I still have three city photo essays to post for y'all: Goa, Mumbai, and Vienna; but unfortunately work has intruded. Darned work that I have to get done before I leave for SXSW on Thursday. In the meantime, while I was packing up The Box to send back to WOM World today, I wrote up my thoughts on the accessories that I took out on my leg of the Urbanista Diaries mobile adventure.

The Nokia Bluetooth Keyboard : Like it, but it takes a bit of practice to get the typing right. Even with practice, I will still making more typos than I would on a regular keyboard, of which part of that may be the bluetooth keyboard's size and part of it may be the small screen of which I could not always see what I was typing. I had been looking into getting a bluetooth keyboard before the trip and using it to type a whole blog post to a photo rather than just a headline was very convenient. I used the keyboard to compose several posts to this blog via Lifeblog on the N82 and was quite happy with the results. The only thing that was a bit of a pain is that the keyboard was not automatically found by the N82 but I had to download software for the phone to run the keyboard.

Nokia BH-602 bluetooth headset: I really didn't use this while in India, as I was not making a lot of calls. I did start to use it when I got home to try it out and other than the awkwardness of it being made for a bigger ear, I quite like it. It doesn't fully stay on my ear and wiggles around a bit, but I do like the lack of wires. The sound quality is a bit fuzzy with some crackles. If the price were under $60, I would buy it. But given that it is over $100, I won't be purchasing one.

The Proporta Charger: This would have been a very handy accessory to have for the trip to recharge the phone batteries while on the go, as the phone would lose battery power about half way through every day of photos plus GPS plus Sports Tracker running. Only one problem with the Proporta Charger, it never worked. I got a gimpy charger that even when it was fully charged, it would not charge another device. I tried a number of times, Jay tried when he was in Chennai, and the Proporta was declared defective on arrival. Good thing I had my own Power Monkey with me and the Power Monkey ended up being the best and most used accessory of the trip.

Generation X Cell Antenna: Ok, they are small, cheap, and sticky, but it works. I put the cell antenna extender in one phone and had another one that I did not have an extender on and then would test both in multiple situations. The cell antenna extender worked to boost at least one bar for phone calls and improved data connections. For all of my friends who are complaining about the dropped calls on their iPhones, too bad that they can't get into the battery compartment of the iPhone to add one of these little guys.

Nokia GPS Modules: I didn't use these. I had good GPS reception everywhere and had no problems with GPS to Sports Tracker, except for the lack of cell towers in the Mumbai Harbor (which was not a GPS problem but a Sports Tracker settings problem), so I never trotted this out. I carried one with me, but didn't need to use it. Part of the reason I may have not cared to use this GPS module was the lack of screen and/or LED read out made it boring to use. It is just a black plastic ovoid. Huh. Screen please with geo-coordinates. Nokia, make this thing fun to use.

Now all these accessories are back in the box awaiting their trip back to the UK tomorrow via the nice folks at DHL. I will be sad to see the bluetooth keyboard and headset go.