not cool, but awesome
I think I’ve ranted before about how I think bluetooth is a giant disaster that works terribly for consumers. I still believe that - the different features supported by different vendors and different bluetooth stacks and the varying experience you get when you mix and match different, supposedly compatible devices with one another makes getting a bluetooth a complete grab bag.
Also, bluetooth almost always means “costs WAY friggin more than it should” - this holds for computer peripherals like mice or keyboards (where a bluetooth version typically costs ~2x what a regular device would set you back) and cellphone kits or headphones which cost even more than their non-bluetooth counterparts.
Finally, basically every bluetooth peripheral just screams out “I’m both a weenie and a dick.”
BUT…I’m suddenly incredibly happy with my HT820 headphones. I bought these headphones years ago to use with a WindowsMobile phone (the HTC Wizard / T-Mobile MDA) and it always worked
<terribly>
The headphones work decently as a handsfree calling kit, but the other core features (working as headphones) was terrible because of a compatibility setting between the headset and my specific phone which made the audio quality completely unacceptable. That was really disappointing because I wasted all this time researching and getting to understand that A2DP is a bluetooth based technology which is supposed to give you stereo audio which sounds totally awesome (except for when a bitpooling interoperability setting makes the end result worse than bad AM radio). And not only that but I learned that both also supported AVRCP, which means that using buttons on the headset I could adjust the volume on the music I was listening to or play/pause fastforward/rewind. Sweet, huh? Except that the implementation of that on my MDA was to emulate screen taps at specific screen coordinates, so pressing “play” wouldn’t necessarily play - it would tap the screen at a specific coordinate (and one that would only work with the build in Windows Media Player and not necessarily whatever player I wanted to use).
</terribly>
But now I’ve got the same headset hooked up with my blackberry curve and everything works. Audio (A2DP) sounds great. The music controls (AVRCP) work great. And the interoperability between switching the phone between music player or calls or anything else all a) works b) well. And it was good. But they still definitely make me look like a dork, and probably a jerk, but I avoid the typical usage behaviors which usually confirm that status.