iPhone 3.1, iTunes 9 and the new Apple iPods…

I know it’s all over the internet and it’s all the Apple Fanboys are talking about,but I thought I’d share my thoughts on Apple’s latest announcement. In case you missed it, Apple have tonight released a minor update to the iPhone/iPod touch operating system, a few new iPods and a major upgrade to iTunes which adds a load of new features. I’ll keep it brief, but here’s the main changes:

iTunes 9
Loads of changes and improvements to iTunes, mostly good, but a couple of things that were better the way they were before. Onto the changes then – first the good ones.

Home Sharing – this for me is the best new feature by a mile. It allows you to share your music with up to 5 other computers on the same network (wired or wireless) by simply dragging and dropping the music from the shared playlist into your own music library. This is great as it means that you only need to buy an album once and you can legally share it with the rest of your household in seconds – in fact iTunes will look for new content on other computers on the network and copy it to the other computers for you automatically. What’s more, if you’re an iPhone user you can share downloaded Apps too – meaning that the £60 price tag for TomTom just got a whole lot more appealing now that you can use it on up to 5 devices.

The new-look iTunes Store

Music Albums & Films on iTunes have been given a refresh too, with a new range of iTunes LP’s and iTunes Extras now being made available to encourage you to buy the whole album rather than just a couple of songs. The idea behind it is that when you buy an album or a movie, you’ll have access to a range of special features similar to those that you’dnormally get when buying a DVD (or an enhanced CD with multimedia content that was popular in the late 90’s early 00’s). It gives you access to song lyrics, cast/artist interviews, extra videos and loads of other content not normally available. For me, this is a bit of a take it or leave it feature – if I’m listening to music, I’m normally working in other applications or surfing the web, so can’t really see as this will appeal to everyone, but if you’re an avid fan of an artist and have to have every bit of information you can then you’ll probably love this.

The iTunes store has been given a complete overhaul and I think it’s now much more user friendly. There’s a full screen option that you can set in preferences and when activated, the sidebar is hidden when you launch the store. Navigating has been made much easier as there is now a bar across the top of the screen with drop down menu’s to the most popular categories of music, film, TV and podcasts etc. To preview a song you no longer need to click through to an album page, instead you can click on a thumbnail of the album to show a summary page that will give you a full track listing, the option to preview or buy songs as well as add them to your wishlist or post them to your Facebook or Twitter page.

Genius playlists were introduced this time last year with iTunes 8.0 and it allowed you to find other music that you’d like based on the contents of your music library. It also allowed you to create a playlist of upto 25 songs on your iPhone or 100 songs in iTunes that go well together. Genius Mixes takes this a step further and creates 12 different mixes of your songs. It’s a bit hard to explain as it doesn’t really sound that different to Genius playlists, but rather than you specifying a track to base the Genius Mix on, it uses data from Apple to group songs together based on the genre and artist. These mixes can then be synced to your iPod or iPhone and unlike playlists, they aren’t limited to a certain number of songs. Genius Mixes will take a bit of getting used to, but once you’ve got the hang of them and as long as you like listening to music in a random order, you’ll find yourself listening to your mixes all the time.

iTunes now creates 12 Genius Mixes based on your favourite music

Overall I think the new iTunes is great, Home Sharing on it’s own makes the upgrade worth having, but I’m not so sure on the most noticeable change – the white background. It makes it feel a bit cheap and empty, having said that, It’s starting to grow on me and isn’t as depressing as the old black/grey one. I know it’s getting a lot of attention in the Apple Forums, so it’ll be interesting to see if Apple make any changes to it in the 9.1 update which almost certainly won’t be far away.

iPhone 3.1
At first glance, not much has changed with iPhone 3.1 – most of the changes seem to be there to incorporate the new features added to iTunes and the two go very much hand in hand. One thing that did jump out at me is that the cost of upgrading the iPod touch has dropped from £5.99 to £2.99 so there’s really no excuse not to do it now – £6 was cheap, £3 is a bargain – especially when you consider how many new features you get with 3.0.

The App Store on the phone now supports the Genius feature from iTunes, so now when you launch the App store you’ll see a ‘Genius’ button on the featured tab of the App store. I use Genius quite a lot in iTunes and on my phone, and given the growing number of apps in the App store, this is definitely a welcome addition as browsing the Apps can be a bit overwhelming.

The only other real change that I’ve spotted on the phone is to do with the Genius Mixes that you can create in iTunes – you’ve got an option to play them on your phone – just launch iPod, press more and you’ll see the option to play them.

Manage the Apps on your phone through iTunes

The final thing worth mentioning is that if your phone or iPod touch is running 3.1 and you’re using iTunes 9, you can now arrange the icons on your homescreen in iTunes and then sync them over to your device. Not a ground breaking addition, but it’s something a lot of people have been asking for.

iPods
As well as the software updates, the whole iPod line up is getting a refresh with the biggest changes coming to the iPod nano.

