Mobile Fun Blog

How to make the most of your Fitted Car Kit

Tuesday, June 17th, 2008

One of the biggest accessory purchases you can make for your mobile phone is to buy and install a fitted Car Kit. While each kit has its own features and benefits, there are a number of extras that you can purchase to help you get the most out of your Car Kit.

Elan Intelli-Mutes

Elan Intelli-Mutes: What are they and why do I need one?

The Intelli-Mute from Elan is designed to install your Car Kit quickly and hassle free. Instead of hardwiring your Car Kit into the vehicle’s power supply, the Intelli-Mute allows your Car Kit to be powered using your car stereo. All call audio is routed through the car stereo speakers, taking away the need to install a separate speaker in the passenger foot well, which can often lead to muffled or distorted sounds – especially at higher speeds. The volume of the call can be adjusted through your stereo controls or steering wheel audio controls (if fitted to your vehicle).

Intelli-Mute wiring Diagram

The Intelli-Mute is a three way lead, one end connects to your existing vehicle wiring, one to the Intelli-Mute control box and the third connects to the back of your car stereo. You will need to make sure that the Intelli-Mute that you order is the correct one for your stereo. If you are not sure what connection type your stereo has, please contact your local car dealership or stereo manufacturer. To complete the installation, you will also need an Accessory Harness specific to your Car Kit.

Elan Accessory Harness

Elan Accessory Harness: What are they and why do I need one?

The Accessory Harness is the lead that connects your Intelli-Mute control box to your Car Kit. As each type of Car Kit is different, they have harnesses specific to each type and have to be ordered separately. They are really simple to fit, one end connects to the Intelli-Mute control box, and the other end to the power and speaker connections of your Car Kit. Depending on your vehicle and the amount of space in your dashboard, the Intelli-Mute and harness are designed to sit behind your car stereo. If there isn’t room, the cables are long enough for you to be able to feed from behind the dashboard where there is more space. All you will need to do then is position the microphone (and display screen if present) and feed the cables through to the Car Kit control box.

What else might I need?

Brodit produce a range of in car accessories to help make using your phone in the car easy and safe.

Brodit ProClips

ProClips are brackets that clip securely to your dashboard, giving you a firm, flat surface that you can screw your chosen phone holder on to. When it comes time to change your car or remove the kit, the bracket can be removed easily, leaving no damage to your dashboard.

Brodit Car Holders

Brodit also make two types of in car holder, Active and Passive. Active holders have a charger built in to them which plugs in to your cigarette lighter. Passive holders will hold your phone securely and allow you to use your own charger. Both holders are normally available with a fixed or tilt/swivel base.

Car Chargers

Using Bluetooth car kits and headsets can sometimes increase the drain on the battery, and as most modern Car Kits don’t have a physical connection to your phone, its always a good idea to have a car charger.

If you don’t want the hassle of installing the Car Kit and all extra accessories, Mobile Fun now offer a fitting service for your car kit. Standard Installation includes a fully trained engineer installing the kit at your home or work address. Premium Installation includes the home visit, but also includes an Intelli-mute and Brodit ProClip for your vehicle (Car kit dependant).

(3 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)

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My weekend with the KF600

Monday, April 7th, 2008

This weekend I decided to take a break from my Nokia N82 and spend a little time with the LG KF600.

The KF600 is the latest handset from the Korean manufacturer and is trying to change the way that we use our phones with the introduction of its “InteractPad”.

The phone looks stylish, is a decent size and weight and feels well built. The one thing you notice immediately is the lack of keys on the front of the phone. The KF600 is a touch phone, but with a twist. Rather than having a large touch screen display that drains battery power, the screen has been split into two parts, the display and the InteractPad.

The InteractPad is a unique way of using your phone, from the standby screen you have 6 touch sensitive keys, and as you move through the different screens of the phone, these buttons move and adapt to suit the application you’re using. In some cases I found the InteractPad to be a bit awkward, but in other applications it works really well.

I tend to use my phone mainly for photo’s, music, email, internet and texting rather than making calls. The camera on the KF600 is a 3 megapixel and has an LED flash. Photo’s come out clear and pretty sharp, and if you print them out they will be of a decent quality at 6″ x 4″ size. The flash is ok for taking photo’s in low light close up, but if what you’re taking photo’s of is more than a metre away, it probably won’t be much use.

The KF600 works really well as an MP3 player. There’s a dedicated shortcut key on the side of the phone for quick access and I found it easy to transfer tracks to the phone using Bluetooth or the data cable and software that came with it. The music interface is probably the best use of the InteractPad, you have the usual play/pause, forward and rewind, as well as a track progress bar. Normally these just scroll along with no purpose, but with the interact pad you can simply drag the slider to get to the part of the track you want – great if you want to skip sections of podcasts.

Email and texting works well too. Predictive text meant writing messages is quick and easy, and setting up POP3 email was very straight forward. The only thing I found to be not so great here was the handwriting recognition. In theory it sounds great, but in reality, writing with the end of your finger just isn’t accurate enough, and for hardcore texters, you’ll be able to text using the keypad a lot faster.

Internet access on the KF600 is pretty standard, it runs off a GPRS connection, so a fairly slow connection, but if you just want to check the odd train time or find out what’s on at the cinema then it does the job with no problem at all.

Overall the KF600 is a good all round handset. It will take a little getting used to with the InteractPad, and for the first few days I can guarantee you’ll be touching the top half of the screen and wondering why nothing is happening, but give it a week and you’ll be flying through the menus, but once you’ve got used to the interact pad, you may struggle to go back to a conventional phone.

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