Bluetooth stereo headsets
I hadn't read about anyone using stereo Bluetooth headsets with the iPhone. I have a 3G iPhone and just bought a Jabra Halo. When the iPhone is awake, it works great. Although I don't need extreme range, I easily got 20+ ft through a wall and metal meshed cubicle panels when I tried to stress the range. This is in an area with two nearby access points. Running the microwave didn't seem to faze it the least bit either. Poor range and susceptibility to interference were the two most common A2DP horror stories that came up in the past, maybe this is simply a better unit or the implementations have matured a bit.
It seems to handle phone calls very well. It includes built-in mics, the sound quality seems pretty good. I'm not a good judge of that though.
There are two notable drawbacks. One problem is that you can't lock the phone or let it go to sleep / auto lock like you could with a wired headphone and still expect it to keep playing properly. At first it stutters and then goes silent. It seems like the iPhone doesn't have the compute power in sleep mode to handle it, be it output power on the bluetooth radio, or the compression necessary for A2DP. I expect this means a serious battery life hit, I'll have to run it for a day and see how it goes.
Edit: It seems to work fine with locking right now. I'll try to report back later if there's interest. I'll try to see if the audio codec has anything to do with it.
Another, much less serious drawback is that the answer/end button doesn't also control play/pause in regular media playback like the manual says.
It seems to handle phone calls very well. It includes built-in mics, the sound quality seems pretty good. I'm not a good judge of that though.
There are two notable drawbacks. One problem is that you can't lock the phone or let it go to sleep / auto lock like you could with a wired headphone and still expect it to keep playing properly. At first it stutters and then goes silent. It seems like the iPhone doesn't have the compute power in sleep mode to handle it, be it output power on the bluetooth radio, or the compression necessary for A2DP. I expect this means a serious battery life hit, I'll have to run it for a day and see how it goes.
Edit: It seems to work fine with locking right now. I'll try to report back later if there's interest. I'll try to see if the audio codec has anything to do with it.
Another, much less serious drawback is that the answer/end button doesn't also control play/pause in regular media playback like the manual says.
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Another, much less serious drawback is that the answer/end button doesn't also control play/pause in regular media playback like the manual says.
I am not sure there is an A2DP headset out there that is allowed to function properly with iphone, I had noticed that my Motorola S9's are not allowed to control the volume via the headset, while all other functions work, why so ? Whats so special about volume ? The whole point of going wireless was that I wanted to stow the iphone in a pocket and basically leave it there, thankfully my scosche dongle still works, so I can get round it, but its annoying.
The Samsung has a separate play/pause button, and it does work, unlike the Halo's answer/end doubling as play/pause. Track skip forward or back don't work though.