NFC-enabled Nokia speakers

by Volker Weber

This is an interesting product I always wanted to play with. For one reason: they are NFC-enabled. Touch the speaker with an NFC enabled phone, and audio gets transferred to the speaker. Touch it again and it comes back. I expected this to work with Nokia phones, but now I found out it works with BlackBerry 7.1 just as well. Cool stuff.

Nokia calls them Nokia Play 360° Wireless Speaker, I refer to them as Nokia Cans. The speaker is omnidirectional, meaning you can sit anywhere around it and you hear the same thing. The grille suggests that the sound comes out all sides, but that's just an illusion. The sound comes out of the top, and there is a small hole on the right side for the lower frequencies.

The interesting thing about these speakers is that you can pair two together. When you switch them on, they will speak. "Left channel". "Right channel". Now you know which is which. Easy for me, since the black one is the left channel, and the white one is the right channel, but you would probably get two of the same color.

NFC does not take care of the transmission. It just sets up the Bluetooth connection and then connects and disconnects them as needed. It takes out all the headache of Bluetooth pairing and connection management. The speakers are charged via a MicroUSB port and I have not run down the battery yet. They are supposed to run for 21 hours between charges, and I believe that. When you haven't used them for a while they switch themselves off.

They sound pretty good for their size, and they are a bit large for my liking. Put your thumbs and middle fingers from both hands together and form a square. That's the diameter. I probably would not carry those around in my bag. This means they are mobile, but they aren't mobile enough for me.

I would probably use them to set up a quick stereo pair for a presentation or as entertainment when sitting out in the garden. But I won't, since they did not earn the editor-refuses-to-give-it-back award.

Comments

What is the MSRP or estimated price?

Karl-Henry Martinsson, 2012-06-20

$150 on Amazon.com. 115 EUR on Amazon.de.

Volker Weber, 2012-06-20

Should also work with Android, but might need a 3rd party application to recognize the NFC signature and act on it.

I have a question however: how loud are they? I tested a Jambox and it was too quiet for me (also, much too expensive) ;-)

Sebastian Herp, 2012-06-20

Android has no clue what to do with the NFC tag.

Volker Weber, 2012-06-20

Did you ever compare with Jawbone JAMBOX™ http://www.jawbone.com/speakers/jambox/overview?r=em1b
?
I use them since about 6 months and I'm very content - and fits the luggage :-) - and it talks to me with a sexy voice like "connect me with your device"

Felix Andris, 2012-06-21

Hold on to your hat. I will. :-)

Volker Weber, 2012-06-21

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