HP Bluetooth Headphones Now on HP Shopping.com

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.shopping.hp.com/cgi-bin/hpdirect/shopping/scripts/product_detail/product_detail_view.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@0605139116.1099413562@@@@&BV_EngineID=cccgadcmmgmejkhcfngcfkmdfondfgf.0&product_code=FA303A%23AC3&catLevel=5' target='_blank'>http://www.shopping.hp.com/cgi-bin/...3AC3&catLevel=5</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Turn your HP iPAQ Pocket PC into a wireless audio player with high-quality, stereo sound with these Bluetooth® headphones! You can listen to MP3s, videos, and any audio files at up to 30' from your iPAQ. Carrying bag and AC adapter (which charges your iPAQ, too) included; each headphone charge provides up to 8 hours of listening. Wear securely; the "behind-the-head" design ensures a snug fit while on the move. Easily access the controls for power, volume, play/pause, and track forward/back. Compatibility: iPAQ models h1900, h2200, h4100, h4300, h5000, h6300, rx3000, hx4700."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/fa303a_400[1].jpg" /> <br /><br />Music without wires? Sounds great to me! It's surprising to see all of those Pocket PCs listed though - I didn't think they all had support for Bluetooth headphones?

[mscdex]

I think it's a really neat idea, but maybe it's just me and my lack of use of bluetooth on my iPaq 2215, but from what I gathered Bluetooth eats up your battery fairly quickly. With this in mind, how long would you really be able to listen to music until the battery drains to a very low percentage? That's the one thing I'd be worried about.

[foebea]

gotta be a sign. Yesterday I lost an ebay auction for Zork Trillogy for mac. (I want the zorkmid :mrgreen: )
My limit was 100. I know know my 100 was being reserved for this. If they ever have any more in stock :)

Anyone know if these are/will be available in stores?

edit: I would use this for the occaisional audio book, but more frequently for movies, set the pda on a stand and no worries about tripping on a cable and sending the pda for a ride. Currently running off a microdrive i can watch about 1.5 movies, or about 3 hours before battery 20% warning. If i really must watch 2, i have a second battery on hand, so this is perfect for me.

[x999x]

Ouch, 100 and change after shipping?

I'll have to hold off until they come down in price a bit, but I do like the idea behind these headphones.

My main points of interest is how to recharge them, and how "portable" these actually are.

I have some sony headphones I got from japan that fold up into what looks like a tiny Egg. It's very portable, and leaves nothing to worry about in terms of breakage whilst being carried in your pocket. If HPs fall along those lines, I'm sold.

[R K]

I think it's a really neat idea, but maybe it's just me and my lack of use of bluetooth on my iPaq 2215, but from what I gathered Bluetooth eats up your battery fairly quickly. With this in mind, how long would you really be able to listen to music until the battery drains to a very low percentage? That's the one thing I'd be worried about.

Unless you have a screwy Bluetooth implementation, it should use up very little battery life. I used to play music off my network using Bluetooth and it barely took more power than using a flash card.

[ctmagnus]

set the pda on a stand and no worries about tripping on a cable and sending the pda for a ride.

I found a stand like that a few days ago! It's a 70s-era calculator stand and it only goes up to ~30deg but it I find it useful at times.

[kozak]

ARGH, Out of Stock!

I called and they said they should have some in a day or two.

[carphead]

I suspect that these will come with a bluetake type adaptor for older tpaqs as only bt 1.2 and higher (if I remember correctly) supports stereo output.

[darthandy]

What does everyone think? These headphones transfer the data over bluetooth, now I have never managed to actually transfer faster than about 5k/sec on the iPAQ 2210 bluetooth, are the newer ones faster? In comparison the bluetooth on my SE S700i phone does about 25k/sec and my TDK adapter to another TDK about 70k/sec. So is the bit rate that these headphones stream going to be in the 56kbit area? ouch! Guess we will have to wait for a review to find out the audio quality. If there is an adapter how do the function buttons work?

Andy

[foebea]

set the pda on a stand and no worries about tripping on a cable and sending the pda for a ride.

I found a stand like that a few days ago! It's a 70s-era calculator stand and it only goes up to ~30deg but it I find it useful at times.

good story here. I actually came very close to purchasing a bluetooth keyboard just for the stand.. then after thinking about it for a while, I made my own by cutting the bottom from a metal coat hanger, taking a section of network cable and removing the wires from inside, then putting the metal rod inside the network cable shell.

I can mold it to any shape and change the viewing angle at will, it supports landscape, portrait and diagonal views. It folds up easily to sit in a pocket.

I highly recommend this, and the price is right.

edit: and i left one of the ends open so i can use that as a stylus holder :mrgreen:

also i have the 2215, so normal stands leave me with a crooked view, with this stand i can adjust for the difference and the view is level.. k i'll shut up now.

