BH-903 And N82 Are The Perfect Gym Buddies
So you’re in the gym looking über cool with music playing through your headphones, and suddenly a wire gets caught up somewhere on the treadmill’s armrest and your head is pulled back, you trip and fall on the floor, the phone jumps out of your pocket and lands in the lap of the fat woman pedaling on the bicycle. If you’ve been in any similar scenario, then you know how ridiculous, annoying, and embarrassing it is and you know that wireless should be the way to go.
I have been using the Nokia BH-903, a stereo bluetooth headset, for a few days now in the gym with my N82, and to say that this marriage has impressed me is an understatement.
The BH-903, which Ricky has reviewed in detail earlier, has a nice fit in the ear, which means that it won’t pop out every now and then for no reason. It also comes with a nice around the neck style earphones that make it incredibly easy to wear it without worrying about it dropping. The whole headset is very light so you won’t feel that you’re doing some weight lifting while wearing it. Music quality is as good as with other headphones, even though this is a wireless one, though do keep in mind that I’m not an audiophile. It also features an OLED screen which is perfect indoors and makes it a bliss to control music as well as voice calls without even taking the N82 out of my shorts’ pocket.
Which brings me to the N82 that, combined with a good microSD memory card, holds a lot of my favourite tunes. With the music player launched and playing through the BH-903, the N82 has no reason to be out attracting prying eyes. It sits in my shorts pocket, with Step Counter running and giving me detailed information about my performance after I finish exercising, which is highly convenient for sports lovers.
Although the BH-903 has changed the way I exercise, I still think there’s a lot that needs to be done in order for me to break my wallet and pay a huge sum for it. The OLED needs to be more visible outdoors, the earpieces should be in-ear and not usual earphones, the volume scrolling should work better, and I should be able to read messages on the screen. Volume synchronization with my N82 is a MUST, as sometimes the volume is 100% on the N82 but 0% on the BH-903; on other headsets, when I modify the volume on the headset, it’s also modified on the phone.
What is your perfect sports gear? Do you use your S60 handset to track your progress or to listen to music while exercising? Do you have a bluetooth headset or do you still carry an ordinary wired one?
I don’t think that volume synchronisation is a must. In fact, the contrary is more useful. You can set your bluetooth headset to it’s best volumelevel and the phone to its prefered soundlevel for (internal speakes or a wired headset). Only if you use your headset as a A2DP-gateway you might want to check the volume before putting in the earsplugs…
?
my perfect A2DP headset is the Motorola S9, I use it with E90. Perfect solution for my MTB rides, no wires at all.
I bought the Jabra BT8040 as I like to have one ear free, even while listening to music.
(Also because I’ve managed to wear down the headset accompanied with the N82)
It works quite well while I work out in my room, but I’m don’t think it would be very good if I decided to do some extended jogging.
In terms of music quality wired ones are still best. Here I bought the Koss SPARKPLUG which offers quite well spectrum of sounds. The Bass is a bit on the heavy side though, but for my kind of music it works ok.
(As I managed to wear down the accompanied headsets which came with the N95 when I owned the N95)
Plantronics Voyager 855 all the way.
Nothing else even comes close.
seriously.
have u tried that?
I’d LOVE to be able to use a wireless headset with my phone while working out but I’m paranoid about the amount I sweat and ruining my headphones. Also, I haven’t found anything that has really good sound through clothes (but granted I haven’t owned a good quality bluetooth product recently so that part may be my fault. I’ll have to get my N82 Black something good…and soon.
BH-503 paired with the N95-3. The perfect compromise between aural nirvana and freedom from wires, IMHO.
I would absolutely love to grab some bt headphones for my N95, but the BH-903 are way too expensive IMO.
I use the Sony DR-BT22 headphones. Nice over the ear, remote pause/skip/play, good sound, very long battery life.
Nick, you could try what I have, the Jabra BT320, which you can plug any old ‘phones into.
Everyone: no-one’s mentioned any problems with battery life? Normally my N82 is fine, but listening to music with a headset a battery literally goes from full to dead in four hours. Is this just me?
bh-903 is da perfect gym buddy?????
heheheheeh hahahaah
come on Dotsix…for God’s sake u completely missed the concept of bluetooth which is wireless!!!! bluetooth means NO WIRES…. WIRELESS….. the name comes after the viking king Harald Blatang, blatang means bluetooth coz he used to eat a lot of blueberries and his teeth were always blue… and he unified denmark with sweden… so u see… unifying (pairing).. bluetooth..(blatang)…scandinavia, vikings (finland homeland of Nokia). hope dat i enlightened u ethymologically and historically.
Just to tell u HOW MUCH U MISSED THE CONCEPT OF BLUETOOTH!!!!!!!!!!!
