General

Bluetooth to the rescue

Since receiving the audio adapter from Seidio I thought I might have all, or at least most, of my problems resolved. And indeed in the beginning things were working out find. But the microphone for this audio adapter sits low with the phone (if your phone is on your hip then the mic is by your hip). Still it seemed to work OK most of the time.

And it was wonderful using my Sony earbuds that fit comfortably and sound good. But the basic problem in all of this is wires! You gotta have a wire from your ears to the phone thus you are shackled in a way. Worst yet, if listening to the phone in the car you usually have the phone on your right hand side and since you do want to obey the law and put on your seat belt these wires cross. Plus sometimes when getting out of the car the wire wraps around the seat belt buckle or otherwise get tangled or your sitting on it or something. Invariably you yank the earbud out of your ear and the little rubber portion pops out and then you're on your hands and knees searching under your car for a black rubber earbud on black pavement!

Also, since you're occasionally yanking the wire it causes additional wear and tear and eventually you're hearing only one channel in your stereo earbuds or the mic no longer works when placing a call.

So rather than purchase another audio adapter and/or the corresponding new set of Sony earbuds I decided to look into some Bluetooth headsets. Now most of them are like headphones, bulky and wear on your ears (usually) over time. Many of them are of the behind the head variety which I detest. I'd like earbuds similar to my Sony's that allow me to do Bluetooth.

Sony (and Ericson) to the Rescue!

Then I found the Sony Ericson HBH-DS9700 Bluetooth Wireless Stereo Headphones.

These seem to be nicely designed and like my current Sony's so I purchased them (~$89). Of course, my PPC-6700 doesn't do wireless Bluetooth audio by default but I found an A2DP "hack" on the PDAPhoneHome forum to enable my phone to work with these Bluetooth earbuds. When the earbuds arrived I had already applied the hack and was able to pair up the earbuds to my phone. You wear the earbuds like necklace and the earbuds themselves plug into your ears. There is a small portion that hangs down your neck which houses the Bluetooth receiver with some buttons for Play/Pause, Next/Prev Track and Volume control. There also a switch to turn on single or multipoint mode. Singlepoint mode means the earbuds only talk to one other device (your phone). Multipoint means that it can talk to up to 10 devices.

Remaining Problems

Hopefully I'll update this entry as I find solutions to these problems:

• Remote control not working: The various buttons do not work on the Bluetooth receiver. Play/Pause, Next/Previous, Volume, etc. don't do anything. They appear to work with WMP but not TCPMP which I prefer. I believe I need the find the proper AVRCP (Audio/Video Remote Control Profile for Bluethooth). More on that when I figure it out...
• Skipping at start of track: There's an annoying skipping of music for the first 10-15 seconds of each track. Then it smooths out. Others have reported this problem. The skipping or gaps of silence sounds similar to when you step out of range of the Bluetooth. It may be a buffering issue, I'm not sure...
• Loss of Bluetooth Pairing: If I hit the phone/talk button on the headphones the phone switches to voice tags. Thereafter my Bluetooth pairing is lost. One solution is to power off and on the Bluetooth receiver - not good.
• Caller ID/Track name: I don't seem to have Caller ID or the track name being displayed on the Bluetooth receiver.