HandsfreeKit
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Parrot Minikit Smart windshield mount cradles your phone, caresses its Bluetooth, charges its battery
Smartphones make great navigation devices (where still allowed by law), but trying to read the things while they slide about on the dash or peek out of a cupholder is hardly ideal. Universal windshield holders help, but none are as smart as the Parrot's latest. How smart is it? Why, it's right there in the title. The Minikit Smart will hold smartphones "whatever their size" -- so long as that size is between 56 and 70mm in width. It has an integrated speaker and telescoping microphone that connects to your phone over Bluetooth, boosting your celly's paltry internal speaker so that you can better hear directions and, of course, make hands-free calls. There's also a USB pass-through, so that you can not only charge this unit while driving but charge your phone. Imagine how happy and secure your phone would feel when being spooned like this, but at $129 it had better be over the moon.
Nextar cuts the cord with solar-powered in-car handsfree kits
While we feel that some objects shouldn't be solar powered for the sake of being solar powered, we can't help but dig Nextar's approach here. The NXBT-001 / NXBT-002 seem to primarily differ only in the amount of charge they can hold, with the former offering 250 hours of standby time / 10 hours of talk time and the latter boasting 150 hours of standby time and 6 hours of yappin'. As for functionality, both devices are designed to enable handsfree calling in the car with any Bluetooth-enabled mobile, and of course, they each soak up the sun while you're out cruising about. The best part? The fact that you no longer have to run yet another power cable to that 8-port cigarette adapter hub sitting in your center console. The pair will ship this Spring for $59.99 / $69.99 (thanks to a bundled caller ID display), respectively. Full release is after the break.
Parrot's NOMAD handsfree kit promises killer sound quality
There's certainly no shortage of Bluetooth handsfree kits designed to keep your hands on the wheel (without necessarily making you safer), but they can be notoriously difficult to use in noisy environments -- like cars, for example. Parrot is showing off its new NOMAD kit, touting the three years of research it allegedly poured into signal processing algorithms to maximize sound quality. The device conveniently clips to a visor and seems portable enough to tote around as a personal speakerphone, offering 10 hours of talk time and over a week of standby. Pricing is unknown, but expect it drop this month.[Via BlueTomorrow]
Internet fad inspires laughable "hands free" kit
The image on the left is a fairly typical example of the casual joke emails that I get from friends and clueless Engadget interns: a momentarily entertaining picture, in this case of a dude using an elastic band as a makeshift hands free kit (incidentally, it's also the third result on Google Images for "hands free kit"). With this in perspective, you'll understand the overwhelming compulsion I had to slap myself in the forehead when I saw that someone is trying to flog an elastic band hands free kit -- complete with an example shot identical to the joke image -- onto unsuspecting punters. I hope, nay, pray it's some sort of joke, although the amount of effort that appears to have gone into the design of the packaging forces me to suspect otherwise.[Via Slashphone]
