I sold that car about three years ago and brought a MINI instead.
After spending much time and effort installing the original Bluetooth car kit in the 306 I decided that it wasn’t worth pulling it out as I integrated it so well into the car and sold it as an additional feature.

I’ve since just been using the ‘loudspeaker’ function of both my work and personal phones – both N95 and this has worked well, to a degree.

A week ago I changed my work phone from the Nokia N95 to the E71 – and as many know, this comes with a nice protective cover – which protects it great, however makes it totally useless for “safe” operation in a car.

As mentioned, I’ve been looking at car kits for a while, and after spending a year working for Enterprise Rent-a-Car Rental wearing a Bluetooth earpiece for 10 hours a day has my ear resent any sort of in-ear technology going anywhere near them – then close to 5 years on!

In my searches I came across iO – more specifically iO Talk1 and iO Play – which can both connect up to 5 devices, and also stream music from one device (e.g. iPod / iPhone) and also connect to a mobile phone – neat idea hey?

They are also extremely well priced (iO Talk1 £69.99 rrp and iO Play £99.99 rrp) – I purchased the iO Talk1 online at BlueUnplugged where I originally brought my Nokia Car Kit jus to trial it, as I’m looking at basic handsfree for my Clio, but probably the iO Play for the MINI.

iO will install (approximately £75), but being used to fitting this type of equipment I done it myself, and from start to finish, including testing the best location for the Mic (remember wind and engine noise at 70 mph!), dismantling half my dashboard and trims, hiding the small unit and installing the wiring loom (very neat idea – full ISO connections, so no additional cables required – well not for a Clio anyway – my Wife drives the MINI in case you were wondering why I switched cars!), putting everything back together again then a final test (remember to test incoming and outgoing calls) was under two hours.

The iO Talk1 even has a ‘remote’ remote control (wireless), which at present I have sat in my side door handle / pocket – controls the unit and the phone by talking to you (how clever is that), and can also be passed to your friends in the car when you hook-up your MP3 player so they can choose the tracks you listen to.

I initially found it strange when the iO Talk1 started talking to me:

“system started”
“phone connected”
“call from 0……” – yes, actually reads you the phone number! (unfortunately doesn’t call out the name on the phone as I don’t think there is SIM / Phonebook synchronisation.

These features can be changed, but I’ve left them all on for now as its only been installed for a day!

Overall a great piece of kit – simple, effective and excellent value for money I found.

So you may ask why not go for a “Blackberry” – personally I’m not a huge fan of these – the BIS (Blackberry Internet Service) is poor, to get the most out of them you really need a BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server) – and this transforms them into a really sharp business tool – but comes at a price and requires its own separate physical or virtual (better option) server (do not bolt this onto your Exchange server!!)

The E71 is a good phone – it comes with “Mail for Exchange” – which is easy (ish!) to configure by following the Nokia Mail for Exchange (MfE) Guide – what it doesn’t tell you is you have one opportunity of getting this right, otherwise if you come out of the settings you can’t get back into them and you have to factory default the phone via plugging it into your Laptop / PC and reloading the firmware and software – or as I found out on a forum later, type in *#7370# followed by the factory security code 12345 – and start again.

If you are thinking of buying an E71 – please do, only do configure your MfE first, when it asks for your Exchange Server (Exchange 2003 SP1 and Exchange 2007 SP1 required) make sure you type in your Public-Facing Mail Domain (e.g. mail.yourdomain.com) get this working and then add all your contacts and features!

If you are thinking of mobilising your business – please get in touch and see how I can help you.