Top 10 HTC Desire Accessories

The HTC Desire is a truly awesome phone. It’s fast, responsive, has a great screen and it looks gorgeous. It makes my iPhone 3G look and feel dated and is extremely tempting.

To really make the most of your HTC Desire you’ll want to invest in a few accessories, but with so many Desire Cases, Desire Covers, Bluetooth Headphones and Car Kits to choose from, finding the best ones isn’t always easy.

This post runs through ten of our most popular HTC Desire Accessories, most of them are available now with some due in the coming weeks. Demand for all HTC Desire accessories is extremely high at the moment, so if the accessory you want isn’t available at the moment, I’d strongly recommend placing your order anyway – this way you’ll get priority on the stock.

On to the accessories then.

1. HTC Desire Screen Protector SP P360 – Twin Pack

The last thing that you’re going to want to do to the fantastic screen on the Desire is scratch it. These screen protectors from HTC are a great way to keep your screen looking like new. They’re precision cut to size and are quick and easy to install.

HTC Desire Screen Protector SP P360 - Twin Pack

2. DAGi Smartphone Slim Line Capacitive Stylus

Not everyone likes using their finger to control their phone – especially those of you who are used to using a stylus on a previous phone. As you may have already noticed, traditional stylus’s don’t work on the HTC Desire as it has a capacitive touch screen – however, there is a solution – the Dagi Capacitive Stylus.

DAGi Capacitive Stylus for the HTC Desire

There are 3 Dagi Capacitive Styluses to choose from as well as a HTC branded one for the HTC Desire. What makes these different to a regular stylus is that instead of having a point to press your screen, they have a flat circular disc at the end that works in a similar way to how your finger would.

3. Noreve Tradition A Leather Case for HTC Desire

The HTC Desire is one of the best looking smartphones available, so if you’re going to invest in a case it needs to be just as stylish. Noreve Flip Cases for the Desire hold your phone securely, but without having to slide the phone into a stitched pocket that interferes with the light sensors or blocks the edges of the screen. It uses a tension system to hold your phone securely in place leaving the screen and keypad fully accessible. The Noreve case looks excellent, is made from high quality leather and is surprisingly slim once it’s on your phone.

Noreve Tradition A Leather Case for HTC Desire

4. HTC Stereo Headset with Music Controls RC E150

Depending on where you purchased your phone, you may not get any headphones in the box with the HTC Desire. If you don’t then you’ll be needing these – they have a built in microphone so you can use them for handsfree calling as well as an in-line remote control that lets you answer and end calls as well as play, pause, skip and rewind your music.

HTC Stereo Headset with Music Controls RC E150

5. Seidio Innocell Extended Life Battery – HTC Desire

If you need more power for your Desire, you can either carry around a spare battery and swap them over when one dies, or you can get a more powerful battery – and that’s exactly what this is. The standard Desire battery is 1400mAh where as the Seidio Extended Battery is 1600mAh. It may not seem like a big increase, but it’s enough to ensure that your phone makes it through the day on a single charge.

HTC Desire Extended Battery

6. HTC Desire Desktop Charging Cradle

Straight forward and simple, just drop your Desire into the charging cradle and it will charge and sync with your PC. It connects to a spare USB port on any PC or laptop and will allow you to sync your phone with your computer while it charges.

HTC Desire Desktop Charging Cradle

7. SanDisk MicroSDHC Card

Despite the Desire being a great Multimedia handset, it only has a limited amount of internal storage. Some will come with a memory card to get you started, but in most cases these tend to be the smaller 2GB or 4GB cards. As a result, one of the first purchases you will need to make is a bigger memory card. This 16GB memory card can store upto 14000 high quality photos, 3000 songs and 18 hours of video. Using a SanDisk 16GB Memory Card with the Desire will allow you to store more music, games, photos and videos on your phone. Images and video taken using the camera will take up space, so more memory is a must. A 16GB memory card will let you store over 6000 high quality photos, 3000 songs or around 80 hours of standard definition video. A 16GB card is the largest memory card that is currently available, although a32GB Micro SD HC memory card is due for release in the next couple of weeks.

HTC Desire Memory Cards

8. HTC CC C200 Micro USB Car Charger

The HTC Desire is a power hungry beast and you’ll soon notice that as you start emailing, going online or watching videos or using your phone for sat nav, your battery will start to drain quite quickly. For this reason a car charger is a worthwhile investment. As with all current HTC phones, the Desire uses the standard MicroUSB charging connection. This genuine HTC Desire charger will work in both 12v and 24v vehicles (Cars, Lorries and Trucks) and can be used to charge any device that has a micro USB charging port.

