3 posts tagged “bluetooth”
I will begin by saying I'm not one of your hardened shoppers who stalks and waits for the deals and such... I just went mainly as I wanted to gift Sol and Aurelia their presents early for Christmas. The line was terribly long... We all waited in line by the loading docks at about 4:45am in the chill cold. Personally, I regretted not wearing my wool coat out as I froze pretty quickly. We all were talking about some of the old times in our lives and trying to laugh to forget the bitter cold. Once 5:00am hit, the store opened the flood gates... What I witnessed was pure animal-like shopping chaos. People shuffling, mass hoarding items, waiting like cattle to get claim checks for high demand items... It was something that would get companies like OSHA concerned.
The art of Black Friday shopping has seriously evolved since the advent of new consumer technologies. I saw many people with mobile phones trying to have other family members triangulate items together to rendezvous at a central point to ensure they would get the best sale items. Some power shoppers had their Bluetooth headsets on so both hands could focus on grabbing items... Of course with human nature, you had people yielding to their territorial instincts of hoarding items and fighting with others over a single material item because it was the last one on sale. The local police were on hand to handle things like major riots, which I didn't see any of those luckily.
My main purpose was to try picking up a 4GB Memory Stick Pro Duo ($29.99) for my PSP for movie purposes but well, that was a failure as they changed the deal to a 2GB model for $17.99. Though my main purpose was to to get Bluetooth headsets for cheap to give to Aurelia and Sol for an early Christmas. They are two people who are on the phone quite a bit with their friends and complaining about how their hand or neck hurts from all the talking they do. Sol ended up getting the exact same model Bluetooth headset as me for his phone. He was a bit limited in his choices due to his phone being an older model Sony Ericsson P910i, so I got him the HBH-V705 which is a nice, sleek model with a very professional polish to its look. I managed to snag that for 50% off which was an awesome kill! Aurelia was hoping for the slick Jabra headset she had her heart on, but well she found a Plantronic MiX tower that had more female oriented headsets there. She would get the MiX 330 which is a remix of the original Plantronics Explorer 330 with a white and silver body color and adorned with Swarovski crystals. The MiX 330 ended up being $20 off so it was not too bad. They both were stoked for me to front for their gifts, which ultimately made me happy.
I was not about to leave empty handed, I wanted to see if I could pick up a PSP title for cheap. I found the last copy of Guilty Gear Judgment (with the bonus Guilty Gear XX #reload) and a screen protector for normal price, but it should be plenty fun for when I need my "fighter" or "beat-em-up" fix. While the game was not popular, it beats the imported edition from Japan where Judgment and Guilty Gear XX #reload were both separate game UMD's at $30 - $40 a disc.
Everyone walked out happy, which I was thankful for. Sure, we waited in bitter cold for about close to an hour to get in the shop, but the "spoils of war" were grand. The expensive part of my gifting is done, but the last will come in 2 weeks when I go shopping at Strapya World for everyone else. I just want to put some good karma in the pool for all of those who've supported me when I was down. Not all things can be had at Black Friday, however...
This year, I have noticed that the deals were mediocre rather than spectacular in the paper/in-store ads. The online shops are finally getting better with their "ads" or Thanksgiving sales. Apple did their sale online with slashing prices about $300 here and their on their machines. Newegg has continued on with their tradition as usual. Some shops like Best Buy and Target has some "ONLINE ONLY" specials that you simply couldn't rush to the store for. I feel the next step forward will only be a fusion of both sorts of sales for places that have a physical store front... But at the same rate, they need to make sure the servers can handle the loads of shoppers pounding the servers. I was unable to get in on a deal at Frys.com for the 4GB Memory Stick Pro Duo as the server kept timing out, but on finally being able to... the server had a MySQL error preventing the transaction from going on any further. Oh well, there's always next time.
