Nokia Digital Radio Headset DAB
Well received?
Review It’s not uncommon to find an FM radio on a smart phone these days. And while the iPhone has seen fit to do without such a thing, it’s a great way to get your music and news on the move, without the need for Wi-Fi connection or any drain on your data tariff.
Tell-tale signals: Nokia's DAB headset
Every once in a while a device comes along that makes you wonder why it wasn’t available ages ago. For me, the Nokia Digital Radio Headset DAB falls into this category. It brings the wide, wide range of DAB radio stations to your Nokia mobile, cunningly disguised as a standard headset. Look a little closer however and there are a couple of clues as to its real purpose.
For a start, the plug is mini USB digital rather than a 3.5mm analogue jack, so you know this is no ordinary headset. Also, the inline box of player controls is considerably larger than you’d expect in 2011, measuring 55 x 23 x 15mm with a big clip on the back. The large buttons for forward, back and play/pause aren’t subtle but they are very easy to find and use. Next to them is a DAB button, which will get you straight into DAB mode and on the side are volume and call answer buttons.
Usefully, there’s a 3.5mm headphone jack on the control box too, so if Nokia’s own earbuds aren’t doing it for you, you can always add your own. They’re not bad though, with noise-isolating grommets and fair control of the bass, though not perhaps the most revealing in the upper range.
A free Ovi Store app unlocks the functionality
So far so good, but this is very much a Nokia-only headset – you can’t plug it into just any phone and expect it to work. Oh no. And not even any Nokia phone either. As yet, it will only work with phones running Nokia’s latest Symbian^3 operating system, which basically means the C7 and the N8 for now.
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COMMENTS
The reason the iPhone doesn't have a radio...
Is that having a radio would mean users could listen to music without buying it from iTunes!
Battery life?
Most (if not all) DAB radios eat up batteries for fun - smartphones aren't exactly renowned for long battery life either.
Wonder how long you get listening if like most people you leave 3G, Bluetooth and wireless on......
Choice, dear AC, choice.
Person A wants to listen to pop music and likes the typical assortment of tunes played on radio station X. Person B also wants to listen to pop music but can't stand the presenters on station X, so tunes into station Y instead. Person C doesn't really care about the presenters on either station X or Y, but prefers to listen to certain types of pop music which don't get played often enough for their liking on those two stations, so ends up listening to station Z instead. And so on.
Oh, and even if only 10% of the extra stations are non-pop (and I suspect the number might be a bit higher than that, thinking about the stations I see listed when I scroll through the list) there's still enough diversity amongst these stations to make DAB worthwhile on their own.
It is not just that though
I read the article, and I don't believe the headline claim re the FM v DAB chips. I'd like to see a direct comparison between the lowest power FM (only) and the lowest power DAB.
However, for me, the biggest issue is that I prefer the quality of FM. DAB (with the crap over compressed codecs used to squeeze more channels in) just doesn't come up to scratch for quality I'm afraid.
I'm not impressed by having 101 channels of rubbish, I'd much prefer a few I can listen to.
Just my opinion and no offence to DAB lovers. :-)
You beat me to it
I was going to say exactly the same. Sadly, my iPod died, so my Rovi is currently sitting on a shelf unloved while I listen to music and FM radio on my Android phone.
I'll take issue with the review, however. Quote - "Indeed, the more robust signal you tend to get on the move also makes up for any step down in sound quality" - Where the hell did you test this?
Whenever I try to listen on the move, the dropout rate and the bubbling mud problem from varying signal strength makes DAB impossible to listen to, especially for spoken word programmes. Try listening to a comedy show when you keep missing the punch-lines. I know I live out in the sticks, but I also have this problem travelling down the M5 within 10 miles of a major city with a correctly installed DAB radio specifically made for a car.
With FM, you get a hiss or maybe some distorted output, but you can follow a conversation. Try doing that when you completely loose the channel for seconds at a time.
Don't get me wrong. I'm all for Digital Radio, and have five in total in the house and car, but until the transmitter power levels increase, I'll be listening to FM on the move.
BTW swisstoni. The delay is caused by the time it takes to digitise the audio at source and decode in your receiver. It's never going to go away regardless of what anybody tries to do. You could try buying a more expensive receiver, but there is no guaranteeing that it will have a faster processor in it, and would only address the decoding side. I'm afraid you will just have to learn to live with it.