HTC Desire Car Charger

9. Jabra Cruiser Bluetooth Speakerphone

If you want to listen to music from your Desire in your car but don’t have a 3.5mm line in port on your stereo, don’t panic there is another way to do it – and what’s more, you won’t need to have wires trailing everywhere to do it – all you need is the Jabra Cruiser.

Jabra Cruiser Bluetooth FM Car Kit

The Jabra Cruiser is a small, slim portable car kit that combines an FM transmitter with a Bluetooth Car Kit. The Jabra Cruiser simply clips to the sun visor of your car and pairs to your Desire, using Bluetooth. The Cruiser supports both the A2DP and AVRCP profiles which means that you can stream your music to it over Bluetooth and control your music using the controls on the Cruiser instead of your phone. The Jabra Cruiser lets you choose whether to play your music back through the built in speaker or through your car stereo using it’s built in FM Transmitter. It ’s currently the only car kit to have dual microphones for improved noise reduction. If you spend a lot of time in the car taking calls and are bored of listening to the radio then the Jabra Cruiser is a must have item. If you don’t want/need the music controls then take a look at the Jabra SP700. It does the same job, just doesn’t have music controls or noise cancellation.

10. Parrot MKi9100 Bluetooth Car Kit

Of all the car kits available, the best kit you can get for calling, music playback and sat nav is one of the Parrot MKi Car Kits. Parrot only make Bluetooth accessories and because of that they make sure that every phone works brilliantly with their car kits. There are three kits in the MKi range, but the Parrot MKi9100 is your best bet for the Desire, mainly because the 3.7? screen on the phone means that you a full colour screen isn’t essential, but it’s nice to be able to see who’s calling and what you’re listening to even if the phone is still in your pocket.

HTC Desire Bluetooth Car Kit

You can play music from your phone through the MKi9100 either by connecting the 3.5mm headphone jack or you can stream your music to it using Bluetooth. The Mki9100 will synchronise with your phone book, and supports voice dialling. There is also a small remote that you can attach to your dash or steering wheel to control your music (Play/Pause, track skip & volume). When you use Sat Nav on your phone, voice instructions come through your car stereo clearly, and if music is playing at the same time, it briefly mutes out the music so that you don’t miss any directions.

If you’ve not seen the accessory here that’s right for you, take a look at our full range of HTC Desire Accessories or let us know what you’re looking for using the comments below.

[u] Top Stereo Bluetooth Headsets for iPhone & iPod touch

Yesterday saw the release of a major software update for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The update brought over 100 new features, but one of the best new features is that the iPhone 3G and 2nd generation iPod Touch now support Stereo Bluetooth. Stereo Bluetooth lets you enjoy your music in stereo and without wires connecting to your phone. As Stereo Bluetooth has been around for years there are plenty of Stereo Bluetooth Headsets to choose from.

Thereare a couple of points that you’ll need to remember though, the iPhone and iPod Touch support the A2DP profile only. If you have an iPhone this means you can answer & end calls, play / pause your music, but not control it fully. If you have an iPod Touch 2G then you will be able to play / pause your music and adjust the volume, but you won’t be able to use these headsets with any of your VOIP apps (such as Skype) on your iPod.

In order for you to be able to control your music fully, the iPhone or iPod Touch would need to support the AVRCP profile – hopefully we’ll see this in a future software update from Apple. Stereo Bluetooth is not available on the first generation iPhone or iPod Touch.

UPDATE: It appears that volume control when using a Bluetooth Headset is a bit of a mystery – it works on some headsets, but not on others. We’ve tested the headsets shown here and listed whether or not the volume levels can be adjusted.

UPDATE: April 9th 2010 iPhone OS 4.0 was previewed yesterday by Apple and early development previews show that Apple have now included support for volume adjustment, but music controls still don’t work as the AVRCP profile still seems to be excluded. It’s a step in the right direction, but still not ideal. Hopefully this will change between now and the official release of iPhone OS 4.0 in June. Look out for an updated post nearer the time.

Right, on to the headsets! With so many to choose from, it can get a bit overwhelming, so I’ve been through our current range of Bluetooth Headphones and compiled a list of my top 5 Bluetooth Headphones for the iPhone 3G, iPhone 3G S and iPod Touch 2G.

