A2DP!!! Finally!

[illitrate23]

So what are some good in-ear A2DP headphones?

i've got these and so far i really like them
http://www.amazon.com/Sony-Ericsson...sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=wireless&qid=1237359772&sr=8-1

the only problem i've had so far is that because the iphone doesn't do a2dp the only way to use them was via a bluetooth dongle - and those generally do not have volume controls on them. and neither do these earphones. so you're stuck listening to the music at the line-out volume - sometimes too quiet when walking along the street, but too loud for listening while on the train to work.

hopefully if OS3 now fully supports it, i'll be able to use the volume control on the iphone itself to adjust it

 

[Nicholas.C]

I though A2DP was bluetooth file sending?

 

[Rayfire]

I though A2DP was bluetooth file sending?

Advance Audio Distribution Profile aka A2DP

 

[lordhamster]

Hi all,

I own a VW GTI with Bluetooth Installed. I use my iPhone 3G to make and receive calls via Bluetooth with the Bluetooth module installed in the car. It works great.

The VW GTI Bluetooth module also supports A2DP - so I was excited that maybe I can send my iPhone audio to the car - but no success so far.

In the VW Bluetooth manual it says to use your phone and adjust the settings so that you send the phone's audio to Bluetooth but I can't find any settings on the iPhone to let me do this.

Any thoughts would be great thanks.

Cheers


JeffAU

Jeff, you will have to wait till summer till the 3.0 update is released for consumers. Then you will be able to use the A2DP function if your car is compatible.

 

[MacToddB]

hopefully if OS3 now fully supports it, i'll be able to use the volume control on the iphone itself to adjust it

Yes, I've been able to adjust the volume from my Motorola S9's, using the 3.0 beta.

 

[Ashyukun]

I just spent some time with 3.0 and a Motorola S9. Quick notes:

The battery issue doesn't surprise me a whole lot. It's a bit disappointing, but I don't think it'll bother me all that much- most of the time when I'd want to be using the A2DP capability the phone would be near a power source of some kind (outlet, car charger) anyway.

Hopefully the stuttering will be fixed by the release of the final, non-beta version of the OS. I had issue with the original 2.0 firmware and the iPod music stuttering when I was scrolling through web pages and they eventually got that taken care of, hopefully they'll be able to knock this issue down.

Not having the numeric keyboard for pairing though? That's just plain ridiculous- every Bluetooth device I've got uses purely numeric codes for pairing! Most are either 1234 or 0000, so presumably if it worked eventually the iPhone is trying those pairing codes by default- but that's something that definitely needs to be resolved before it goes live...

 

[richard.mac]

Bluetooth headphones are crap but i can really see A2DP being used in a car stereo to play music with the iPhone in your pocket! that would be sweet…

even more sweet would be wireless syncing with the iPhone in your pocket but thats not in 3.0 unfortunately.

 

[MacToddB]

Bluetooth headphones are crap but i can really see A2DP being used in a car stereo to play music with the iPhone in your pocket! that would be sweet…

even more sweet would be wireless syncing with the iPhone in your pocket but thats not in 3.0 unfortunately.

I don't expect greatness from BT headphones, but it would be nice for jogging, etc. Imagine an iPod Touch 2.0 with Nike and wireless headphones.

I'm going to be testing Trispecs (www.Trispecs.com) sunglasses with retractable earbuds, too.

BTW, I was reading about Bluetooth over WiFi.... uses Bluetooth for the handshaking and WiFi for the data transmission. It's got potential.

http://i.gizmodo.com/5154863/bluetooth-over-wi+fi-zoomtastic-speed-shocks-our-pants-off

 

[MacToddB]

Not having the numeric keyboard for pairing though? That's just plain ridiculous- every Bluetooth device I've got uses purely numeric codes for pairing! Most are either 1234 or 0000, so presumably if it worked eventually the iPhone is trying those pairing codes by default- but that's something that definitely needs to be resolved before it goes live...

It's clearly a bug. There are blank, black spaces where the 123 button would be, and when I dragged my finger over some of those spaces, keys would show up, like Shift. But I couldn't get 123 to appear. However, it paired after about 3 tries. 0000 and 1234 are common, so it must default to those. But my in-car system (Parrot) uses random numbers, so that could be tricky. Fortunately, it remembered my pairing from pre-3.0 when I got in my car this morning!

 

[slicecom]

It's clearly a bug. There are blank, black spaces where the 123 button would be, and when I dragged my finger over some of those spaces, keys would show up, like Shift. But I couldn't get 123 to appear. However, it paired after about 3 tries. 0000 and 1234 are common, so it must default to those. But my in-car system (Parrot) uses random numbers, so that could be tricky. Fortunately, it remembered my pairing from pre-3.0 when I got in my car this morning!

