Nokia Headset Crams NFC And Bluetooth Into Future-Perfect Pod

Nokia may have fumbled their way to smartphone irrelevance in recent years, but that doesn’t mean they still can’t make us drool over their other hardware. Their new Luna Bluetooth headset is tiny, colourful, and comes with a pod-like dock that’s easy on the eyes. But it’s the built-in NFC hardware that has us most excited.

Unless you spend every waking hour with a Bluetooth headset in your ear, you probably keep your phone’s BT connection disabled until needed to conserve battery life. Which can unfortunately involve constantly digging through an annoying settings menu on some handsets. (COUGH-iPhone-COUGH) But when the Luna is used with an NFC equipped phone, the headset can automatically tell it to power up its BT connection and auto-connect when a call comes in. And then shut it all down again once you hangup and return the headset to its futuristic, yet retro-looking, dock. It also makes pairing as easy as tapping the two devices togethers, with voice prompts providing assistance when you have to manually pair the old fashioned way.

Did we mention it was tiny? The earpiece weighs just five grams while still packing Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, Handsfree profile 1.5, and Headset profile 1.1, which allows it to stay connected and make calls with two phones at the same time. And the all important battery life is promised to be in the neighbourhood of up to eight hours of talktime, with 60 days of standby. The Luna will be available sometime before the end of the year in black, white, fuchsia, green, yellow and blue for around $US95. [Nokia Conversations via Ubergizmo]