Orange launches HD Voice Calling – is it necessary?

You would be forgiven for thinking high definition only mattered with images and video, but sound can be high definition too. It’s just that no-one really bothered producing or enabling it on digital devices. But Orange has stepped into the breach and is now promising HD Voice on three new handsets with more to come.

Is it really necessary? Well they claim HD voice makes speech sound clearer as well as better and that it reduces background noise, allowing you to make phone calls from places where you usually can’t – at concerts, in clubs.

This video claims to show up the difference… Convinced? tell us in the poll below.

How does it work?
It’s about Orange giving over more bandwith to carrying voice calls. They explain:
“HD Voice runs on the 3G network and uses the WB-AMR (Wideband Adaptive Multi-Rate) speech codec. This provides excellent audio quality due to a wider speech bandwidth of 50-7000 Hz compared to the current narrowband speech codec of 300-3400 Hz. The WB-AMR (Wideband Adaptive Multi-Rate) delivers significantly enhanced sound quality while utilising the same network resources.”

How do I get it?
Orange HD Voice is free but you need to buy an HD Voice enabled handset. From launch, new variants of the Nokia 5230, Nokia X6, Nokia E5 and Samsung Omnia Pro will be HD Voice enabled with further manufactures expected to offer HD handsets in the coming months.

See more on Orange

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