Windows Phone Thoughts: IOGear Bluetooth Stereo Headphone Kit Reviewed

Pairing the Headphones Only
So, now comes the experimentation part. Normally the headphones are supposed to be used in conjunction with the supplied audio transmitter, but being a bit of a bluetooth first adopter in my work, I decided to try pairing the headphones directly to my Axim X50v using the existing Bluetooth drivers.

As Ed, Jason and others having pointed out, it’s not quite as easy and straightforward as the ‘toothers’ would have you believe. First off, don’t fall in to the trap of simply turning all the bluetooth stuff on and trying to discover services available. You’ll end up with messages saying things like “No services are available”. Here’s how I made the connection.

Note: All these shots are on Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition. I didn’t have WM5 running on my Axim at that time, and now I don’t have the headphones to show you how that connection looks. NOTE: THIS PROCEDURE IS NOT NECESSARY FOR OPERATION WITH THE AUDIO TRANSMITTER!

First, turn on the headphones and place it in Discovery mode by pressing the power button in the centre of the headset for about two to three seconds. A blue LED will begin flashing. Then go into the Bluetooth Manager on the Pocket PC, and select Pairing. You should see a screen like this.


Figure 6: Adding a new Bluetooth Device (WM2003 SE).

Tapping on the search icon to the right of the Device box, your Pocket PC should go out and try to find who’s out there. It should discover the IOGEAR Headphones and return with a screen that looks like:


Figure 7: The Headphones have been discovered!.

Now, as per IOGEAR’s suggestion, input a passkey of ‘0000’ and tap OK. That will establish the headphones as a ‘paired device’ with your Pocket PC. OK, so now we can connect up the services. Back at the Bluetooth Manager on the Pocket PC, start up the Connection Wizard and select the Handsfree/Headset Setup option.


Figure 8: Selecting the Handsfree / Headset option.

From there, it should automagically identify the IOGear Headphones as the appropriate device and you are off to the races!

I have to admit I was singularly unimpressed by the quality of audio available using the bluetooth drivers provided with the Dell Axim. There was considerable hiss, the overall sound was very muddy with lots of pops and crackles. It sounded like most of the upper frequencies (above 8 to 10 KHz) were missing and it certainly was hard listening to music for any appreciable length of time. I was able to walk away about 35 feet (10m) from the Axim before I lost the signal.

I was also able to successfully connect with my Nokia 3650 cell phone using a similar process (pair first, then connect). The audio quality was similar to that of the Axim X50v – not quite as much hiss, but muffled and missing a lot of the higher end frequencies. The neat part of pairing with a cell phone was that when a call comes in, the headphones generate a call ring (similar to that found on regular North American landlines – single long ring – and you answer the call by tapping the power button on the headset. The supplied microphone plugs into a jack located at the bottom of the right earpiece (sorry about that, left-handers).


Figure 9: Headphone with the mike plugged in.

As reported by others, audio from the microphone was a little muffled, but definitely clear and understandable. They could also clearly recognize my voice and didn’t get a lot of extraneous pickup from other noise sources around me. Unfortunately, using the built-in bluetooth stack in my Dell, I wasn’t able to simultaneously connect the headphones to the Dell and the phone, something that was intimated by the Quick Start Guide as possible to do.