The Bluetooth headset has gone from nifty novelty to ubiquitous accessory. They’ve become better and better with each generation, so now that they’ve matured, just how good are they? And what use are they for something other than making you look like you’re talking to yourself?When the first Bluetooth headsets came onto the market, I had been eagerly anticipating Bluetooth technology for years. Back then, wireless networking was still indistinguishable from magic. Unfortunately for me, I was on Sprint, which had a very backward selection of handsets, none of which had Bluetooth. Eventually, I got my hands on the one and only BT phone from sprint, which was hard to get and a littledisappointing. More disappointing were my first experiences with Bluetooth headsets. Muddy, echoey, and just overall substandard. Over time, I got better handsets, and they’ve all had Bluetooth. And from time to time I’d try a new BT headset. A few years ago, I bought what was considered to be one of the better Bluetooth headsets, from Motorola. I think it was an HS850. Rubbish. When I used it, people complained about the sound quality, and eventually it found a space in a drawer somewhere, and there it presumably still lies. Maybe it was just my bad luck. All this time, other people seemed to be happily walking around with dorky, blue-strobing Lieutenant Uhura thingamabobs on their ears. Was it just me?
I decided to give the Bluetooth headset another chance. The Aliph Jawbone seems to be the favorite Bluetooth headset these days, so I asked them to send me one. First off, this is definitely a worthy accessory to an iPhone. The designaestheticis a littledifferent: more angular and stark while the iPhone is curvier and shinier. iPhone = Mercedes Benz, Jawbone = Stealth fighter. But they both hold to a high standard, down to the packaging. Aliph definitely took a page from Apple with the little boxes within boxes packaging motif, compact documentation, nicely-designed accessories, and even the magnetically-attaching power supply. And just look at the thing:
Diamond-patternedaluminum-looking skin, hidden slit of an LED display (white and red, not yesterday’s boring blue), and that leather-wrapped earclip!
The technology sounds impressive too: the noise-cancelingtechnologywas originally developed for military application and uses a special sensor to detect when you are speaking, and then it “models the noise, and aggressively eliminates it.” There’s more detail at their web site,but suffice to say, in their marketing materials, they make some pretty bold claims. So will I end up with a headset that not only isn’t muddy and echoey, but makes my voice sound even clearer than it should by eliminating ambient noise, even loud noise like a small engine or heavy wind?
To try it out, I put the Jawbone on, and went outside and started up my weed trimmer. It’s got a small noisy engine that’s just at the threshold that you can use it without ear protection, but it’s better if you don’t. I fired it up, and started talking. My wife, on the other end of the line, said that she could hear some noise from the weed trimmer, but that it didn’t affect her being able to hear me. Pretty impressive.
Now, this being OSAlert and not a gadget blog or mobile phone review site, I thought that I ought to look at the possible uses for a Bluetooth headset beyond the mobile phone. In fact, before I even paired it with my iPhone, I paired it with my Macbook, and tried making a couple of VoIP calls with Gizmo5. I was able to get it to make calls on the Gizmo network, but was unsuccessful in configuring it to make SIP calls through my regular ViaTalk VoIP account. This would actually be a very useful tool for me while traveling, to be able to make a phone call using a service I already pay for, when, for whatever reason, I had internet access but no cell service or expensive cell service, such as overseas. I contacted Gizmo tech support and they informed me that their latest release was having problems with that particular configuration, and that I should try the next-oldest version. Sure enough, that did the trick, and I was able to make phone calls over Bluetooth through my laptop, and using the VoIP service I’m already paying for (and only $199 for two years).
So aside from VoIP calls, what else could I use this headset for?
It would be handy in the car to be able to perform various functions by voice control. Requesting an address in your nav system. Changing the radio station. Getting information from the trip computer. Why don’t cars give you the option of voice control, now that voice control systems are so good and cars have so much computing power? Typically, the interface design in automotive technology is absolutely atrocious. Ironic, really. The one place where performing your task quickly and with a minimum of fuss is literally a life or death situation, and it’s a complete disaster, UI-wise. Have you seen a late model BMW recently?
There are other areas where a nice Bluetooth headset would be handy for personal computing. Voice recognition software has advanced to such a point that it’s actually feasible to do dictation to your PC.