Please also see my edit about my new experiment with this headset. - Zero
A lot of sites (like C|Net's Review) gave this headset a terrible review complaining of the minor things like the weight of the headset was uncomfortable or the design was not adjustable. I felt those are more of "your mileage may vary" sort of commentary. At the time of this headset's release, not many phones had the A2DP profile, so that may have something to do with some of the unfavorable reviews. I will factor that the initial "buy-in" price ($130) during the headset's release rather expensive being another reason that the reviews came out so unfavorably on this headset. I would like to redeem this headset because I actually picked them up locally from a local retailer for half-off.
I originally wanted to pick up the Motorola HT820 headset, but when I read the poor battery life being the headset's failing with an estimate 3-4 hours of total over all life, I was a bit hesitant. The packaging doesn't even make mention of battery life, just that it's a stylish headset and functional at a price of $90. For me, a useful Bluetooth headset needs to have great battery life as being the first criteria and then design and function are the next criteria that must be fulfilled. The alternative that I was considering but hesitant on dropping the cash was the Sony Ericsson HBH-DS970 with the earbuds and pendant style form, but with a poor design with great battery life it was not worth the retail value of $130. Close to the two headsets was the Jabra BT620s headset but with a dramatic price change from $110 to $60. It was a diamond in the rough, but saving $30 was not a bad idea and I figured "why not?" It was a gamble, but I felt it was a worthy gamble as my experience would prove from my experience.
Unpacking the headset proves easy and same for preparations. The headset takes about 3 - 4 hours to completely charge. Also with the AC charger, there is a USB cable that allows you to use the headset as a wired computer headset and charge the headset at a slower pace. I will give Jabra kudos for making a great indicator system. The headphones have two clear rings that have 3 colors that light up according to status. Here's how it breaks down from the manual:
If you don't like looking like a club light strobe, you can kill the blue flash by simultaneously pressing and holding the call and media buttons together for 5 seconds and it will turn them off until the next recharge. Pairing is simple, hold down the call key until the left status lamp turns solid blue entering "Find Me" mode. Ask the phone to connect to it and enter the passkey to sync to the headset. For musical use, my phone (P990i) immediately recognized all of the functions such as being used as a headset for calls, a music output device, and track control was the real shocker. The power to skip tracks, play/pause/stop playback was mentioned with "limited compatibility" to devices, so it was something to really celebrate about.
Left side - Solid blue: Pairing mode
Left side - Flashing blue: Linked Phone mode
Right side - Flashing blue: Linked Audio mode
Flashing red (Both sides): Low battery
Solid Red (Both sides): Charging
Solid Green (Both sides): Full charge complete
As far as sound quality and tonal range... I feel that the device is sufficient for your casual music listener. The tonal range capability is pretty wide and the headset's performance does not favor one genre over another. My phone's equalizer settings show dynamic changes in the headset as well! This excited me a great deal, as a good dynamic range and great sound quality are good things to see from this headset. The only caveat is sometimes the sound transfer has hick-ups and gaps, but this was a problem when the phone was separated about 5 - 6 feet away from the headset. A minor set-back if anything. The surprising part was on tapping the right ear piece, it automatically loaded the media player. Something that I also didn't expect to be supported, much like the track skipping compatibility with my phone.
Tested Songs
"Apologize" Ft. OneRepublic by Timbaland
"Chop Me Up" Ft. Timbaland & Three-6 Mafia by Justin Timberlake
"Papercut/Big Pimpin" mash-up of Linkin' Park and Jay-Z
"Drumhead Pulsation" from the Guilty Gear Isuka Soundtrack
"What Hurts The Most" by Rascal Flatts
"Bloody Tears" from the Castlevania 20th Anniversary CD
"Adelaide" by Anberlin
"Bat Country" by Avenged Sevenfold
"Bodysnatchers" by Radiohead
"Humanity" by ATB
Edit about 24 hours later - I had a crazy experiment to try to listen to the radio while streaming the sound to the Bluetooth, but the only caveat is that my phone requires that you use the wired stereo headset as an antenna for radio signals. I would plug up the headset/antenna to my phone, then transfer the streaming radio broadcast to my headset for the experiment and I would be met with success. The funny part was there was no instances of skipping audio. I was listening to the radio for a straight 2 hours for a intensive test. The signal was crisp and clear with no problems. This leads me to a hypothesis that the Bluetooth chipset is not hindering the on board audio transfer and also that this is not a RAM related problem (aka memory leak)... I now personally believe that the Memory Stick Pro Duo slot is not reading the data fast enough for the data transfer to the Bluetooth stereo headset to properly process the sound. This problem may possibly be phone related and not due to the headset.
