One of the big selling points about the original Nokia N95, N86 and 5730 XpressMusic (among others) has been that they have hardware music controls. So, while pocketed, or while in another application, or even with eyes closed in bed at night, you can still skip music tracks, pause podcasts, and so on. But with the new breed of touchscreen phones, you're out of luck in this department. Or are you?

So there I was writing up an editorial on Touch vs non-Touch. And there, in the comments, I'm made to feel utterly silly by an iPhone user(!) because I'd forgotten about an accessory that comes in the boxes of many (but not all) smartphones, one that can solve at least one of the problems of touchscreen devices.

You start a music track or podcast playing using the touchscreen of your Nokia 5800 or Samsung i8910 HD or Nokia N97 (or whatever) - what you need to do is to be able to pause it or perhaps cue/review forwards or backwards, or even skip to the next thing in a playlist, all without having to stop your life, concentrate back on the touchscreen and carefully tap the right icon for the right length of time.

One solution is to use a headset that includes full media controls. For example, here's the HS-83 unit that comes in the box with the Nokia N86:

Something similar (the HS-45) comes with every Nokia N97 and I'm sure there are more variations. If your smartphone didn't come with an all-singing, all-dancing media control module in its headset chain then they can be bought on eBay for a token amount. But do go check your original sales box, just in case, it may still be there under all those promo leaflets, cleaning cloths and general debris.

This is going to sound really obvious and I'm almost apologetic for spelling this out, but since I'd forgotten that this was possible (hey, I'm getting old and losing 1000 brain cells a day) then maybe this will help someone else as well:

You can use a media controlling headset to control your touchscreen smartphone

It works really well, as it happens. The headsets mentioned here even have a volume control, so in effect you can leave your touchscreen smartphone, with screen keylocked out, safe in a pocket and have complete control of what's happening with your audio purely from the little control unit.

Disadvantages? Well, there's more wire to worry about - and it's easier for this to catch on a door handle or similar and end up ripping something out of your hand or pocket - I know this to my cost when the remote unit for my old Nokia 5500 proved not to be as robust as the phone itself and had its rear half ripped away after such a cord catch.

There are also often a few chirrups and weird electronic noises over your 'phones with the control unit attached - presumably because there are electrical pulses being passed backwards and forwards and there's bound to be a little interference, especially when actuating buttons.

Overall though, I consider myself chastised for forgetting this useful genre of accessory and hope that it proves useful to others. Happy listening!

Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 4 Dec 2009