The new 5th generation iPod nano is the same size as it’s predecessor, but it has a larger 2.2″ screen, a video camera and surprisingly a an FM radio. The camera isn’t capable of capturing still images, but it does record video in the h.264 format at 640 x 480 pixels. The nano now has a microphone and speaker which allows you to add sound to your videos. Any videos you create can be uploaded to youtube or facebook. Is video needed in the nano?  Probably not,  but I’m guessing the makers of the Flip video camera’s aren’t too impressed!

iPod shuffle gets new colours and is available in 2GB or 4GB sizes, with the older 2nd generation shuffle finally being phased out. A stainless steel version is also available exclusively from Apple and iis by far the best looking shuffle I’ve seen. It’s amazing just how much the shuffle has changed since the original white plastic USB one.

New iPod nano and iPod shuffle

The iPod touch gets the same processor speed increase that the iPhone 3G had when it became the 3GS as well as a memory increase from 32GB to 64GB. Rumours of a camera being added turned out to be just that as there were no other changes annouced for the iPod touch.

iPod classic – rumoured to be dropped, but instead sees an increase in capacity. It now has a 160 GB hard drive, up from 120GB on the previous model. Strange choice by Apple, as this time last year they discontinued an 80GB and 160GB model to make way for the 120GB. Why they didn’t just kill the 80GB and leave the 160GB version I don’t know.

Best Apps for Android and the HTC Hero

Since Apple launched the App store for the iPhone, the way that we use our phones has changed. Almost all touchscreen smartphones now have a version of the App store, where you can download free and paid for applications to your phone to increase it’s functionality.

Android Market

I’ve been playing with the HTC Hero & Android Marketplace for a few days now and have been trying out some of their most popular apps. As my phone is an iPhone, there are a few comparisons to the iPhone in here but these are my favourites Android Apps so far.
Read more »

The Best Cases for the HTC Hero

The HTC Hero is a difficult one when it comes to finding cases for it. Its funny ‘chin’ – the angled section of the phone under the screen – makes finding a case that fits it well extremely difficult, especially as all the case manufacturers took their time in releasing cases that are specifically shaped for the Hero.

It’s taken a while, but I’ve managed to track down 10 cases for the HTC Hero, so with more cases available and after hearing feedback on some of the cases I’ve put this list with cases that are made specifically for the HTC Hero. I’ll still keep my eyes open for any other cases that come along, and I’ll update this post as and when they become available so you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed or bookmark this post so that you don’t miss out on any new ones that become available.

HTC Hero

Now before I go on to the cases, there is one thing that I’ve noticed on the Hero that I feel I need to warn you about – particularly if you have a white one. The plastic that the housing is made from seems to discolour quite easily, the dye from clothing or some cases may transfer on to the phone, which will require quite a bit of effort to clean off and it means that if your phone isn’t protected, it might end up looking worn quite quickly on the corners and on the back cover.

Normally, I’d recommend an InvisibleSHIELD full body protector to stop this kind of discolouring of the case, but if you try to remove an InvisibleShield from the phone, it will peel the paint off too, so for that reason avoid InvisibleShield for the HTC Hero.

Noreve Tradition A Leather Case for HTC Hero

Noreve are a designer case that to be honest I’ve never heard of. They produce premium leather cases that give Piel Frama and PDair a run for their money. This case for the Hero fits the phone so well it’s surprising. When I first saw the ‘chin’ on the Hero I didn’t think that this style of case would work, but Noreve have proved me wrong. The case is the same shape as the phone and moulds around it beautifully. The whole case is hand crafted from top quality leather and leaves your camera, charging ports and volume keys accessible. The case has a detachable ratchet clip that locks eery 15 or so degrees on the back that can be removed easily to leave the back of the case perfectly flat.

Noreve Leather Flip Case for HTC Hero

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Top 10 HTC Hero Accessories

The HTC Hero is the most highly anticipated Android handset to be released. Not only because it’s only the third handset to be released running the new operating system from Google, but because this one is available without network or Google branding. Instead, HTC have put their own interface on top of the Android operating system to make it easier to use and improve how the menu system looks.

There’s no doubt that the Hero is going to be an incredibly popular handset this summer, and if you’ve invested in one, you’re going to want to keep it looking at its best and working to it’s full potential. To do that you’re going to need a few accessories, but with so many accessories for the HTC Hero available, choosing the right ones for your phone can be a bit of a minefield.

To help you decide on the accessories that you need, I’ve compiled a list of my top 10 Accessories for the HTC Hero .

1. HTC Hero C300 Leather Carry Case

The Hero is a smart looking phone that needs a smart looking case. The C300 has been designed to fit most HTC smart phones. It has cut outs for your charger and handsfree/headphones, as well as a hole in the bottom to make it easier to push your phone out. It’s made from a high quality leather with grey stitching and a soft suede lining that helps to keep your screen fingerprint free. The front of the case has been toughened to give your screen extra protection against crush and impact damage. On the back, the case has a couple of mounting options. The first is a sprung belt clip that allows you to attach it and remove it from your belt quickly and easily, the other is two stitched belt loops that allow you to keep the case on your belt permanently with no chance of it falling off.

