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MOBILE EXTRAS
INTRO
It’s Spring, and what better way to brush
aside those winter blues than to go out and spend lots of money on things you
never knew you needed. Here’s this month’s selection of weird, wacky, and
sometimes quite useful cellphone accessories...
COPY
SEL-BEL £26
Several products we’ve looked at in past issues
have been concerned with countering growing public irritation with mobile
phones. There’s few things more annoying -- for non-cellphone users at any rate
-- than the sound of mobile phones ringing in meetings, restaurants, theatres
or on public transport. So just for a change we’re looking at a device, aimed
at people who reckon their phone (or pager) isn’t loud enough...
We’ve been trying out an interesting little
gadget called the Sel-Bel. It’s about the size of a box of matches and it
attaches to a mobile phone or pager. When Sel-Bel is triggered by the phone’s
ringer it emits an even louder tone, that can be heard several tens of metres
away. It was developed in South Africa; apparently missed calls are common occurrence
over there, when cellphone users are in their swimming pools, or on the tennis
court you know the kind of thing... Maybe that’s not such a big problem in the
UK but there are plenty of situations where it could prove useful. People with
impaired hearing are obvious candidates, but even those with fully working ears
sometimes have difficulty hearing their phone ringing when it’s on the charger,
and they’re in the bathroom, or the garden for instance. Most ringers cannot
compete with a lot of background noise, in a factory, on a building site, or
simply the hubbub of normal family life.
Sel-Bel comes with a set of Velcro fixing
strips which have to be fixed to the phone. On the back of the unit there’s a
tiny microphone, and this has to be placed close to the phone’s ringer. This is
normally a small hole on the top or side of the casing, and not the earpiece,
as the instructions seem to imply; the manufacturers tell us they’re in the
process of changing them. Power is supplied by a small re-chargeable battery,
that lasts for up to two weeks. It comes with a car power cord, though that’s
not terribly convenient as it takes 12 hours to re-charge. The cigar lighter socket
on many cars is isolated when the ignition is switched off -- maybe South Africans spend a lot more time
behind the wheel than we do -- a mains charger would be more appropriate for
the UK.
But does it work? Yes, is the simple answer.
It’s not terrifically loud but it combines with the phones ringer to produce a very
distinct combination of frequencies, that carries a good distance, improving
the chances of it being heard. There’s
a few points to bear in mind. First, it can take a while to find the best
position for the device on some phones, and if that happens to be on the front
you will get an ear-full of Velcro every time you use it. Perhaps Velcro is not
such a good idea, maybe an elasticated band would be better? The on/off switch
on our sample unit was unmarked, we’ve since been told it was a prototype,
hopefully production models will be okay. Now you want to know how much they
cost, and where you can get one from? The bad news is that manufacturers were still
setting up their UK distribution at the time of going to press, so they’re only
available by mail order direct from the makers. It costs £26.00, though that includes
shipping and insurance from South Africa, so all things considered it’s not bad
value.
THE FACTS
Typical Price £26
(includes shipping and insurance)
Features cellphone
ringer amplifier, detachable Velcro strip fixing, re-chargeable battery
operation, car charger cord supplied
To fit most
phones, but ask first, if you’ve got an unusual one
Contact Medmechan
(Pty) Ltd., PO Box 72541, Lynnwood Ridge, Pretoria 0040, South Africa. Telephone
(from UK) 00 2712 471744, fax 00 2712 471262
WHAT CELLPHONE VERDICT 85%
ORA HANDS-FREE KITS £70 & £45
You shouldn’t need reminding about the
benefits and safety implications of a hands-free car kit for your mobile
telephone, however, there is a downside. They’re still quite expensive -- typically
£200 to £300 -- and they normally have to be fitted by a specialist. So what if
the car’s not yours, you don’t want holes drilled all over the place, or you
only use it infrequently? In those circumstances a regular car kit could be difficult
to justify, but there are alternatives, like these two hands-free kits from Ora.
They’re the Travel Talk and Personal Hands-Free kits. They’re both relatively
inexpensive, and can be fitted in minutes by almost anyone, without drilling any
holes.
