RIM’s BlackBerry Music Gateway is a small Bluetooth A2DP music streamer and, well, not anything more. That’s part of the device’s charm: it contains no battery, no screen, and no complicated settings. You plug it in, pair your phone, and start streaming music.
Hands-on with RIM’s new NFC-enabled BlackBerry Music Gateway
RIM’s BlackBerry Music Gateway is a small Bluetooth A2DP music streamer and, well, not anything more. That’s part of the device’s charm: it contains no battery, no screen, and no complicated settings. You plug it in, pair your phone, and start streaming music.
RIM’s BlackBerry Music Gateway is a small Bluetooth A2DP music streamer and, well, not anything more. That’s part of the device’s charm: it contains no battery, no screen, and no complicated settings. You plug it in, pair your phone, and start streaming music.
The main new feature that RIM has added is NFC pairing. Just as with Nokia’s speaker solutions, you can touch any device that utilizes a standard NFC connect protocol to automatically pair and unpair with the device — RIM says it works great with NFC-enabled BlackBerry smartphones (naturally) and Nokia smartphones, but other devices with NFC are hit-and-miss. Of course, you can still pair the old-fashioned way if your phone doesn’t support NFC.
The original Music Gateway had an MSRP of $99.95, which was an awfully steep price for an awfully simple device. The new version that RIM introduced today is half the price, at $49.95 — though even then it’s a little difficult to justify. Still, if you can’t find another way to stream music from your phone to your home stereo system, this fits the bill.
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