BH-903 is full of wires… i get stuck with those @$%# shitty wires…. nothing is more disgusting than wires behind our ears and around our necks while doing gym.
having u heard about the BH-501 aw BH-503? NO WIRES!!!!!!!!!!
people keep asking me while jogging how are u listening at music? we dont see wires! THAT’S THE SPIRIT OF BLUETOOOOOOOOOTH!
BH-903 may be a good product but to call it PERFECT BUDDY? that’s too much! tooo much dear dotsix.
I can guess dat u didnt try the Bh-501 or BH-503…and if u’ve tried them and u wrote dat BH-903 is perfect…. well that means ur case is indeed advanced (not fatal… but advanced)
heheheheheh
PS: i like ur articles…it’s so… so feminine :$ (nokia maps are great…bh-903 is great..etc….), based mainly upon ur own feelings.
u add the feminine touch in high tech world…. not the objective, scientifically and practical one.
N93i worshiper-
A brief geographical and anthropological lesson in return for you- Finland is not a Scandinavian country, and the Vikings don’t come from Finland either.
To say that Dotsisx has missed the point of bluetooth completely isn’t quite fair, and lends to my understanding that you’ve kinda missed the point of bluetooth yourself- despite the fact that you’ve spent some time reading a wikipedia entry.
FWIW- Bluetooth clearly doesn’t mean *NO* wires. This is evident in the fact that there are far more users that prefer the BH-903 to other headphone options than just Dotsisx. Connecting wireless to an audio gateway and passing the audio along through a wire is also a common theme with the AD-42W; a very slick device that connects a bluetooth enabled music device to your home stereo or otherwise with, yes, a set of wires on one side, and bluetooth on the other. There’s also the line of bluetooth gateways from Scosche which also incorporate the hybrid wired/wireless setup as well as a product similar to the BH-903 from Jabra (though it does not have the wicked OLED display). Are you saying that they all don’t understand bluetooth?
The point is, let’s not confuse your personal preference for the lack of understanding of a technology or an objective viewpoint. :-\
Speaking etymologically (there’s no ‘h’ in the word, FWIW) I think that the point of paying homage the Swedish ruler and specifically his efforts to unite with relation to bluetooth refer to a unified set of protocols that enable interoperability between bluetooth devices, not just the fact that they can pair with each other.
There you have it, my humble effort to further your efforts of enlightenment for all of us.
Another point to mention-
“nothing is more disgusting than wires behind our ears and around our necks while doing gym.
having u heard about the BH-501 aw BH-503? NO WIRES!!!!!!!!!!”
FWIW- although it’s encased in plastic, there is indeed a wire traveling around your neck with the BH-501 and 503 from speaker to speaker.
Incidentally, the author’s moniker is dotsiSx (”.sisx”, the extension of an installable S60 file; not “.6″, roughly equating to ~2/3 of a whole, which is meaningless in this matter.)
The Swedish ruler’s name is Blåtand, not Blatand. Blåtand meaning bluetooth, or black tooth, as it seems blue and black weren’t distinguished against each other at the time in the language. The genesis of his nickname might have referred to the notion that he ate so many blueberries that his teeth were stained blue, though far more sources indicate that he had a dead, blackened tooth- or a Blåtand.
Well N93i worshiper, there you have it, Pseudofinn defended my rights well enough.
I will only add that I am PROUD to bring the feminine point of view to the high tech world, it took me a whole lot of time to get acknowledged because I was a female whereas 99% of the symbian bloggers are males, but I never denied my sex although I believe it would’ve made matters a whole lot easier. And just a reminder: High Tech isn’t limited to male users, FYI. Just take a look at any Nokia announcement, and you will see that a great percentage of product managers and speakers are women, not to be sexist.
And to answer your saying that my thoughts aren’t objective, practical or scientific, i’ll just say that I respect your opinion. Incidentally, there are other blogs and sites on the internet that have a less “feminine” touch, you are invited to explore them. I hope you will find there your objective, scientific and practical reviews.
Pseudofinn
Who said finlad ain’t a scnandinavian country? open any geo-political book and u’ll see dat scandinavia includes norway, sverige, denmark, finland AND iceland. vikings dont come from finland…i knoooow! but u dont know dat finland is included in scandinavia.
Secundo…. if a finnish company wanna name one of its technology after a viking king….. dat doesnt mean it should be also a direct descendants form them! it’s like i cant name a technology Shiva coz i’m not indian. so whether or nor finland is a scandinavian or an african country… they have the right to name anything after anyone on earth.
As for AD-42W…well i have one installed in my room…. i know dat it has wires towards da TV set…. but i dont jogg wiz this gateway, wires around my neck with a risk of strangling myself.
yes i know BH-503/1 has wires along the piece between the speakers…. how else would they communicate with each other? by telepathy??? DUH!!!!!