HTC Hero C300 Case

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Increase the battery life of your Nokia 5800

Want to use less energy and get more battery life out of your Nokia 5800 Xpress Music? Here are my top tips on how to reduce your mobile phones carbon footprint and get more from each charge.

Nokia 5800 Battery

Turn your phone off
It may sound silly, but how many times do you turn your 5800 off when you go to bed at night? Chances are you’ve not had many phone calls in the middle of the night, so by turning your phone off when you go to bed, and back on again in the morning, you’re saving 8 hours a day of battery life and could extend your battery life by a few days.

Turn off Bluetooth
Bluetooth only needs to be turned on when you need it – by leaving it turned on all day your 5800 is constantly looking for other Bluetooth devices and draining your battery.

Turn off GPRS, 3G & WiFi
If you never use the internet on your Nokia 5800 you won’t notice any difference by turning GPRS and 3G off – other than having to charge your phone less! If you do use Internet on your phone through either 3G or WiFi, turn them on as and when you need them, other wise they’ll be consuming power searching for networks when there is no need.

Adjust the display
Nokia normally set the screen on the 5800 to its brightest setting to make the display seem clearer. This only drains power, so adjust the settings and dim the screen to a level that you can still see, but is no brighter than it needs to be. Change the screen saver settings too, set it to come on sooner – reducing the time the screen is lit up for.

Leave it alone
We’re all guilty of it, we get bored, nervous, need to look busy, so we pick up our phones and start fiddling with them. We’re not doing anything on them, only draining the battery. Put it down and find something else to play with!

Carry a Spare Battery
If you still aren’t getting the battery life you need from your 5800 after trying all the steps above, then it’s probably time to get yourself a spare battery. Keeping a spare, charged battery with you means you can just swap them over when one runs out. For easy charging, I’d recommend getting a separate desktop battery charger too so that you can charge them both at the same time.

Buy an Extended Battery
If you don’t want the hassle of carrying around a second battery and having to switch between them, then you’ll be better off getting an extended battery for your 5800.  They tend to be slightly bigger than a standard battery, and normally come with a replacement back cover for your phone.  The Nokia 5800 2200mAh extended battery holds more than twice the amount of charge of a standard battery and will give you over 5 days of use before you’ll need to recharge it, but it will make your phone considerably larger.

Portable Power
If you don’t want to add any bulk to your phone or keep switching batteries, then your best bet will be to get yourself a portable charger. Nokia do a few portable chargers/power packs that you can charge up at home/work and then use to charge your 5800 while you’re out and about:

Nokia Extra Power Chargers

Nokia DC-1 Power Pack
The DC-1 will let you charge your phone up to 3 times before it runs out of power.  It has 2 power outlets and can charge 2 phones at the same time. It’s larger than the others, so is best for carrying around in a bag rather than your pocket.

Nokia DC-8 Extra Power
The DC-8 is more portable and runs off standard AA batteries which makes it easy to recharge if you’re out and about – just grab some more batteries and off you go.

Nokia DC-11 Extra Power
The DC-11 is similar to the DC-1, but has a Micro USB and 2mm Nokia charger connections and can charge 2 phones at the same time. It’s the same sort of size as the Nokia 5800, so again, it’s probably better to carry it around in a bag rather than your pocket.

A guide to FlexiShield Skins

FlexiShield Skins are a relatively new type of protective case for mobile phones, but what exactly are they?  Are they silicone cases, crystal cases or something else completely?  To answer this, I’ve put this quick guide together to explain what they are, how they work and why you’d want one.

Flexishield Skin vs Silicone Case

Although FlexiShield Skins and Silicone Cases are quite similar, there are a number of differences between them. Firstly, FlexiShield Skins are made from a tough, flexible gel, rather than the softer, more flexible Silicone used in Silcone Cases. Both of these skins are very different to Crystal Cases, which normally break when your phone is dropped FlexiShield Skins and Silicone cases will absorb impact without damaging the case or your phone. It’s worth noting here, that crystal cases are designed to break on impact – it’s not a design fault – after all, what would you prefer to break;  a £5 case or your phone?

Both cases are roughly 1mm thick, but each case will deal with damage differently. Silicone cases will  protect your phone against scratches while your phone is in your pocket, minor liquid spills and small distance drops, where as the FlexiShield Skins are tougher and provide better protection to against impact damage.

HTC Hero in a Silicone Case on the left and a FlexiShield Skin on the right

As you will probably notice from the picture above, Silicone Cases cover more than just the back and sides of the phone – most will normally offer some kind of protection for your phone’s keypad, although they can become loose over time and need replacing where as FlexiShield Skins will only protect the back cover, corners and edges of your phone but have a much tighter fit and won’t loosen over time.

If you want to look after the screen on your phone you’ll need to purchase a screen protector separately as neither Silicone Cases or FlexiShield Skins will cover your screen.