Adaptor woes, changing headphones on the Nokia E71
Troubleshooting, Miscellaneous, Communications General, S60 3rd EditionQ. I'm new to Symbian phones, but really loving my Nokia E71. I think it is a thing of beauty and probably the greatest phone I have ever owned. I have one slight niggle though, the provided headset hurts my ears. I got a 2.5mm to 3.5mm adapter and bought a high quality stereo headset with a 3.5mm 4 pole jack. But the phone won't recognise it as a headset, though music plays OK. How can I use the headset for calls as well?
A. The problem here is that your 2.5mm to 3.5mm adapter only has 3 'poles', i.e. it is designed for music playback only, there's no fourth 'pole' for carrying the microphone signals.
If you don't make that many calls via headset, it's reasonably practical to just lift the phone near your mouth when you need to say something, since the internal E71 microphone will still work. If this seems too much like a kludge or if you make a lot of calls, then it's worth going to Maplins or a similar specialist electronics retailer and asking specifically for a '4 pole' 2.5mm to 3.5mm adapter – they do exist!
(This original text of mine was originally published in Smartphone Essentials magazine and re-purposed here with kind permission)