Nokia's new Symbian Belle smartphones may be dominating the headlines, but also breaking cover today is the Nokia Essence Bluetooth Stereo Headset, a high-quality mobile accessory that taps into the NFC capabilities of Nokia's new Symbian heroes. 

Say hello to Symbian Belle, Nokia's new smartphone OS

The Nokia Essence headset is Nokia's highest performance in-ear headset to date, and boasts 99 per cent noise cancellation from a package that's remarkably lightweight and pocketable.

The secret sauce is Nokia's Active Noise Cancellation territory, which eliminates nearly all background noise to ensure maximum audio quality and clarity while taking calls, and of course the minimum of distracting white noise if you're listening to music.

Like most noise-cancellation technologies, Nokia's works by constantly sampling ambient noise using outward-facing microphones and then producing opposing audio wavelengths that neutralises this noise before it reaches your ears.

Of course, some noise-cancellation technologies are better than others, but Nokia claims the quality of the components and algorithms used by the Nokia Essence headset is the highest it's ever produced.

Moving on, the controls are housed on a compact console and as you'd expect, there are the usual essential transport controls for audio playback, as well as call-handling controls too.

Being based around Bluetooth, the Nokia Essence headset will work with any Bluetooth capable device from any manufacturer, from phones to MP3 players and everything in between. But it's a particularly good match for Nokia's brand new Symbian Belle handsets as – like the phones themselves – the Nokia Essence has built-in NFC capabilities.

That means pairing up the headset to your phone is as simple as tapping one to another, with the rest happening automatically.

We're still waiting to hear just when the Nokia Essence headset will be available, and the kind of price we're looking at, but we're certainly impressed by what we've seen so far.