This year’s Mobile World Congress featured some interesting accessories, including headsets and speakers. I’ve collected a few examples to highlight current trends.
The handset market is subject to strong (and transient) design trends; for example, touch screens and slider designs are currently the dominant fashion. At its zenith, Motorola’s Razr made clamshells and thinness essential design features. The accessories market, however, seems more immune to such influences. Accessories have benefitted from technology advances, with Bluetooth headsets replacing wired versions, and improved power consumption leading to more compact designs, but there’s no dominant “standard” for the look of headsets, for example.
Most manufacturers produce a range of designs: mono, stereo, in-ear, over-the-ear and headband, for instance. Tastes in accessories vary, partly because they allow users to customise an otherwise homogeneous phone by adding, say, a headset that suits their individual preferences. Manufacturers have recognised that no “one size fits all” and continue to explore new approaches to accessories. A good example of this is Nokia’s Music Almighty headset competition, which invited people to design a headset using an online tool. The top five designs were turned into one-off functioning models for their creators.
Music appears to be driving headset development. As more devices come equipped with strong music features, accessories focus on providing a better audio experience than the standard in-the-box headphones. At Mobile World Congress, Nokia launched the BH-214 (right), a stereo Bluetooth headset featuring a large clip with music controls, which makes it well suited to use while running.
Similarly, Jabra’s BT650s Bluetooth headset (below left) features a sleek design with the added benefit of headband comfort. This type of product is particularly useful for people that don’t like having headphones inside their ears.
Nokia’s exhibition stand also featured the BH-804 (below right), perhaps its most interesting accessory. It’s a small mono Bluetooth headset that’s so small and light (just 7.4g) that it fits snugly inside your ear without any need for an over-the-ear band. The headset also provides an impressive four hours’ talk time and 150 hours of standby time.
Nokia also had on display a new Bluetooth speaker. The HF-310 has a suction cup and cradle that attaches to a windscreen (below left). It also features DSP noise reduction technology. Its control buttons are easy to use — the main send/end key is prominently placed in the middle of the device, and the volume controls are around the edge. Designed primarily for use in cars, it can be removed from the suction cup and used as an office speaker.
And finally, LG had a number of what it termed “feminine” accessories on show: The HBM530 and HBM540 Bluetooth headsets look like items of jewellery and feature Swarovski crystals and a range of pink shades (below right).
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