Cool, please keep us up to date on any other BT headphones you try.

 

[ViViDboarder]

http://www.amazon.com/Jabra-A120s-100-61210000-02-Bluetooth-Adaptor/dp/B000FL4GBI/ref=tag_dpp_lp_edpp_ttl_in
wouldnt something like this work in a car that has a plug in for a 3.5 jack. just have to sync the phone to that right?

No, that's the wrong way. That is for plugging into the top of a regular iPod or CD player or Walkman and sending A2DP data.

If someone finds something to do what you mentioned, receive A2DP and output to 1/8th stereo, I would be very interested.

 

[MacToddB]

No, that's the wrong way. That is for plugging into the top of a regular iPod or CD player or Walkman and sending A2DP data.

If someone finds something to do what you mentioned, receive A2DP and output to 1/8th stereo, I would be very interested.

Motorola made a device (DC800) to do that, but it was a little big and AC powered. I might even have it... somewhere! Radio Shack and Best Buy had them on clearance... so I bought one but not sure if I gave it away.

http://search.ebay.com/search/searc...ef=C6&from=R40&dfsp=32&satitle=motorola+dc800

Speaking of Best Buy deals, I just picked up a Bluetooth speaker (A/C) from BestBuy (Insignia house brand). Normally $60 for $30. I'll try it w/ 3.0 iPhone.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...uetooth+speaker&type=product&id=1184369165394

 

[MacToddB]

Okay, I've had some time to play with Bluetooth A2DP stereo on the $29.95 Insignia (BestBuy house brand) NS-BT400 A/C powered speaker.

The speaker is surprisingly solid, with nice heft as well as sound. It also has a standard audio-in jack so you can use it for wired audio connections. It does require A/C power however. It even has a "well" on the top where you could rest your iPhone vertically (but not horizontally). It looks like it ought to have an iPod dock... but it doesn't.

On the top of the speaker are the audio controls and this part is important. Volume is controlled on the speaker. Pause, play, rewind, skip are ignored... for that, you need to use the iPhone.

On the other hand, if you change volume on the iPhone, it's ignored.

In an earlier post, I wrote that the Motorola S9's controls were able to control the volume on iPhone/iPod. Volume is indeed controlled on the S9 and not the iPhone, BUT again Pause, Play, Rewing, Skip buttons are ignored and must be done on the iPhone. This is another area for Apple to work on.

There was still the stuttering I wrote about earlier, when using CoverFlow or using the iPhone for other purposes. Apple still has several months to iron this out.

When listening to videos, there is a noticeable delay of 1 to 2 seconds, so lips are out of sync with dialogue/music. I had hoped to use this for projecting movies via a pico projector, and using the speakers wirelessly, but this isn't going to work. Especially since one way Apple might fix the stutter is to build in an even bigger delay.

Distance however was surprisingly good. I will have to make specific measurements, but I took my phone down the hall, almost the length of my house and the audio kept playing.

Also, this time, I *WAS* able to access the numeric keypad to enter 0000 to pair the BestBuy speakers. I deleted ('forget this device') the Motorola S9, and reinstalled it and didn't even have to pair it.

So those are the quick hits. Obviously, it's not fair to Apple to treat this as a finished product, but on the other hand, A2DP is not bleeding edge and has been available for other phones since the iPhone came out, so it's not unreasonable to expect more. I'm working on a more in-depth matrix with more headsets, etc., and plan to publish it in iPhone Life magazine, where I'm a contributor (www.iPhoneLife.com/Todd.Bernhard). Stay tuned!

 

[tasset]

I have been trying out 3.0 with an old pair of Jabra BT620s headphones, something I bought on clearance almost 2 years ago when the first iPhone came out in hopes Apple would include it originally.
And now after collecting dust I finally, FINALLY, have had a chance to use! They sound great for what you would expect, I don't care about the look. There is sound stutter if trying to multitask, but I can put up with that mostly if I was using this to lift weights.
My grade:
sound - B+
pairing - A
ease/connectivity - A
Beta stuttering - C

 

[Mengels7]

My S9's connected without any effort on my part, which then killed the audio on the phone until I rebooted it. Guess I'll go try again.

 

[DreamPod]

Obviously, it's not fair to Apple to treat this as a finished product, but on the other hand, A2DP is not bleeding edge and has been available for other phones since the iPhone came out, so it's not unreasonable to expect more.