A good headset, wireless or otherwise, is essential for videoconferencing. Which, by the way, still makes me a little uncomfortable. All the science fiction movies assumed that we’d use video telephones in the future. And now we have them and . . . yuck! I don’t want to watch people while I’m talking to them. You have to make eye contact and not bite your fingernails, and be dressed and all those unpleasant things. But if you have a nice headset while you’re doing your Skype or iChat, at least you’ll sound good while you look uncomfortable.
A nifty headset like this would be great for voice control of software, kind of like Picard’s insignia/communicator on Star Trek. Trouble is, computers aren’t smart enough to really understand natural language, so we’re still in the era of needing to use arcane commands or endure a stilted back-and-forth with the software. The service “TellMe” that you can access by calling 1-800-555-TELL, is probably the most accessible voice-controlled computer you’ll run across, and it works pretty well. Get news or a stock quote or the weather or a bunch of other things you’d normally use the internet for, all through a voice interface. Now that I think of it, TellMe is voice-controlled cloud computing. Kind of cool when you think of it that way. And the most ordinary telephone you can find is your terminal to a mind-blowingly futuristic computing system. Of limited use in its current incarnation, but bound to improve dramatically in the next decade. Now all we need to do is mate the sophistication of TellMe with the hardware in a modern car, and maybe we can stop rear-ending people while we fiddle with switches and menus.
You know, the latest crop of smart phones, my iPhone included, are rather powerful computers. There’s no reason why they couldn’t integrate top-notch voice control functionality, and I don’t mean pre-recording and recognizing names in your address book like cell phones have had for years (but that, shamefully, the iPhone doesn’t do). I mean actual control of the entire device through voice command: “iPod” “Artist: Calexico” “shuffle all” or “Map” “search: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue” or “Search: phone number” “Home Depot” “Arcadia California.” These are things I’d like to be able to do while driving, riding my bike, running on the treadmill, playing World of Warcraft, or while doing any task where fiddling with menus in a graphical user interface is inconvenient or dangerous. This is totally doable, and cool!
So ultimately, the Bluetooth headset that I wanted all those years ago has arrived, and I’m happy to have it. But there’s so much more that a ubiquitous, quality voice-delivery device could bring to modern computing. We now have the hardware of the future. How long will it be until the software catches up?
…I want a pair of Bluetooth headphones that doesn’t sound like crap and drop out every 30 seconds.
Someone fix A2DP already!
Could you be more precise about your bad experiences? This really doesn’t sound good (no pun intended), maybe it was just WLAN interference? What phone/a2dp device combos did you use?
I think your ears are broken.
I’ve tried a Nokia 6300 and an HTC Apache as host devices, and three different phones (Plantronics P590, Jabra BT620s, and some Plantronics earphones I forget the name of). The Jabra worked best, but they all sound fairly poor, with obvious artifacts of heavy MP3-type compression (extremely tinny and artificial upper mids and highs). All three will drop out the audio for a second or two every two or three minutes (the Plantronics P590 is worse), with either host device.
A2DP is just a crap design, and needs to be improved. If you have cloth ears you might not notice the quality issue, I guess, but it’s not a subtle thing at all. It’s not the difference between my Eggo D77s and my Grado HF-1s, it’s just really, really obviously terrible.
edit: oh, and I tried them all for at least one extended trip, so I wasn’t sitting at a desk with a ton of interference around.
Edited 2008-10-02 00:14 UTC
Ad personam attacks are really classy. You know that sarcasm gets stripped over the Internet, so please use some emoticons at least.
As for your point… Well, I use my A2DP headphones outside, in a noisy environment, so I couldn’t care less if they sound a bit worse than wired headphones. I can’t tell the difference when I’m outside (who could, it’s just MP3s I’m playing, not FLAC, I’m not an audiophile). And when I’m inside, I opt for the hi-fi stereo sitting on my desk or normal, wired, honest-to-god headphones. Why? Because I don’t find the convenience of wireless headphones when I’m sitting at my desk appealing or useful. Recharging them alone is annoying and a pointless exercise if you sit at home with wired headphones on the shelf. And I’ve used both wired and wireless headphones, both with a computer and with a phone, so I know the ups and downs. A2DP headphones, at home, non-mobile, are pointless. On the road, you’d have to have some pretty good noise cancelling to notice any difference at all. That comes with a price of being run over by a car though.
