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Works like a charm in somewhat noisy environments too.
http://www.jabra.com/headsets-...

We already have one of these. The speaker is good. It's the mic that's rubbish. If you hold it too close the sound is mashed. If you don't then no-one can hear you because of the room...

Thanks for the suggestion anyway.

My ideal solution would be an Asus Padfone, preferably the first one, since Padfone 2 lacks keyboard dock, so you'll have enough battery life for all day bluetooth. Then a bluetooth headset such as Jabra Clipper so you won't look like an idiot with a bluetooth headset dangling on your ear all day. The final piece of the kit is Sony Smartwatch. With the smartwatch, you'll be able to see who's calling, read sms and gmail, control media player and many more, while keeping the padfone docked on its' station and stored inside your bag. And the battery life is quite good too. Finally, if you need to be away from your bag, just take out the padfone from the station, and put it in your pocket

Been using the GN Netcom headsets (both wired and wireless) in the workplace now for over 10 years. Great quality. Jabra recently bought them.

http://www.jabra.com/NA-US/headsetsolutions/Pages/JabraGN9100.aspx?tab=variants#UID=9

If you have money to absolutely blow, there are some Aviation headsets that have built in Bluetooth. The Lightspeed Zulu comes to mind.

But it's complete overkill for what you're attempting to accomplish. A dual-ear Jabra GN series would work fine in all but the most noisy environments.

Washington, D.C. - Today the Bush administration announced the first major increase in public spending for the mentally ill since Ronald Reagan slashed psychiatric care for indigents in the 1980s. Under the new program, Medicare will be expanded such that every American who is diagnosed with schizophrenia will be issued with a Bluetooth headset to allow them to speak to the voices in their heads more efficiently. In a surprising move, the Administration has budgetted $100.00 for each of the 298 million U.S. residents, regardless of citizenship status.

In a related story, Halliburton (symobl:HAL) has announced that it will be making unsolicited takeover bids for Motorola (MOT) and Jabra, major players in the Bluetooth handset field.

If this requires a bluetooth enabled phone then you would (or should) already have a bluetooth enabled headset. If I have a headset that does not require me to be connected to my phone (see: tethered cord) then why not just use a bluetooth dongle and my headset for my PC anyways?

Some may say that the battery is longer on your phone than a headset but my Jabra has some pretty good talk time http://www.jabra.com/JabraCMS/NA/EN/MainMenu/Produ cts/WirelessHeadsets/JabraBT250v/JabraBT250v

Now what would be nice is to be able to place bluetooth access points throughout the house so you don't have to worry about the 30ft (not counting dense walls) limitation.

Nitch product with no nitch market.

The current problem with WiFi VoIP is that you need a really big handset.

What I really wanted was to use my mobile phone and make VoIP calls over bluetooth. Yes, the bluetooth range sucks, but at least it's a technology ready to use by my mobile. All it needs is an app (say J2ME) that handles the VoIP at the client side.

- or -

rather than use the mobile phone, use a bluetooth headset and link it straight to the bluetooth AP. The problem then being headset configuration and call making/receiving. Perhaps the mobile phone could act as a bluetooth remote control, or another alternative is to use something like this and have it link up directly to the bluetooth AP, which then runs some kind of mobile phone emulator on the server-side.

I blogged about this before but only got a limited response (one guy who liked the idea, and that was it).

Is it feasible? Is anyone trying or willing to give it a try?

Yes. I was given a Jabra headset for my birthday and it works fine with Skype, iChat and my ancient Nokia phone. It's also very comfortable, tiny and sorta space-age. The only catch is you can't pair it to your phone and Mac at the same time and it's a slight pain to try to re-pair it in a hurry. I tend not to use it with my phone, and occasionaly use it at work if i want to Skype or iChat and not annoy my workmates any more than me talking on the phone would.

Just mentioning that skype is a cpu hog. This matters because it means it's not great for playing recent video games.

A great alternative is teamspeak which lets groups of players talk. Another alternative (I haven't tried this one) is Ventrillo.