Sony Ericsson HBH-IS800 Stereo Bluetooth Headphones

Sony Ericsson IS-800 Stereo Bluetooth Headset

These are without doubt my favourite Bluetooth Headphones, hence they’re at number 1 in my list. It’s incredibly small, and although it still has a wire, the IS-800 is pretty much the only headset that doesn’t feature a fairly bulky control unit. Instead this has a small, simple in-line control that allows you to answer and end calls. Battery life is impressive at upto 270 hours – especially considering how small this headset is. The IS-800 doesn’t support AVCRP, which in this case is a good thing as it means you’re not going to be paying for features that you can’t use. Volume levels are currently fixed when using this headset, but hopefully a fix from Apple is on the way.

Sony Ericsson HBH-DS200 Stereo Bluetooth Headset

Sony Ericsson DS200 Stereo Bluetooth Headset
The DS-200 is designed to hang around your neck in a similar way to the Jabra BT3030. It comes with ‘in ear’ style headphones that can be replaced with any standard headphones with a 3.5mm jack plug. Battery life is great with upto 300 hours stand by and 6 hours of music play back, and an LCD Display will let you know when you’re running low. This headset allows you to control the volume levels by pressing and holding the play button.

Jabra BT3030 Stereo Bluetooth Headset

Jabra BT3030 Stereo Bluetooth Headset

The Jabra BT3030 is probably more suited to the iPod Touch than the iPhone. The reason I say that is because the BT3030 is a Multipoint Headset – this allows you to connect to two devices at once, so you can connect it to your mobile phone and your iPod Touch to listen to your music, and when a call comes in, it will pause the music and answer the call from your mobile. It hangs around your neck on a chain or can clip to your belt or pocket, and can be used with any 3.5mm headphones. Volume control on the BT3030 is not a problem, press the ‘+’ or ‘-’ keys to adjust the volume.

Nokia BH-604 Stereo Bluetooth Headphones

Nokia BH-604 Stereo Bluetooth Headset

These are probably the most normal looking headphones of the bunch. They’re solid, comfortable and well built and have the best battery life out of all the headphones listed here with up to 19 hours of music playback, 18 hours of talk time and 2 weeks standby. Sound quality is excellent and set up is incredibly easy. Volume is controlled using a slider on the base of one of the ear cans and worked as you’d expect.

Nokia BH-501 Stereo Bluetooth Headphones

Nokia BH-501 Stereo Bluetooth Headset

The baby brother to the BH-604. A smaller more compact design that goes around your head rather than over it, and folds away neatly when not in use. The controls for music and calls are mounted on the outside of the earpiece and are easy to use. One of the more comfortable headsets thanks to the large, padded earphones. We weren’t able to test the volume control on the BH-501, but as all Nokia Headsets work in the same way, we would expect the volume controls to work perfectly fine on this headset.

This isn’t the full range of Stereo Bluetooth Headsets for the iPhone and iPod Touch, so if you’ve not seen one here that does what you want, take a look at all Stereo Bluetooth Headsets.

If you’ve got any questions or queries about Stereo Bluetooth on the iPhone get in touch with us using the comments form below!

Mobile Broadband: Finding your nearest transmitter

This is the latest post in our series on how to improve your mobile broadband signal. In case you missed the earlier posts, here’s what we’ve already covered:

• How to boost your mobile broadband signal
• Which mobile broadband antenna do you need
• How to fit your mobile broadband antenna

The one thing that I’ve not covered yet though is how to find your nearest 3G transmitter so you can work out how to position the High Gain Antenna or Mobile Broadband Panel Antenna correctly.

High Gain Antenna for USB Modems

Both the High Gain and the Mobile Broadband Panel antenna need to be pointed towards the network transmitter in order for them to work effectively, but chances are you won’t know where your nearest transmitter is. Fortunately there is a great tool on the Ofcom website. Sitefinder shows you not only where the transmitters are, but also which network they belong to, what frequencies they transmit on and how high they are.

Before we get to using Sitefinder, it’s worth putting your postcode into the coverage checker on your network’s website (see links below to network coverage maps) to make sure that you do actually live in a 3G coverage area before you start. If the coverage map shows that you live on the edge of 3G coverage, both antenna’s should help, although the Mobile Broadband Panel Antenna will be the better option. If your network says that you don’t have coverage, then neither High Gain and the Mobile Broadband Panel antenna will be of any use to you.

Edge of Coverage Vs No Coverage - Click for more information.