For calls... picking up calls and managing calls is rather simple. The calls come in stereo sound to the user resulting in very crisp quality. I would call two folks for test calls to see if I could debunk the poor reviews saying that the sound quality was poor on the receiving end. I would get called by my girlfriend Aurelia and later call my cousin Sol to do a test. Aurelia has a Blackberry Pearl on T-Mobile and Sol has a Sony Ericsson P910i on T-Mobile as well. Both reported that my voice came in very clear and without coming off as sounding tinney or echoing with reverberation. That pleased me a great deal.
The fusion of call and music management, I feel I would have to test multiple phones before I can offer a fair opinion on it... When a call comes in, the music immediately cuts out for my phone and I hear a beep tone letting me know a call is trying to come in. On picking up, the connection happens rather quickly... The only issue arises when the call ends and then the music resumes. Due to the poor amount of RAM that the P990i has on it (the primary culprit for many of its short comings), there's about a 5 second delay and the music then resumes. Not the smoothest transition unfortunately. This portion of the review, I really want to do a fair review on it... but I can't quite do it as I only have one available phone to test it out on. If you have a Bluetooth stereo compatible (A2DP) phone and would not mind me spending about 20 minutes to an hour to compile information on this portion of the review, please contact me, I can compensate for your time with food or something.
My closing thoughts on the Jabra BT620s are in favor of the headset ONLY if you pay about $60 or less for it. It definitely is not worth it if you're paying anymore than that price. The audio quality, simplicity, and design are great with the documented battery performance of 240 hours of standby, 16 hours of calls, and 14 hours of streaming music. The comfort level is debatable as some may feel the headphones are uncomfortable or too snug... This is the only "con" about the design as the "Street Style" (if you want to use Sony's name for the design) headphones are more of a "one size fits all" solution. Personally, I felt the headphones as very comfortable to my ears. With crisp sound quality from the musical part and clear calls on the phone side, the Jabra BT620 is a bargain buy for the gadget geek looking to get a value for cheap!
I offer a challenge to those who may be reading this and feel that my review was not fair: If anyone out there has a Motorola HT820 or a Sony Ericsson HBH-DS970 that they want me to do a "shoot-out" review, I am more than willing to take up the challenge and offer a fair "dissection" of the headset to the Jabra BT620s. The only part is, I cannot expense the purchase of the competing headsets. If you are willing to let me borrow yours or if you want to even spiff me one unit of the device for a link exchange or food and drink, I am more than willing to oblige. Contact me and we'll talk.
I have been terribly backlogged in stuff and haven't had time to write a proper review on things... so... I would like to get that squared away.
Strapya World [Legend Cross] Collection Phone Charms
I am one of the people who falls into line with the Asian (primarily Japanese and Hong Kong Chinese) belief that a person should have a lucky talisman around them. Talismans are thought to be a trinket or charm to give the bearer protection or have properties to positively influence the lives of their users. In the modern day, Asian societies have had a thing for putting cell phone charms on their mobile phones as a means of protecting themselves or boosting certain aspects of their lives. Things like anti-evil wards, money blessings, empowering health, and even charms to boost ones romantic life or for making a wish. I was looking for a charm or strap to put on my next phone, because when I owned the Nokia E62 and the Palm Treo 680... these enterprise communicators just simply lack a place for phone charms or wrist straps. I was initially looking to get a phone strap that had a charm that senses the cell phone tower waves when the phone receives a call, for the few times I put the phone on "silent" mode on my desk, face down with out the vibrate.