As for a lot of people prefer Bh-903…. who said dat majority means the right choice??? the elite is the minority!! (tell that to Galileo who was burnt alive coz the majority didnt believe him even the Pope)
when i wrote about bluetooth and the viking king…. it was just a general explanation….so i dont see what u wanted to clarify by speaking about interoperability and protocols in this particular part of ur intervention! it’s easier than this…. unify the two kingdoms…. it’s sort like bluietooth concept.
thx for the lesson between the difference about blatang and blatang with an aureole above the a (yeah my keyboard aint scandinavian coz i’m not scandinavian and i dont wanna losing time searching for this character on my qwerty keyboard).
Dotsix:
u r just adorable
PS: for the word etymologically… well i wrote it with h coz as a lebanese citizen, we are multilingual and in french we write it ethymologiquement….so sometimes i got lost between the two languages, especially when i got boiled over a subject (such as this one :D)
N93i Worshiper-
You would like to know who said Finland isn’t Scandinavia? The Finns that I had lived in Finland with. The scholars and professors at Helsinki University which I’ve spoken with at length on the subject- and many other Finns that I’ve held conversation with on the matter in subsequent years. While many refer to Finland as Scandinavia, the fact is that it’s not Scandinavian. I don’t know about your books- but I know about the people who I happen to think are at least a bit authoritative with regards to who they are and are not.
With regards to your second point of contention here, Nokia was not the creator of bluetooth technology. While they were integral in the SIG, they didn’t create the tech and it wasn’t Nokia that chose the name. True, they have the right to name anything whatever they want- but they didn’t. Sorry. Ericsson, among others, were also integral to the creation and development of the technology. Incidentally, they are Swedish- in case your books and wikipedia entries have that mistaken as well. Perhaps they had a bit more to do with the naming of bluetooth…?
Also- I didn’t say a majority prefer the BH-903 over the BH-503, I said that there are far more than just Dotsisx that prefer the BH-903 over other headphone options. To answer your question- no one said that the “majority is the right choice”. Read, re-read, respond.
I mentioned the wires in the BH-503 because you clearly stated that there are no wires, and that wires around your neck is disgusting. The BH-503 has a wire around your neck…
I chose to clarify your remarks regarding the “Viking king” because you’re clearly missing the point, while claiming that the author missed the point- which I completely disagree with. You weren’t really stating your case well, and your words were more than just a bit unfair, IMO.
What I wanted to clarify with your “general explanation” of bluetooth and how the name refers to unity was that, again, you state that Dotsisx doesn’t get bluetooth while your overly simplistic view of the technology proves, IMO, that you don’t really get it yourself; therefore your entire argument was a bit out of order, and unnecessary.
The correction in the spelling of Blatand was not in reference to obscure characters (I haven’t got a ‘Scandinavian keyboard’ either- which also, btw, doesn’t stop me from spelling out the majority of the words I use) - you spell it BlantanG, not BlantanD- when posting my response in correction of your chosen spelling, I mistakenly spelled it correctly twice when the second mention should have been that of your spelling. My apologies. It wasn’t in reference to your lack of the proper character, but the proper spelling. It was another simple indication that you’re not quite well informed on the subject to get so fired up- and needed just a bit more help along the way.
Once again- just because I can’t say this enough. While most Finns aren’t overly offended by the practice of erroneously lumping their land into the realm of Scandinavia, some are- as it is indeed **not** Scandinavia, and they are not Scandinavian. To state with such authority that they are shows ignorance and a bit of disrespect for the history of the people and the land, and the struggle with the Swedish crown throughout the ages, among others. I’m not sure what geo-political books you’re referring to- but Finland is just not Scandinavia. I believe you’re either mistaking it with the term “Nordic” or are taking a simplistic and uninformed stance on the use of the term Scandinavia and ignoring the struggles of a people to establish their own identity and all the effort spent in the decolonization of Finland from Sweden and Russia. Geographically speaking, as well as with regards to linguistics to an extent, I can grant you that some very northern parts of Finland can be correctly identified as Scandinavia, but to label Finland as Scandinavian and be unyielding when someone offers a correction- I find that personally irksome.
If you’re going to start a discussion like this, you really need to have the facts straight- clearly this is not the case on several subjects of your tirade. It seems we’ll just have to disagree on these facts and the semantics of your argument against the BH-903 and my fellow S-Ger.
In the meantime, if I may summon my feminine side as you might refer to it (since this will be said rather subjectively), I personally find the BH-903 to be a wicked hot item. The only thing I don’t like about the unit is the price.
Aug 7th, 2008 at 5:25 am
[...] Over at Symbian Guru , Dotsisx has been to the gym with her new BH-903 bluetooth headset and her N82. [...]