In a nutshell:

Turn your blower into a wireless handset for VoIP chat on your PC and Instant Messenger. Does it live up to Mobiola’s claims though, or are is it just a load of hot air? The long answer is after the jump. The short answer is no. We gave it 1 star.

What is it?

An app to turn your phone into a wireless mic to use with your PC for VoIP chat and instant messaging

What’s it good for?

Clearing your desktop of yet more cables!

Judgement time…

Mobiola Microphone lets you use your mobile as a microphone with your PC. Its makers claim your phone can double as a ‘high quality’ mic that’s perfect for chatting online or just recording sounds onto the desktop. That, dear readers, is absolute twaddle.

The microphone in your phone is seriously sub-standard, no matter what model you own – there’s simply no point putting a decent microphone into a mobile, as it’ll sound the same as a terrible one over a phone line, and that’s why no-one else makes software to attempt what Mobiola has.

Connecting the phone to PC is a simple process, but fraught with hurdles. If you haven’t installed Nokia’s PC Suite on your computer the install process will stall as it tries to send the mobile portion of the software to your phone. That’s because Mobiola haven’t done anything fancy with their software, they just expect Windows to know how to handle a mobile phone software file. If Nokia’s software’s not there to help it out, it can’t do the job.

Once the software’s on the phone it’s a simple process though – connecting to the PC is fast and smooth, and setting the phone as an input to Windows Live Messenger was easy, thanks to Mobiola’s rock solid drivers.

There’s even an input meter on Mobiola’s Windows software to show the sound levels coming from the phone’s microphone, but it’s incredibly deceptive as the input level is constantly low.

Even shouting into the microphone on an N76 only just registered in Windows’ sound recorder, while the noise was garbled and unintelligible.

So, the software might succeed in connecting your mobile’s mic to Windows, but the ultimate question is: what’s the point? It’s terrible quality and a bit of a performance to get it going in the first place.

Yes, the prospect of a wire-free mic is an attractive one, but when it’s this bad quality, and when the software costs as much as a far superior wired version, it’s a pointless exercise.