Come on HP get these back in stock!

[johnm]

Will these be supported on other manufacturers bluetooth PocketPCs? I'm pretty interested in these but I'm planning on buying a Dell or Asus VGA PPC.

[hamishmacdonald]

Yeah, that's the operative question: "Are these HP-only?" I couldn't blame HP if they were, but I jumped off their ship this quarter and bought a Pocket LOOX.

I guess we wait until someone...
a) With a non-HP PPC decides to conduct a potentially expensive experiment, or
b) Someone with specific information about the requirements tells us why they'll work.

(I'm really just throwing my my two cents so I can click "watch this thread".)

[powerbook17]

Holy crap i started sreaming for gjoy when i saw its available then i saw the price... :evil:

[dean_shan]

Holy crap i started sreaming for gjoy when i saw its available then i saw the price... :evil:

Yeah same here. Those are pretty pricey.

[arnage2]

if someone can let me know if it works with a asus a730, ill buy one

[hamishmacdonald]

I guess I've been using this stuff long enough (what rhymes with "Newton" -- oh, gave it away!) that I've become accustomed to shelling out of a lot of money for everything.

At least now we're getting to the point where everything doesn't have a proprietary connector.

[foebea]

Holy crap i started sreaming for gjoy when i saw its available then i saw the price... :evil:

Yeah same here. Those are pretty pricey.

You guys have not been following bluetooth headphones. For years they were vapourware, then suddenly this indian company had a set which was not for sale, then they were and a couple other companies have them as well, 330-450$ a pair.

Then logitech steps up with this bit at the astoundinly low price of 99$. Rechargable, excellent battery life, no stupid tooth to plug into the audio jack.


This is the real deal for many people and the price is great. (course i would prefer to just drop 20$ on them), but i think 100 is fair this early in the game. 0X

[Sslixtis]

$99 is a steal, the next cheapest set is $199 and has an adpater you have to use. :pukeface:

Now if these are compatible with my internal bluetooth on my laptop as well as my PDA I'll buy a set, heck I might even buy two! :lol:

[questionlp]

What does everyone think? These headphones transfer the data over bluetooth, now I have never managed to actually transfer faster than about 5k/sec on the iPAQ 2210 bluetooth, are the newer ones faster? In comparison the bluetooth on my SE S700i phone does about 25k/sec and my TDK adapter to another TDK about 70k/sec. So is the bit rate that these headphones stream going to be in the 56kbit area? ouch! Guess we will have to wait for a review to find out the audio quality. If there is an adapter how do the function buttons work?
I don't know what kind of throughput is required to stream audio to a BT headphone, but considering that BT has a peak rate of around 700kbit/sec, it's conceivable that one can wrap WMA or MP3 audio into a serialized BT stream, or use some form of compression on PCM audio. Of course, I have no clue how HP is doing it :)

While Googling, I found an interesting document:
www.impulsesoft.com/HomePage/btaudioguide.pdf+bluetooth+headphone+bandwidth&hl=en&start=1&client=firefox-a] (http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:qc2dnOFlLJcJ:

Original PDF:
[url]http://www.impulsesoft.com/HomePage/btaudioguide.pdf

[foebea]

my only question, and its not a deal breaker at all for me, is about the play/pause button on the headphones.

I hope it works with any program that understands the basic commands, and not just wmedia player. Im hoping i can use it to pause betaplayer, pocketmind and others as well. that would be so great :)

[obvious]

Perhaps it's a good sign that there are no drivers for these on the HP site. I guess this could mean that they are natively supported by WM2003(SE) or just that HP haven't got around to posting drivers yet. It's encouraging though.

Nevertheless I might still wait for a proper stereo bluetooth headset so that I can use Skype as well.

[jasondearyou]

i really hope these other device could use these head phones, and i'm sure someone will write a program for it to be able to do that.

[maximus]

They should also make a canal-phone model ... better sound quality, lower profile ...

[jemichael]

Damn out of stock.. Well I know they will work with my brand new HP DV1000 Notebook, and it would be cool if the PDA2k reconizes them if the bluetooth ever gets working. :lol:

[wbgordy]

Argh!!!!!!!! - but will they support other devices?!? I swore up and down with the Jornada fiasco (long time, I know) never to buy another HP/Compaq product again. If it's compatible with other devices (even cooler if Logitech came out with their own device) I'd take a deep breath and break my oath and shell out the $99.

