iPhone 3.0 and Bluetooth Stereo

05 Jul, 2009

Posted by: TheKaptain In: Cool Toys

One of the unexpected benefits of the recent 3.0 update to ithe Phone/iTouch operating system is the rebirth of my Motorola S9 bluetooth headset. I originally bought a pair of these on special from tigerdirect.ca ($19.99 as I recall) to use with a MacBook Pro and they were pretty hit and miss – I eventually gave up on them because everytime the connection dropped the laptop speakers would immediatley blare out whatever I was listening to.

I’d pretty much shelved them until I was reading over the list of new features and saw the new support for bluetooth stereo. Sure enough I dug the headset out of a box, charged it up and took the dogs for a walk – with beautiful wireless stereo sound piped out of my iPhone. The connection was very solid and the sound was at least comparable to the earbuds that come with the iPhone.

A quick test indicates that the microphone works great for phone calls as well, making these a great alternative to the earbuds. The lack of wires is a big bonus since the majority of the time when I’m listening to music from the iPhone it’s when I’m out with the dogs – and they do love to jump up and “accidentally” rip the earbuds off my head.

I thought I was doing pretty great with cut and paste and spotlight in the new feature set, and I get this added bonus for the same price as the rest: free . Thanks Apple! I can even almost forgive you the $10 charge to update the iTouch OS(tsk tsk).

If you’re interested in a good headset for the iPhone, here’s a nice article with some alternatives. I’m also EXTREMELY glad to see that I seem to have gotten a good deal on the headset, since they’re still listed online at $49.95US and I paid less than half of that, including shipping and handling. Thanks tigerdirect.ca!