Skype is great if you just want to use your computer for wireless chit chat.

I might as well plug the Jabra BT250 bluetooth headset while I'm at it. Wireless headset with up to 8 hours of talk time. I use this plus teamspeak to give me the freedom to wander my house and not loose contact with my gaming buddies. It also works nicely with my powerbook and my cell phone.

Bluetooth certainly has the bandwidth for two-way voice--that's why you can buy a Bluetooth wireless hands-free headset for your (Bluetooth) cell phone. For example, one from Jabra. However, the range of Bluetooth is much shorter than Wi-Fi. At a maxium of 30 feet (a lot less going through the walls in my apartment), Bluetooth would be less convenient than Wi-Fi. Also, Wi-Fi access points are already becoming prevalent, whereas Bluetooth access points are less widespread. Though you can buy a Bluetooth access point, Bluetooth is meant more as a device-to-device standard for peripherals, not a networking protocol. It would be easier to cover a large buiding with Wi-Fi, and the network would be multi-use, allowing laptops and PDAs and such to connect along with the badges. While it's possible for devices to use Bluetooth to use a computer's internet connectivity (see the Share2Blue2th AppleScript that my friend C.K. wrote for allowing a cellphone to browse the web over a computer's intenet connection (that's the reverse of the usual way where a notebook uses Bluetooth to browse the web over the cellphone's modem connection)), it's much more of a hassle than with Wi-Fi, which was designed expressly for that purpose.

OTOH, Jabra seems to have done it right.

Here's my favorite. This style uses an "ear clip" to essentially dangle an earbud-sized earpiece in front of the ear opening. The wire runs behind the ear (as with the sony headphones mentioned above), and there's something about how the earpiece only rests on the ear that keeps any heat issues down. I like this headset enough that I got an adaptor at Radio Shack to use this headset on my computer.

I've never understood the need for bluetooth keyboard and mice. I've got a non-bluetooth wireless keyboard and mouse, and it's "good enough". Sure, bluetooth would be cooler, but the old tech is "good enough" (yes, BT is lower power, but the old tech is "low power" enough, too).

BT keyboard w/BT laptop is something of a special case. If you're using an external keyboard with the laptop, you probably have other (non-BT?) connections (e.g., LAN) going to the laptop, too. For this case, a docking station to handle all of the connections might be a better choice (e.g., big fat LAN pipe, & wireless keyboard/mouse). The point is that, for this case, you probably have to make other connections, which negates some of the coolness of the BT keyboard.

I'm not complaining about the coolness, mind you -- a BT keyboard and BT laptop are way cool, but it's questionable for the average Joe.

Now, on the other hand, BT headsets are way cool , like the Jabra one. It's really nice to be able to throw your cell phone into your backpack or fanny pack, and be able to answer it by pressing a button on your ear. ;-) This does, of course, require a BT-enabled cell phone which, in the US, seems to require GSM, and GSM coverage is still pretty spotty in the US. ;-( On the other hand, many US GSM phones (but not all) will also work internationally.

Adding a Bluetooth SD card will set you back around a hundred bucks. A bluetooth headset another hundred bucks. And that's assuming that the software will support the headset.

It reallly makes you think twice, doesn't it?

The standard jack on your cd player is probably a 3.5mm sterio plug, this is standard. Most cell phones i've seen have a 2.5mm headset jack, one channel to the earpice and the other to the mic. This seems to be pretty standardized, i can use my jabra headset, the headset that came with my cell phone, and the headset that came with my mini land line phone interchangably with my cell phone, mini landline and my cordless phone.

I am really tired of seeing PDA's that are being crammed into a phone. It really doesn't work. The phone ends up being to big, and the PDA is barely usable.

Instead, put a phone into a PDA. Yes, thats right, take our best PDA's, the Zaurus, the IPAQ's, Palms's, etc...and add a phone into them.
Now I know that sounds odd at first. How does it differ.

First, get over the idea of holding a phone to your ear. Its simply not practical anymore. PDA's don't fit your head. And before you know it, most states will outlaw using a handheld phone in the car anyway.

