Nokia BH-604 review: part 1 background information and physical description

It’s been a long while that I’ve been looking for a good stereo Bluetooth headset. I was trying to get hold of a Nokia-manufactured headset because I wanted to avoid all possible pitfalls of pairing a Nokia handset, namely the N82, with a non-Nokia Bluetooth headset. That’s why I now have Nokia BH-604 up and running here, but before getting into the technicalities let me talk about the purchasing process a little.

First off, it’s worth mentioning that finding handset accessories in Iran is a big trouble. In other words, in spite of the fact that one can find almost all major handsets from all manufacturers here, it’s very difficult to find high-end Bluetooth headsets, Bluetooth speakers, and so on in the market. So it took almost three months to spot one somewhere, and had it not been for the fabulous cooperation of a friend of mine who sells handsets, I couldn’t have found it. To put it in a nutshell, simply don’t expect to be able to call a Nokia store to have a certain accessory delivered to your door. Such a thing doesn’t exist here. Oh well, enough is enough.

Back to Nokia BH-604. At first I was planning to buy Nokia BH-903, but the more I surfed the web, the faster I gravitated toward Nokia BH-604. The BH-903 is also a great stereo headset, weighing only 32 g. However, it has a visual display and I was set to avoid such displays at all costs. I was assuming that a stereo headset with a visual display might display certain inaccessible messages on the screen. Also, the lightness of the handset brings three obvious caveats:

• Small function and multimedia keys,
• Relatively shorter battery life,
• Pretty normal sound quality.

At $200-220, this headset is more expensive than the BH-604 with its $120-150 price tag. At any rate, my choice headset, Nokia BH-604, offers the following:

• Weight: 250 g,
• Battery type: 500 mAh, Lithium-Ion Polymer,
• Talk time: up to 18 h,
• Music time: up to 19 h,
• Standby time: up to 2 weeks,
• Charging time: less than 1.5 h,
• Interfaces: Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR specification,
• Supported profiles: A2DP (advanced audio distribution profile), AVRCP (audio video remote control profile), Handsfree (HFP), and/or headset (HSP) profiles).

As opposed to my BH-604, Nokia BH-903 has an FM radio, offers up to 9 hours of talk time and up to 11 hours of music time, and provides visual access to the phonebook. All in all, I’m satisfied with my choice, and in the next post I’ll be talking about its features, benefits and instructions on how to pair and use it.