Headphone madness part 2

I thought the story of picking the most appropriate headphones for the mobile gear was one of the least interesting. But it looks like it is generating above than average number of responses. Last week I came across an article describing the missing link in my search for the universal headphones. Shure is getting close with their I-series sound isolating ones, but they still do not solve the double-jack notebook problem. The truth is notebook manufacturers should finally equip new models with a cell phone-compatible 4-conductor 2.5mm socket to let us use cell phone sets for notebook VoIP conversations. On the other hand SonyEricsson is pretty close to a perfect solution with the HBH-DS970 set. They are in-ear, sound isolating, have integrated microphone and support a multipoint A2DP Bluetooth interface.

I mentioned A2DP her several times before, so let us explain what it is about. A2DP stands for Advanced Audio Distribution Profile and is designed to stream high fidelity stereo music over Bluetooth interface. This approach, once widely adopted will change the way we use our music phones and MP3 players forever. Since you will no longer need wires to stream music from the source where it is stored (a player) to a destination, which can be your stereo headphones, but can also be your car stereo or your home amplifier. No cables, no plugs, (hopefully) no incompatibilities. Freedom at last. I'm waiting for Apple to release the new A2DP equipped iPod, since it will be a central streaming source of my music (until music phones catch up with storage capacity of 30GB or more). Bluetooth iPod is certain, PortalPlayer, the manufacturer of iPod SoC (System-on-Chip) has a wireless version in the works, so Apple will definitely use it. The question, as always, is when...? And of course we will need other devices to provide A2DP support as well. Windows Mobile music phones seemed to be already there, as the A2DP had been promised for the AKU2 update, but is not showing up, and the word is, it did not performed well enough to be included in the gold releases. Windows XP lacks A2DP as well. Yes, Windows XP even lacks the ordinary Headset profile, but at least some notebook vendors (as IBM emmm Lenovo) provide Widcom emmm Broadcom stack with both Audio Gateway and Headset profiles. So hopefully Broadcom will release A2DP Windows XP stack as well...

A2DP very often comes in tandem with AVRCP profile. This profile is designed to provide a standard interface to control TVs, Hi-fi equipment, etc. to allow a single remote control (or other device) to control all of the A/V equipment that a user has access to. This combined with a multipoint capability, which essentially means headphones can be simultaneously connected to several sources, such as an MP3 player and a mobile phone. So a simple scenario when you listen to a music that gets paused when a call comes in may finally realize.

News on the gadget front this week center around the AKU2 update for the i-Mate SP5m phone. Shame no A2DP Bluetooth there, but at least Microsoft DirectPush rocks. It is really really great to have email notifications delivered instantaneously to your mobile. And of course (as you can see on the right) this feature can be turned off with a push of a button for those lazy weekends :) DirectPush is really a killer feature. Who will buy Blackberries now?

PS> Thanks to Mike Temporale from the SmartphoneThoughts team for pointing me to a blog entry that describes how to install a root certificate on the SP5m (you need that for the DirectPush to work).