Um, yes it is, it is EXTREMELY unreasonable to expect ANYTHING AT ALL to work in a beta. For all you know some guy at Apple has been working on this for all of 3 days! Apple did not release this to the public, they did not release it to reviewers, they released it to developers (and told them to use it only for development), and covered it with an NDA. In what possible situation would be be reasonable to expect a non-development-related feature to be feature-complete or even usable? Now, in 3 months, then I'd expect more.

 

[MacToddB]

Um, yes it is, it is EXTREMELY unreasonable to expect ANYTHING AT ALL to work in a beta. For all you know some guy at Apple has been working on this for all of 3 days! Apple did not release this to the public, they did not release it to reviewers, they released it to developers (and told them to use it only for development), and covered it with an NDA. In what possible situation would be be reasonable to expect a non-development-related feature to be feature-complete or even usable? Now, in 3 months, then I'd expect more.

as I wrote, "Obviously, it's not fair to Apple to treat this as a finished product", but thanks for reinforcing it.

 

[Requiemm]

I've been using my Jaybirds to listen to music and to watch movies. No stuttering during the movies, but the time lag actually grows. If you pause the movie and then start it again, the video will actually play in a "fast forward " kind of mode for a few seconds. After that it has caught up to the audio and then starts getting out of sync again.

That's my experience so far.

 

[rayward]

Hi all,

I own a VW GTI with Bluetooth Installed. I use my iPhone 3G to make and receive calls via Bluetooth with the Bluetooth module installed in the car. It works great.

The VW GTI Bluetooth module also supports A2DP - so I was excited that maybe I can send my iPhone audio to the car - but no success so far.

In the VW Bluetooth manual it says to use your phone and adjust the settings so that you send the phone's audio to Bluetooth but I can't find any settings on the iPhone to let me do this.

Any thoughts would be great thanks.

Cheers


JeffAU

If and when AT&T allow tethering, and with the new ability to do turn-by-turn, I think it should now be possible to for car manufacturers to integrate the iPhone's mapping capabilities into the car's onboard nav. system. Getting up to date maps, instead of DVD-based ones that are out of date before they're even installed, would be fantastic!

It doesn't even have to be Bluetooth either, because they can write an app for the iPhone so that when you plug it in to the 30-pin dock connector, you'd be able to access everything on your phone and have a web-enabled car too. That means emails and texts can be read to you through the stereo; you could dictate and send emails and texts whilst driving; browse for web content and have it read to you; video content could be streamed to the kids in the backseat...

The possibilities are almost endless.

 

[DreamPod]

as I wrote, "Obviously, it's not fair to Apple to treat this as a finished product", but thanks for reinforcing it.

Yes, and you followed that up with a statement treating it as a finished product, slamming it for being an incomplete buggy feature, saying people should expect more than what it is, just because the feature has existed on other devices for longer. When nobody should expect anything at all from the developer's beta.

 

[SFC Archer]

Read here for my evaluation of 2 blue tooth headsets that work great with 3.0 and the activation of the A2DP protocols.

 

[MacToddB]

Yes, and you followed that up with a statement treating it as a finished product, slamming it for being an incomplete buggy feature, saying people should expect more than what it is, just because the feature has existed on other devices for longer. When nobody should expect anything at all from the developer's beta.

let's revisit what I wrote.

Obviously, it's not fair to Apple to treat this as a finished product, but on the other hand, A2DP is not bleeding edge and has been available for other phones since the iPhone came out, so it's not unreasonable to expect more.

I didn't "slam" anything. I didn't say people SHOULD expect more, just that it's not unreasonable to expect more. Sorry, it's subtle, but there's a difference. Heck, it wasn't unreasonable to expect the original iPhone to have A2DP, when other phones did.

If the iPhone can communicate with a Glucose meter via Bluetooth, as shown at the introduction of 3.0, it's not unreasonable for it to communicate with Bluetooth headsets.

 

[mckvakk]

iPhone 3.0 and the Sony Ericsson Speaker ball MBS-100 works like a charm.

 

[MacFly123]

Amen! Others were complaining about cut and paste and MMS, but I couldn't care less about either of those. What I REALLY wanted was to get rid of the annoying cord! This will make working out at the gym a much more pleasant experience.

I too am very excited for this. Now I just need a nice new car that has a bluetooth audio system haha

On a side note, I would also like to thank you for saying "couldn't care less" instead of "could" like so many morons in this country!

 

[slapppy]

Looking forward to this function so that I can work out without worries. I've almost ripped the iPhone out few times getting the headphone wires caught up on the bars. Man I hate that.