Posted by Vince Wadhwani on Oct 02, 2006

A few weeks ago I reviewed the Nokia N73, praising it on most fronts but expressing my disappointment on one side: the audio earbuds. Nokia shipped terrible stereo headset that tangled easily, gave poor sound quality, and did not allow any flexibility in using your own earphones. At the time, the only solution I knew of was the AD-15. Unfortunately, that accessory does not have a microphone which makes it almost useless as a full replacement. But eventually I found a solution I could live with: the HS-20.

First the bad news: getting the HS-20 is not easy. It ships with the Nokia 3350 3250 and a few other phones but I was not able to find it in the US except for from eBay. I happen to be in Bombay this week and even here it took a few trips to a bunch of different shops before I found it.

Now the good news: it rocks. The HS-20 is different than the AD-15 not only in that it has a microphone but that it also has controls to stop, play, pause, adjust the volume, and skip tracks. As expected, it allows you to plug in your own headphones/earbuds and retain the full functionality of the phone. Even so, I found the earphones that came with the HS-20 to be pretty good overall and yet super-duper fantastic when compared to the default set provided with the N73.

Nokia should have made this the standard earbud accessory for all their high end phones regardless of whether they are being billed as music phones or not. If you have the N73 and use it as a pseudo-replacement for an iPod then, at around $20, the HS-20 is a worthy investment.

Update: One minor complaint is that, if your phone is locked and you stop the playback of music with the HS-20, you first have to unlock the phone to restart the music. This is silly since the HS-20 itself has a lock on it to prevent accidentally starting/stopping/skipping, etc. Still, its not a deal breaker in my view.