Instead, use a headset that attaches to the PDA. For instance a Jabra , or Jabra-like device. Ideally, using Bluetooth built into the PDA for wireless headset convenience.

IMHO, the combo PDA with a built in phone and wireless headset would make the ideal solution.
In the meantime, I'm through with these so-called integrated devices that are barely usable.

At first I was mildly intrigued by the look of the 3650, and since T-Mobile (my carrier in AZ) actually offers the phone directly, I did some looking around... bottom line, pass on it (IMHO).

Others have pointed out the flaky Nokia bluetooth stuff, and the lack of syncml might actually be a bigger minus that I would have thought initially (I have an Ericsson R520 with all sorts of features, syncml among them, and I am just now starting to exercise the phone's feature set).

The keypad has to go.

I usually stop by here to get some phone scoopage (there are certainly many, many other sites as well). They have a review of the 3650 at the bottom-- or use the review search feature-- with the final thoughts (on page 3 of the review) rather humorous, but probably too true to be ignored.

Also on that site I found a review of the Siemens S55 which made me want to read more about the current and upcoming Siemens offerings. On the same site yet again is an article covering just that topic, about the upcoming SX1 and others from Siemens. The SX1 looks like it takes alternative keypad design in a slightly more functional direction.

Having tried out the Jabra FreeSpeak with my R520 (successfully and satisfactorily), and with a need to use some WAP and other wireless networking features lately, I am utterly convinced that getting a phone that does what you want it to do-- well-- is essential. Look past the buzz, get what will meet your needs, and pay attention to those details about keypad quality, low-light screen readability, and other such mundane details.

But that SX1 still looks cool...

The best-looking one I've seen is from Jabra - the pictures look a bit clunky, but in practice it wraps neatly around your ear, looking like somewhat spacy jewelry (it made my friend who had it looked a bit like she was one of the Borg, though :-)

Well this page:

http://www.jabra.com/fscs/FreeSpeak_FAQ.html#5
Says that bluetooth is less than 1% of cellphone radiation. Of course if your phone is in your pocket while using the headset then the radiation is going into your crotch.

This page:

http://www.goaegis.com/shielding_options.html

says:
Wireless headsets replace the wire normally found on a headset with a transmitter and receiver. They can represent a greater health risk than a wired headset, particularly when their frequencies are within Bluetooth or 3G operating specifications. In addition to the wireless headset frequency entering the ear canal, the earpiece attracts higher frequencies generated by the phone and from the air that surrounds all of us.

So I guess it depends on who you talk to.

Hmmm...what if the issue isn't making the phones themselves smaller, but adding small bits of telephony to useful places?

Or, to put it another way, you have a "normal" sized cell phone (whatever we decide that is) that you carry with you, but everywhere you go there's a phone embedded into small spaces places?

Ooo, even better. What if the receivers are all built on a bluetooth standard. Everyone has a jabra-like ear piece that automatically reaches out and makes a "PAN" connection when it comes in range of a "button" phone. There's a button phone receiver on your monitor, in your car, and in your house, and when you're in any of those spaces, all you have to do is touch your ear piece and speak the number you want to dial. Calls are automatically forwarded to you depending on where the PAN is established. If you go to a store, your earpiece automatically connects to the button phone receiver on the shopping cart, so that if you have questions while you're shopping, you can ask a customer service rep (on their dime)...

Okay. Back to the crack smoking....

--

"To do what ought to be done, but would not have been done unless I did it, I thought to be my duty"

--

"To do what ought to be done, but would not have been done unless I did it, I thought to be my duty"

You shouldn't be using your phone while you are driving anyways, fuckface. I hate those assholes who drive and talk on the phone at the same time and end up swerving all over the road. I think it's worse than speeding. Leave your damn phone off and just get a pager so you can answer your calls when you won't kill everyone else around you.

Or get some sort of handsfree setup. I've got a Jabra earset speaker/microphone, which didn't cost much at all. It should definately be illegal to talk on a cellphone without a handsfree device while driving.