To my dismay, the selection for those type of charms is rather limited. But Google would eventually lead me to Strapya World. It is one of my favorite places for getting something unique for the people and friends I care about dearly after my great experience there save for one small imperfection. Their selection is unique and huge so it's pretty easy to find something for everyone. There was one section that had me interested... the luck and magic charms section. I liked the designs in this particular section mainly from how interesting they are. The Legend Cross series piqued my curiosity as the design is unique, but the price won't break wallets. I liked the designs so much that I bought all 5 designs. The nice part is that they looked far better in person than the online pictures give them credit for.
The only imperfection with my set was that on the "Pledge of Peace" or "Gladius" (which is on the package) cross... The blue "gem" wasn't glued on properly and fell off during the shipping. I managed to fix it, so no harm there. I really liked the "Red Devil" or "Chaos" cross the most, personally, as it fits with how I am the "black sheep" of the family. I will post pictures of the charms later on with better detail and post repairs for the "Gladius" cross. Each cross was about a little over $4.50 USD, but totally worth it.
Playing Around with a LIVE T-Mobile version of the Motorola RAZR2 V9
With October 15th looming in the horizon of T-Mobile USA's launch of the RAZR V9, people are hyped over the phone's release to T-Mobile. Initially, people were pissed that T-Mobile's rendition was going to be the weakest of them all without expandable memory card access being the buzz kill... Until there was a shocking change in plans. The T-Mobile version got tweak with 2GB of flash memory built into the phone! The fun didn't stop there... The T-Mobile one uses the newest version of the pure Linux operating system. As far as the features go, nothing has changed from the other versions for Sprint, AT&T, Verizon, and so on.
The T-Mobile shop had one to play around with today (October 13th) and frankly... I am impressed that Motorola is finally in a positive step forward for progress. The new system that the phone is based on is pretty quick and responsive, unlike the Java/UNIX fusion system or even the problematic P2K system. The fit and finish of the phone is very sharp. It is a cut above how the RAZR of the past was and even the "upgraded" versions such as the V3i. Once again, it has the flash and wow effect that the predecessor (the V3) had on the market when it first came out... I can already see eBay or craigslist sales go wild over the RAZR2 much the same vein as the RAZR did back in the day. Personally, the 2GB built into the phone is a great move for those who aren't technologically knowledgeable, because they don't have to go "What memory card do I need?". It's just a plug-n-play affair. This is a godsend for folks like my father who is not the most technologically advanced guy when it comes to phones... but he does love music.
As it stands, my father may be getting one when I sign up... so you may be seeing some live photos and a more detailed review at some point. Keep an eye out here if and when the phone comes in.
Sony Ericsson HBH-PV705 Bluetooth Headset
With family blowing up my phone every now and then, they usually have had an ironic timing to notify me about something before I come home or leave a place. Stuff like me doing a stint in a grocery store and then to see my phone ring on driving home... I don't like picking up my phone while I drive, so I just ignore the ringer and just drive. When I get home, it's a situation of "Didn't you get my message? I was trying to call you and ask you to buy this one ingredient for us" and I end up doing a second trip for posterity. So I figured for my own sanity and my family's sanity, I should pick one up for cheap. Found this one for $20 off of the "retail" price that the SonyStyle Online shop was selling it for.
After the headset charged up, I would do the pairing. It was rather painless. After the pairing, the phone worked with the headset well. Once the authentication is configured, the headset automatically pairs to the device immediately. This is much better than my experience with the experience I got from trying to pair a Motorola headset with a RAZR V3, that was actually a really sour experience. The sound quality is crisp and clear, easily a "bang-for-your-buck" deal. The headset is not compatible with MP3 ringtones and the headset had a great little chime that's sure to get your attention. The buttons have a good tactile feel and make a satisfying click so you know that you're not hallucinating if you clicked something or not. With a documented battery life (from the manual) of 12 hours of talk time and 300 hours on standby. That's pretty good for a down to business headset that is simply no-nonsense and just does it's job sort of issue. Sure, it's no Jawbone... but for a basic headset, it's one hell of a deal.