First the MTHF5 Travel Talk which is designed
to work with Motorola Mirco TACs, clones and related flip-phones. (More models
are in the pipeline). It costs £70, and for that you get a simple dashboard
phone holder clip, that fixes in place using a pad of double-sided sticky tape (supplied)
or screws (not supplied), plus the adaptor module, that plugs into the car’s cigarette
lighter socket. The adaptor is actually three devices in one: inside there’s a
charger, an amplifier and loudspeaker, and close to the phone’s accessory plug,
a microphone. Installation is virtually idiot-proof, provided you follow the
instructions on the box. Ora are usually pretty good with their instructions
but we felt they could have gone into a bit more detail, especially about positioning
the holder in the drivers reach and field of view.
The cigarette lighter plug is hinged, so the
speaker module can be set to the best angle, there’s an LED indicator which comes
on when the power is on. Ora warn about not plugging it in until the engine is
running as harmful voltage spikes, generated by the starter motor, could
destroy the electronics in the adaptor, and your phone! The microphone module also
has an LED indicator, it has a miniature jack socket on the side of the module,
which we presume is for an external mic, though we couldn’t find any mention of
it anywhere in the instructions.
Once the phone has been programmed for
hands-free operation it’s ready to go. Our sample worked well, though it could
do with some form of volume control. It’s reasonably loud and the trebly output
suits speech, though it struggles a bit
to make itself heard when there’s a lot of road or engine noise, or a couple of
raucous kids in the back. The microphone is reasonably sensitive but not very
directional. In most cars it will be at waist height, a metre or more from the
users mouth and not necessarily pointing in the right direction. If there’s a
lot of background noise you may have to speak directly at it, repeat yourself,
or shout to be heard at the other end. Generally though it’s well thought out,
and it performs at least as well as some of the more average full-spec/cost car
kits.
The second of the two is the CTM5, ‘Personal’
hands-free kit. Like the MTHF5 it comes with a dashboard phone holder and
sticky pad, but instead of the speaker module it has what looks like a conventional
talk-and-charge card cord. There’s a bit more to it than that though, and on
the back of the charger unit there’s a jack socket into which plugs a lead with
an earphone and microphone. Just below the microphone there’s a small tie-clip,
to prevent it from waving around. It’s as easy to use as it looks, just pop in
the earphone and plug everything in. The cord disables the phone’s own earpiece
and microphone, and the ringer is diverted to the earphone, so you need to keep
it in whilst you’re driving. Calls are sent or answered in the normal way, so
you need to be able to access the phone, bear that in mind when fixing the
holder, after that just talk and listen, like any other hands-free system.
The ear/mic lead is around a metre long, it
could do with being just a little longer, it was close to full stretch one of
our test cars, and turning the head sideways quickly, to look out of the window
-- overtaking or parking etc. -- it would sometimes pull. The earphone is a
fairly ordinary design, and not especially comfortable to wear for long
periods.
Audio quality at both ends of the connection
is good, there’s plenty of volume, and the microphone is very directional, so
there’s no problem with background noise. It works well though it seems a touch
expensive for what it is.
THE FACTS
ORA MTH F5
Typical price £70
Features simple
to fit hands-free car kit with integrated speaker/power supply unit and
microphone
To fit Motorola phones including: Micro TAC
MkII, Classic, Flip-Phone, Cuo, Pro, BT Pearl, Ford, Blaupunkt 582, Pioneer
740, Bosch Cartel S/SC/SL
Contact Ora
Electronics Ltd, telephone (01296) 415445
ORA CTM5
Typical price £45
Features plug-in
hands-free car kit with earphone, microphone and charger
To fit Motorola Micro TAC MkII, Classic,
Flip-Phone, Cuo, Pro 5200/7200/7500 series, BT Pearl, Ford, Blaupunkt 582,
Pioneer 740, Bosch Cartel S/SC/SL
Contact Ora
Electronics Ltd, telephone (01296) 415445
WHAT CELLPHONE VERDICT 85% & 75%
VIVANCO ACC1035, £15
We’re always on the lookout for interesting
or unusual cellphone aerials, this one from Vivanco definitely fits the bill.
It’s designed to clip onto a door window -- nothing very unusual about that --
but it is incredibly elaborate, and unexpectedly
cheap at only £15.00. The actual radiating element is a short base-loaded 17cm
whip, it screws onto a jointed arm poking out of a bulbous base module, from
which two horizontal ground-plane elements also protrude. They’re not just
there to make it look weird, they make up for the lack of the ground-plane
effect -- essentially the other half of an aerial -- which would normally be the
metal in the car body. The whole assembly is bonded to a padded metal clip,
that fits over the glass. On the backside there’s a large locking screw, that
clamps the aerial to the window. The aerial lead is a generous 2.3 metres long,
and it’s terminated with a standard FME connector, that plugs into an adaptor
or cradle.
