Jawbone Headset Does Cut Out Most Ambient Noise

Tonight, I decided to do a spur of the moment show on Blog Talk Radio. I was at Fedex Kinko’s and took advantage of the T-Mobile Hotspot to schedule a show for myself so that I could talk on the way home. Previously, I have used my mobile phone with or without a headset to run the show. I’ve had the best result using the wired headset, holding it close to my mouth. The other bluetooth headset did a really poor job of capturing my voice. Using the phone by itself actually does a decent job, but when you are holding it up to your face for an hour, it can get tiresome.

I’ve had the new Jawbone headset for a while now, but have not had the opportunity to do a show with it. I’ve tested it on a couple Utterz posts, but have not put it to a good test. After tonight’s show, I can definitely say that the Jawbone does offer kick-ass noise reduction. You can’t really tell on the show that I was driving home except for the parts where the phone signal fades a little. My voice is a little “tinny”, but it is clearer.

Another way in which I love using the Jawbone is with Jott. Prior to the Jawbone, I had a hard time getting the voice recognition to figure out who I wanted to message, especially with the windows open. The Jawbone headset is amazing in its ability to ensure that Jott recognizes my speech in the first attempt. On occasion, I’ll have to repeat, but not too often.

There is one downside to the Jawbone bluetooth headest. I think it does a horrible job in windy conditions. It can deal with lawnmowers and crowded places, but totally blows it in the wind, pun intended. I don’t understand how it can’t deal with wind. Consequently, I often only lower one window on the van to avoid windy conditions while I’m on the phone.

Despite its shortcoming in the wind, I would recommend the Jawbone bluetooth headset to anybody considering the purchase of a new device. It won’t help you hear the other side clearer, but it does help the other side hear you better. Just the benefit of not having to repeat things makes the Jawbone worthwhile. If you plan on podcasting in noisy environments through your phone, it is definitely worth its weight in gold.

Geeking out with my T-Mobile Dash

I know this is a bit late to be writing about the T-Mobile Dash. In a few days, I’ll have had my phone for one year. This means that it is old technology. I only recently discovered the Voice Command feature on the phone and have been all over it ever since. It caught my interest one day when I was wearing my bluetooth headset and a voice started telling me that I had a message from somebody and read the subject to me. It freaked me out. I didn’t know it could do that. So, I poked around and learned that I could set it to read all my messages rather than just the urgent ones. While I’m driving, I occasionally take a peek at my Twitter messages. Having the phone read text messages to me as they come in saves me from that task, which theoretically makes things safer for me.

Looking around the web, I discovered that I could also issue commands to my phone to get it to do things like tell me the time, tell it to go to flight mode, find out my next appointment, and other tasks. So, the problem was that it required me to pick up my phone and press the Home button to activate the voice command. Once you do that, it’s pointless to issue a voice command as I can do the rest myself. I found a blog entry that corrects a bug on the Dash through a hack on the phone’s registry. Now, all I have to do is tap my bluetooth headset, issue a command, and listen to the response. I just made the registry edit today, so I have not had a chance to test it out.

The only thing I wish I could do is listen to my music via the bluetooth headset. If this worked, I’d buy the AAA battery powered headset to enjoy the 8 hour talk time.

UPDATE

I went and purchased the Motorola S9 headset, which lets you listen to music on your Dash using bluetooth. Apparently, there are two settings for the headset. When you have it as phone headset, you only hear through one ear. Notifications are one-eared as well. For the music connection, you get full stereo from both ears.

If you pair your headset with another device for either setting, then you have to re-pair it to your phone. Simply go to the Communication Manager, select Settings, select option 2 Bluetooth, option 1 Bluetooth, highlight your S9, then select “Set as Hands-free” or “Set as Wireless Stereo” depending on which got turned off.