The beauty of silence, Nokia BH-905

Nokia BH-905's are premium in noise-canceling, mobile music. With attachments for all types of outlets, these are the only headset you will need.

I received the Nokia BH-905's as a Christmas present. I had put them on my list as a sort of joke, but my parents found a good deal with a rebate at Amazon and got them for me, bless their hearts. I opened this sucker up, set it to charge, and, after a wonderful meal, started playing with it.


The noise canceling works great. I do not have much experience with noise canceling, but these work as well as any I have ever tried. I sit under a noisy vent at work, and while it is bearable, sometimes it is nice to block it out. This headset does that wonderfully.

The BH-905 is comfortable to wear, although i cannot say I've ever forgotten that they were on my head. They are best when sitting or lounging, but I have walked a mile in them and did not have any problem with that.

The headset comes with a great case, a cable for connecting to a standard 3.5" microphone jack, an extension cable for when the sound source is far away, and a ton of adapters for other plugs, including airplanes.

But we don't want to have a cable, do we? I mostly use these connected via bluetooth to my N97 with its 48GB of music and video. So far, these have the most powerful bluetooth transceiver I have used, as I have not run into any of the skipping or connectivity issues I sometimes get when I use other bluetooth headsets and put the phone in my jeans pocket. The connection between device and headset has been rock solid every time I use it.

The battery life is phenomenal. I have gone multiple days with lots of noise canceling and some bluetooth usage. They are much smaller than I thought they would be, but still a full on-ear headset that is comfortable to wear but far bulkier than in-ear or clip-on style headsets. This headset has quickly become a part of my daily commute on the train and long hours at my desk.


Everything fits snugly and easily into the case for storage, portability, and protection. You can see charger, cables, adapters, and the headset all have their own place.

What noise-cancelling headphones have you used? How do you like to listen to music on the go?

Note: I also posted this review to GDGT. Feel free to check me out or follow my profile on GDGT.
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Evernote for Nokia S60 phones

Evernote has quietly released a beta version of its mobile client for S60 5th Edition handsets like the n97, N97 mini, and 5800 smartphones by Nokia. I am a huge Evernote user and have written about it before, but if you still haven't tried it, now is the time! Evernote gives you a "second brain"; a place to put all that information you want to remember but know that you won't or can't. Evernote provides a blank slate for any type of information you want to put into the system, and then allows you to access that information from just about anywhere with clients for the web, Windows, Mac, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Palm Pre, and now Symbian S60.

I have been using Evernote S60 on my N97 and 5800 since November. It has really improved over the past month and ready for you to try. It's not perfect yet, but here is my overview with some tips and tricks along the way. I have used the 5800 exclusively with wi-fi because mine does not have a SIM in it, and the N97 on AT&T's network. All of the screenshots are from my N97 in portrait mode, but the app works just as well in landscape and handles switching between the two without a problem.



The APIBridge app is supposed to be installed by default on newer Nokia devices or as a bundle with some apps. I did not have it, so I had to register and download at Forum Nokia to get and install it. Evernote will work without it, but you will pretty much only be able to create text notes and view existing notes. All the additional cool stuff requires APIBridge.


Starting up Evernote, the phone presents the user with a number of dialogs asking for access to the phone's resources. This is annoying and I hope that final versions will eliminate this.


The main Evernote screen presents the ability to create four types of notes: text input, a photo taken from the camera, an audio message, or an attached file (usually a previously snapped photo or recorded audio)


A sample text note. I added a title by tapping where I have the title. Then, I selected the notebook location by tapping just to the left of the arrow, and then I am presented with a list of all my notebooks. New notes select the default notebook at first. Tags are entered by typing the tag as in the Windows 3.0 version of the client. There is no tag completion at present.
Perform text entry on-screen when the phone is open and keyboard exposed, or with the on-screen T9 and the Symbian text entry box.


Creating a note with a file attachment will allow you to attach previously-taken images or recorded sound clips.



Creating a note with an attached image allows you to choose scroll through the images stored on your device. I have all mine in the external memory under Images, but notice that it is displaying both screenshots and pictures taken with the phone's camera. On my N97, the screen does not want to scroll through for me. I think this is a memory limitation and it comes to a halt because I have so many images stored on the phone. I can still scroll through the images by popping open the keyboard and using the d-pad.


Clicking the Notes tab will take you to all your notes, starting with the most recently uploaded ones.


Viewing a note with an attached image that has been uploaded by the S60 client.


Pressing the "Menu" option in the upper right corner allows you to perform actions on the notes.


Activity tab shows notes that are pending upload.
in earlier versions, when uploading notes during spotty connectivity issues, I could get multiple copies of the same note up in my Evernote account. I have not seen this recur in the latest app.


The account screen with the new 'Exit' button


Upgrading or Installing


Evernote will check for new versions of the application. If it finds one, it presents an option to download and install right away. You can also manually check for updates from the accounts screen.


The phone does not recognize that the newly downloaded version is an installable application; notice the notepad-style icon associated with the download. I suspect this is due to MIME-type, but it is annoying. After the download is complete, go ahead and close the web window and Evernote if it is still running. Navigate to your file manager and to the Downloads directory on the Mass Memory drive. You will see the Evernote-xxxxx.wgz (where xxxxx is the build number). Double-tap this file and the installer will begin.


Installing a new version of Evernote.


The Evernote widget weighs in at over 2.5meg, so it is best to choose the external memory when installing it.


Conclusion
As you might have guessed by this lengthy post, I am really excited to have an Evernote client on my Symbian phone. There are only two applications I really want to see: Evernote and Google Voice. I have one now, and will hopefully have a Google Voice application soon.

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