“As for your point… Well, I use my A2DP headphones outside, in a noisy environment, so I couldn’t care less if they sound a bit worse than wired headphones. I can’t tell the difference when I’m outside (who could, it’s just MP3s I’m playing, not FLAC, I’m not an audiophile).”
As I said, that’s how I tested them. The quality issues are bad enough to stop me enjoying the music even when I’m listening to a Foo Fighters album (hardly the last word in recording quality) on a moving bus. That’s how bad it is. I’m really not sure how you don’t notice it. A2DP sounds like a 64Kb/s MP3. Heck, it probably *is*.
Bluetooth funny. This one made me laugh…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbBcGVAWuEw
I’m still waiting for a decent bluetooth stereo headset and stereo support to go with the iphone. Seems like that would have been a natural.
Well, iPhone doesn’t support A2DP, which is the stereo Bluetooth profile, so you’ll have to hold on for awhile there.
It might be possible to get mono Bluetooth headphones that broadcast into two earbuds, but stereo headphones will require a wire for the time being. Why? Only Apple knows.
Well, all Nokia E-series and N-series devices… to tell you the truth, probably all Nokia S60 3rd Edition devices have voice recognition built-in. There is no more pre-recording of contact names and you can enable some functions (e.g. bluetooth on/off
) via voice.
There’s also a cool feature that enables the phone to tell you out loud who is calling in-between rings. And I’ve upgraded from E61 to E51 to get A2DP support specifically (which turned out to be great choice, the phone’s interface flies in comparison to the crawl of E61). A2DP works great.
rant -> Symbian maybe not the pinnacle of interface design, but I had the possibility to switch from my Nokia E51 to the iPhone 3G and I did not. But I’m a geek and a FOSS advocate. I want my copy/paste. I want free software titles by the thousands. I don’t want to be locked in. And I don’t want to generalize, I’m sure the iPhone is also cool in some ways for geeks, but I can’t shake off the feeling that there is something really superficial to wanting to have an iPhone. For most, it’s probably the look of the hardware and the look of the software and the way it behaves. /endrant
what some diamond patterning and a relationship with the fruit can do for the popular image…
Don’t let the mention of pairing with an iPhone fool you. The Jawbone was popular long before the iPhone teasers where leaked. It tends to be the better audio quality over the look that does it also.
Even now with the iPhone on the market; I can remove the battery from my PDA and phone yet the Jawbone is still the headset I would be purchasing.
you know, I just had an epiphany about the wired headphones. Apple really tied the ipod to the white wire headphones. I wonder if the decision not to go to a wireless BT headset was partially driven by a desire for an obvious brand identifier that was already widely known.
would not be impossible. if there is something apple is, its brand conscious.
I admit it. I finally got into the nonsense of a headset.
Six months ago, I tried a Plantronics headset that listed for US$130 on their website, though I got it for US$60. It wouldn’t charge correctly and didn’t answer calls or hang up correctly but the ear piece was comfortable. “I have a return, please.”
I’d been reading about Blue Ant and their dual microphone/noise rejection technology and spent the extra money (US$100) and it has been nothing short of amazing. Sprint has a whole menu of things I can do, but the LG synthetic voice really doesn’t help much, although the phone usually recognises the name quickly but that’s the phone and not the headset.
I’m impressed except for one thing–the car tire that sits in my ear. It’s perfectly circular and doesn’t try to bend at all but I wanted good sound and it has it.
After last Christmas, I also bought some Bluetooth accessories for my iPod. Motorola isn’t known for its high quality sound, but the things work well enough for the conditions.
The best wireless device on the planet (and this is true of all wireless, not just bluetooth) doesn’t match up to a $5 cable.
The quality of the audio is only going to be good as the quality of the codec implementation in the headset. Because of the way A2DP works, the headset is effectively the real “media player”. Also, if the headset doesn’t support the encoding of the files you’re playing or your player isn’t written to support A2DP directly, the audio has be decompressed, re-encoded into something that is supported, and the decompressed again. How’s that for brain damage?
The only way this would make sense to me is if it were streaming raw PCM, but bluetooth doesn’t have the bandwidth for that. The way it is now, not only does the headset have to have logic to support the bt protocol stack, but it has to implement a bunch of audio codecs. So they’re not really just headphones but a portal media player that sits on your head and uses your iPOD –or whatever– for storage.