Have you ever felt a deep need, a craving to share your favorite music with all your friends, but couldn't really do so, simply because you didn't have a large-enough speaker available at hand, or the speaker built within your portable music player or mobile phone wasn't powerful enough to cover all the noise around? Well, if you have, then you might actually enjoy quite a lot the device you'll read about as follows, namely the Nobi from Altec Lansing, a portable speaker designed especially for the Nokia Xpress music mobile phones that will certainly make some ears (and heads) turn.

Although it was officially rolled out at some point in late 2007, we've just recently had the chance to take the Nobi for a test spin. However, using this tiny speaker was a very pleasant surprise, since the quality of the audio this thing can output is completely unrelated to its size. I don't really know just what acoustic design Altec Lansing has managed to come up with, but one thing's for sure: it works great.

However, I won't go into any more details regarding this thing's audio capabilities for the time being, because there's a whole chapter in our review dedicated to this issue. What I'll tell you, though, is that the Nobi is just the thing to take along if you're planning a long trip towards a holiday destination and you want some music to accompany you on your way there, whether you're traveling by car, bus or train.

Moreover, the Nobi (or iMT217, as it's officially called) is extremely versatile, so, even if it's been designed specifically for Nokia's Xpress Music phones (or so the company claims), the truth is that it will work with pretty much any audio source that features a 3.5 mm jack. Plus... but wait, let's not spoil the surprise.