The big advantage of an aerial of this type
is that there’s no need to drill any holes in your dream machine, assuming of
course it belongs to you; if it doesn’t then that’s another good reason not to get
out the Black and Decker. It can be fitted, and removed in moments, without leaving a mark -- unlike
glass-mount aerials -- in fact the biggest problem is tucking the cable out of
the way, under carpets or behind trim, and making sure there’s enough slack so
the window can be opened. Be extra careful with windows that have electric
winders, if it’s fixed too tightly it could damage the motor, or the glass, or
possibly both if its wound down too far, otherwise it just comes off. For that
reason it may be a good idea to put it on one of the passenger door windows as
they’re normally used less often.
We tried it out using our normal aerial test routine.
It did quite well, a few notches down on a typical glass-mount aerial. That’s almost
certainly because it’s not as high up, the tip of the radiator only just clears
the car’s roof-line, nevertheless it easily outperformed a hand portable inside
the car using just its built-in aerial, managing to hold on to calls that
without the aerial would have been dropped. Definitely worth considering as a
hassle-free alternative to a glass or body mount.
THE FACTS
Typical price £15
Features window
mount car antenna with built-in ground-plane
To fit most
car kits
Contact VIVANCO,
UK, telephone (01442) 231616
WHAT CELLPHONE VERDICT 85%
DANIEL DESIGN ‘IQ MASTER’ BATTERY
It’s no good beating about the bush,
cellphone batteries are about as interesting as Marmite jars. For those who
even bother to think about them -- batteries, not Marmite jars -- they come
somewhere between watching paint dry and party political broadcasts, on their
list of interesting things. Hold on to your seats for a bit of a surprise, batteries just got interesting! Well, this
new one from Daniel Design is. It’s called the IQ Master, one to fit Micro TAC
phones costs around £50, it’s the first outing of ZMS or the Zaptronic Monitoring System battery capacity indicator
and it lights up! The glow comes from a circle of 10 green, yellow and red
LEDs, built into the back of the pack. They come on when you press one of two
buttons on the back of the box. The top one is marked ‘test’, this shows the
relative state of charge, if they’re all lit up it’s full, if just the yellow
and red ones are on there’s less than 50% charge, and just the red LEDs, or no
LEDs at all means it’s time to re-charge.
This is where it gets clever, the second
button is marked ‘Disch’, that’s right, this battery has a built-in discharger
or conditioner circuit. Press the button and all the LEDs come on, and go out
one by one as the cells inside the battery are carefully drained. This has the
effect of removing any imbalance between the cells, so that when they’re
recharged, they all start on an equal footing. That’s important because over
time the cells in a normal battery achieve differing states of charge, and it
can get to the point where some cells reach full charge well before the others.
At that point most nicad chargers switch off, leaving the pack as a whole only
partially charged, this is a major cause of the so-called ‘memory’ effect.
Discharging the battery on a regular basis eliminates cell imbalance, the
battery gets a full charge, it needs recharging less often and ultimately leads
a longer and healthier life, at least that’s the theory.
IQ Master is off to a good start, this 1700mA
high capacity packs for both the Micro TAC and a second version for the
Ericsson 237/238/337, are filled with matched high-grade Panasonic cells, which
should help reduce the incidence of imbalance even further. Pretty lights and
clever dischargers are all very well but the proof of the pudding is in the
What Cellphone battery test. To cut a long story short we cycle a battery
through a series of high and low current discharges, designed to reflect
various patterns of use. On the high use cycle our sample managed a very healthy
6.5 hours, the low demand cycle lasted for an impressive 10 hours 40 minutes.
Both sets of results were well above average for a pack of this type. The
capacity display is a great idea, not especially accurate but it’s a good way
of quickly checking the condition of a battery. The discharger is a genuine
benefit; chargers with built in conditioners are fine, if you remember to use
them, this way is far more convenient. The price is fair, performance is good,
so it gets our vote!
Typical price £50
Features ‘ZMS’
capacity display, built-in discharger
Voltage 6
volts
Capacity 1700mA
To fit Motorola
Micro TAC, clones and family, Ericsson 237/238/337
Contact Small
Talk Communications, telephone (01923) 218753
WHAT CELLPHONE VERDICT 95%
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Ó R. Maybury 1996 1601
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Ó R. Maybury 1996 1501
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