Once you’ve established that you’ve got 3G reception, you’ll need to know where it’s coming from, so for this head over to Sitefinder by Ofcom. It works in a similar way to the network coverage checkers, but instead of showing coverage, shows you the locations of nearby transmitters as small blue triangles on the map. To see details of the transmitter, you’ll need to zoom in as close as you can, until the ‘Zoom in’ option changes to ‘View Base Details‘ as shown below. Once it’s changed click on the blue triangle on the map to see details of that transmitter.

Transmitter Locations on Sitefinder

A pop up window will then open to show you the information on that transmitter. The first thing you’ll need to check is that it belongs to your network. If it does then you should check the Type of Transmission – 3G Transmitters will be UMTS where as standard GPRS transmitters will be listed as GSM. If it doesn’t belong to your network or is a GSM one then the transmitter is of no use to you and you’ll need to go back to the map to find the next nearest. To do this you’ll probably have to zoom out again until you see more blue triangles, then zoom in on them.

Transmitter Details

If you’re struggling to work out exactly where the transmitter is, I find it helps to have a satellite view of Google maps open in a different browser window so that you can cross reference the main roads from the Sitefinder map with the Google map and work out where it is.

Once you’ve determined which transmitter is your nearest 3G one you’ll be able to point your High Gain or Mobile Broadband Panel antenna in the right direction. Keep an eye on the transmitter height too, as you might need to angle it up or down if it’s mounted on the roof of a tall building or you live on a hill.

Coverage Maps

To get started you’ll need to visit your network to check the coverage where you are. These links should take you straight to the relevant page on each networks website.

• Vodafone Coverage Map
• Three Coverage Map
• T-Mobile Coverage Map
• Orange Coverage Map
• O2 Coverage Map

FAQ’s

We get a lot of questions about the mobile broadband antennas, most of them asking the same thing, so to try and answer your questions here are some of the most common questions and answers:

Where can I find 3g coverage map?

Use the links above to go to the networks coverage checkers

What signal booster would we need?

There’s no set answer to this, but as a rule of thumb:

• Clip antenna is best suited for mobile users that use their laptops while they’re out and about in areas with generally good coverage
• High Gain antenna is best suited for those who get 2-3 bars of 3G signal and want a stronger, faster connection
• Outdoor Antenna is best suited for those who get 3G signal outside, but not inside or those that live on the edge of an area of coverage

Which connection type do you use for my dongle?

Please see our post titled “Which Antenna Do I Need?” or find your dongle on the Mobile Broadband section of the Mobile Fun website

I thought the antenna would help boost that but when I connect it, if anything, it reduces the signal.

This can happen if you’re using an antenna with a long cable in an area that already has good signal. You lose some signal strength the further the signal has to travel, so by using extension cables with the outdoor and high gain antenna the dongle can lose signal. If this happens either disconnect the antenna as the signal is strong enough for you not to need it, or reduce the length of the cable. You shouldn’t see a drop in signal strength if you’re in a poor signal area

Does the 3G USB Modem Antenna work?

Yes, although the difference it makes to your dongle will vary depending on the dongle you have, the current strain on the network, distance to the transmitter etc. Other customers have told us that the antenna with a physical connection to the dongle seems to give more of an improvement over the universal one, but an improvement is still seen on both. If you are considering taking out a Mobile Broadband agreement, I’d recommend that you opt for a dongle that has an external antenna connection if you are given the choice.

If you’ve got a question that’s not been covered here, feel free to ask it in the comments section below.

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.

A guide to choosing the best Screen Protector

Screen protectors are fast becoming one of the most popular accessories for mobile phones – mainly because of the number of handsets with large, high quality displays. A screen protector will stop your screen from getting scratched or damaged and will help keep your handset looking like new.

There are a number of different options available to protect your screen, from a simple MFX screen protector, to privacy screen protectors right through to the top quality Martin Fields Screen Protectors. On paper they all seem to do the same job, but there are subtle differences between them so I’ve put this post together to highlight the key differences between them and make choosing the best screen protector for your phone simple and straight forward.

For this test, I’ve used the same image displayed on an iPhone with the screen brightness set to maximum I’ve then applied a screen protector to half of the screen and taken a photo. The photos have not been edited in anyway other than cropping and no filters have been applied – what you see below is as close to the real thing as possible. You might notice a few air bubbles in the photos, these will normally disappear after a day or two so don’t pay too much attention to these. The first image here shows how the picture is displayed on the phone with no screen protector fitted.

