Hands Free Car Kits Options - Bluetooth hands-free only - or cradle & antenna? The CK-7W Bluetooth enabled hands-free kit is designed to support not only Nokia handsets but also any other manufacturer's handset that is Bluetooth enabled. There are the obvious benefits associated with this Bluetooth kit; the user is no longer tied to a specific manufacturer's brand or form factor. We suggest that a number of points need to be weighed up before making the commitment to have a Bluetooth hands-free kit installed into a vehicle without a cradle or external antenna: The Bluetooth hands-free kit can only initiate calls by either voice activation or keying in a number. The voice activation on many handsets is limited to 10 numbers - what happens when you want to dial the 11th number and your handset is on the back seat of your car? At best you need to pick up the phone - and then you are breaking the law (and if you are not careful it could be your neck!) If the handset and kit are only connected by Bluetooth, there is no means to charge the handset whilst using the kit. Those of us that use hands-free kits are used to the battery remaining fully charged since the current kit doubles as battery charger. This will not be the case with Bluetooth only kits, clearly an in-car charger may be used but this is not as neat or convenient as the traditional hands-free kit cradle. Another characteristic of the Bluetooth only kit is that since it is "wireless" there is no cradle supplied to support the handset. For the user that is used to a "hard-wired" kit, they will be used to receiving a call and glancing at the handset display (that is conveniently mounted to allow a safe sideways glance) to see who is calling or the status of the handset. This convenience is lost when the handset is left in a jacket or laid on a seat. The vast majority of current hard-wired kits are supported by a glassmount antenna; Clarion (UK) will fit a tax-disc antenna or covert antenna at the time of installing the hard-wired kit. There is no external antenna option with the Bluetooth only handsfree kit. This means that there is a risk of reducing the sensitivity of the mobile handset in the Bluetooth kit versus the same handset in a hard wired kit. Whilst it may cost a few more pounds at the time of installation, we recommend that whenever possible a hands free kit should be supported by a cradle and glass mounted antenna. The flagship Nokia car kit is their 616 car kit phone. This car kit operates quite differently from previous equipment. Ignition sensitive, when you start the car all your contacts are downloaded to the kit (via Bluetooth) and the handset is disabled. You can then interface with the device via voice, the Navi™ Wheel and dashmount LCD display. Nokia has branded this 'seamless handset to in-car environment' technology SIM Access Profile (SAP). Consequently this car kit is only compatible with the handsets supporting SAP (see the Nokia site for supported models). The car kit phone has capacity for 500 contacts (with up to 5 numbers per contact) and two user profiles but only 12 voice tags per user profile. The kit also supports 3 predefined voice commands per user profile (replay voice memos, download contacts and connect wireless headset). SMS messages are displayed via the dashmount LCD screen. << Previous Next >>