[Blue Zero]

I dont like it cause it cant fold up, so that I can put it inside my shirt...

its just too chunky for something that suppose to be handy :roll:

[hollis_f]

What does everyone think? These headphones transfer the data over bluetooth, now I have never managed to actually transfer faster than about 5k/sec on the iPAQ 2210 bluetooth, are the newer ones faster? In comparison the bluetooth on my SE S700i phone does about 25k/sec and my TDK adapter to another TDK about 70k/sec. So is the bit rate that these headphones stream going to be in the 56kbit area? ouch! Guess we will have to wait for a review to find out the audio quality. If there is an adapter how do the function buttons work?

Andy

I've just bought the Bluetake i-phono headphones. I was really worried about the audio quality. And I was pleasantly surprised.

[dhpss]

Music without wires? Sounds great to me! It's surprising to see all of those Pocket PCs listed though - I didn't think they all had support for Bluetooth headphones?

Wondering how this would would work on all iPaqs as stated since this would required BT Audio Gateway Profile from the ROM BT stack. The 63xx, 55xx have them but I know for sure the 4xxx, 19xx don't...

[ghostppc]

good story here. I actually came very close to purchasing a bluetooth keyboard just for the stand.. then after thinking about it for a while, I made my own by cutting the bottom from a metal coat hanger, taking a section of network cable and removing the wires from inside, then putting the metal rod inside the network cable shell.

I can mold it to any shape and change the viewing angle at will, it supports landscape, portrait and diagonal views. It folds up easily to sit in a pocket.

I highly recommend this, and the price is right.


This sounds kind of cool. Foebea, do you have a picture of your mod?

[nirav28]

the thing that makes me mad about HP and Bluetooth , is that they somehow keep dropping the ball when it comes to providing some sort of an audio input bluetooth profile. Hence, you can't use a bluetooth headset to use as a microphone or for voice input. Of course there are third-party registry hacks. But I've heard the audio quality is pretty bad.

Look at small Mp3 device makers such as Diva or BoomGear that have bluetooth mp3 players on the market which allow you to use the mp3 headphones and player as two way audio headsets which pair with your bluetooth enabled phones. Boomgear's model even allows you to record the phone conversation on the mp3 player.

When will they learn! :roll:

[jalm1]

I've just bought the Bluetake i-phono headphones. I was really worried about the audio quality. And I was pleasantly surprised.

What PPC do you have and do you have to use the dongle?

i am looking at the i-phono or the HP ones, my concern with the HP ones is that they are limited in use, while i have a 6315 (that they should work fine with, and i listen to music and suck on), but i also have the SMT 5600 smartphone (that i am using more and more, and listening to music more often on) and am concerned that i would not be able to use these HP headphone with that phone. Sort of a bugger.

Additionaly, with the HP head phones and the 6315 phone there becomes another problem that i wonder if anyone can comment on; if you are listening to music and get a call, there is not a mic on the head phones so does A) the audio of the call come through the headphones and the mic on the deive become activated and work, or B) you are left shuffeling around to reject the call to the head set to hold the phone to your ear (not a good option).

If the 6315 has the proper BT profiles to make the audio work, i then wonder if the i-phono headset will work without the dongle on the 6315? does anyone have any thoughts on this?

[rmasinag]

I dare to guess that most people who complain about the price and practicality do not commute by train or bus, or any public transportation, because if you guys do, you will appreciate how much of a Godsend BT headphone implementation would be.

As for my poor student self. Heck yes! I'm willing to shell out $100 for these babies (plus another justification for my 2210) instead of the $200 Iphono headphones. I think $100 is a small price to pay to be the first ones to be free of wires! (plus Kerry lost... I need a booster :| )

[ADBrown]

As for my poor student self. Heck yes! I'm willing to shell out $100 for these babies (plus another justification for my 2210) instead of the $200 Iphono headphones. I think $100 is a small price to pay to be the first ones to be free of wires! (plus Kerry lost... I need a booster :| )

You can say that again.

One thing I noticed on the HP Shopping site is that unlike the iPhono headphones, these don't appear to have a built in microphone for use as a headset. Too bad--being able to listen to music wirelessly from a PocketPC, then have the music automatically pause itself when a phone call comes in seems like a cool idea.

[ladyvols]

I'm somewhat suprised by the comments concerning the lack of a mic on the HP headphones. Headphones don't have built in mic's. If you want a mic, buy a headset.

[Sven Johannsen]

I'm somewhat suprised by the comments concerning the lack of a mic on the HP headphones. Headphones don't have built in mic's. If you want a mic, buy a headset.

Headsets don't generally support stereo, or even music quality sound. There is a precedent for BT headphones having a mic, Bluetak. These offer the option of pairing the device with a cell phone, as well as a music player (PPC). The HP device is designed purely as a music receiver it seems and then only for HPs. Might have improved sales if they had considered their HP6315 and positioned the headset to be used with that PPC in both phone and MP modes.