Test Image with no Screen Protector

Martin Fields Screen Protector:

Martin Fields Screen Protectors are without doubt the best quality screen protector you can get. They’re crystal clear and will make your phone look like new. They don’t reduce the clarity of your screen and colours look exactly the way they’re supposed to. If your screen protector gets dirty, they can be removed easily from the phone, cleaned and refitted.

Martin Fields are exceptionally clear

MFX Screen Protector:

The MFX screen protectors are available for most phones currently on the market and are quick and easy to fit. As you can see from the image below, there is little to no distortion of the images and colours appear as they should. MFX Screen Protectors will work with both touch screen handsets and standard phones and are precision cut to size. If you’ve got a lot of devices that you want to protect, a 12 in 1 Universal Screen Protector Pack is also available. This includes 12 screen protectors of varying sizes that can be cut to fit devices such as cameras, sat nav units, phones & games consoles.

MFX Screen Protector

MFX Mirrored Screen Protector:

Mirrored Screen protectors have two purposes, first and foremost they protect your screen from getting scratched and secondly they can turn your phone into a mirror. Just like the MFX ones, these are precision cut to the size of your phone and are extremely easy to fit. When your phone is in use and the screen is lit up you can see the phone normally. When it’s not in use the reflective coating on the screen protector turns your screen into a mirror.

Makes the screen of your phone reflective

The only slight downside is that they do alter the colours on your phone’s screen slightly. You can still see clearly enough for calling, texting and emailing, but they can make looking at photos and videos more difficult and as a result, these type of screen protectors are probably suited to non touchscreen handsets or those of you that use your phone more for texting and calling. They do attract finger prints quite easily too, so a Mobile Phone cleaning cloth is a must have item if you use a mirrored screen protector.

MFX Mirrored Screen Protector

MFX Privacy Screen Protector:

The last ones in the MFX family are the Privacy screen protectors. These are a great way of making sure that no one else is looking at what’s on your phone or reading your emails over your shoulder. They’re quite a bit thicker than a standard screen protector and provide extra protection against knocks and scrapes, but more importantly are made so that you can only see through them from certain angles.

Try to view the phone from the side and you won't see anything

Once fitted to your phone you’ll only be able to see the screen of your phone when you’re looking straight at it. If you try and see the screen from the side you’ll just see a black plastic sheet. Although they have a dark tint to them, you shouldn’t have any problems looking at photos or playing videos on your phone. If you find that it darkens the screen too much, just increase the brightness settings on your phone. The Privacy Screen Protectors are precision cut to size and available for most of the latest handsets, as they’re a bit thicker removing air bubbles.

MFX Privacy Screen Protector

The Privacy Screen protectors will work fine with Resistive touch screen handsets, but aren’t currently available for capacative touch screens such as the iPhone, HTC Hero or LG Arena.

InvisibleShield Screen Protector:

The last of the screen protectors then is the InvisibleSHIELD. Technically, this isn’t a screen protector as InvisibleSHIELDs normally cover your whole phone, not just the screen. They’re also made completely differently to the rest – rather than being a solid plastic sheet that sits on your screen, these are made from a soft flexible plastic film that sticks to your handset using a liquid spray adhesive. You spray the invisibleshield with the liquid and then place it on your phone. It dries in seconds and when you remove it from your phone it leaves no residue behind. Of all of the screen protectors here, these are probably the most secure fit to your phone and there is no chance of you catching a corner and it coming off. The downside though is that they do require a little more time and patience to fit, but the end result is well worth it.

InvisibleSHIELD Screen Protection

On my test, the screen image didn’t come out too great, but I’ve had one on my phone for over 12 months and honestly can say that the screen is clear and images aren’t distorted, although they do tend to attract smudges and require wiping clean now and again.

Summary:

If you’re looking purely to protect your screen, then you won’t go wrong with either a Martin Fields Screen Protector or an InvisibleSHIELD. There’s not much between them, although the faster fitting time will probably make the Martin Fields a better option. Of all of them, I’ve scored the Mirrored one the lowest, but that’s mainly down to how much it changes colours on the screen. In terms of fitting and protection it scores the same as the other MFX Screen Protectors.

My Ratings:

Martin Fields – 10/10
MFX Screen Protector – 9/10
InvisibleShield - 9/10
MFX Privacy – 8/10
MFX Mirrored – 7/10

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.

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.

Clip and Talk Bluetooth Car Kit - Solar Edition

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

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, Ive 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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