Reviews
Treo
650 Bluetooth Headset
Must-have accessory for Treo 650 owners
The
Palm Treo 650 has an excellent earpiece, speaker and mic, plenty
of volume, and an utterly spectacular speaker phone feature built
in. Out of the box, you can use it like a ãnormalä cell phone:
hold it up to your ear to talk, or after making or taking a call,
tap the onscreen speaker phone button and hold it, or set it down
on a table or your car seat, and yak away with the confidence
that the person on the other side of the call will be able to
hear you, and vice versa. I probably use my 650's speaker phone
feature more often than I hold the phone up to my head, freeing
both hands.
The
650 comes with a little mono headset that plugs into its bottom
jack. It's an ear bud with a long skinny wire. I hate ear buds.
Often when using one, I've stood up to walk away and had them
yanked right out of my ear(s), or been all tangled up in wire.
On a recent convention trip, I forgot to pack my Sony headphones
to use with my MP3 player in the hotel room, so I dug through
my luggage, and found a set of stereo ear buds, and I couldn't
stand using them for more than half an hour because to me they're
painful, and they just don't stay in my ears. They're cheap and
evil, and if they didn't come free with most portable devices,
I'd never use them.
Palm's
new Treo 650 Bluetooth Headset is an altogether different beast.
If you're not familiar with Bluetooth, check out bluetooth.com
for an overview of this cool technology, and if you ever wondered
where the name came from, look here:
www.bluetooth.org/bluetooth/landing/btname.php
I
didn't have much time to play with this new headset before deadline,
but found it to be quite a capable and high quality enhancement
to the Treo 650 experience. This featherweight unit weighs barely
half an ounce. And its silver plastic body and big oval multifunction
button are a nice match with the phone's color and oval earpiece.
The
headset has two tiny but serviceable volume up/down buttons on
its side, and a fat and comfy rubbery ear grip that's trivial
to rotate around so you can use it on either ear. It took a little
getting used to hanging it over the top of my ear and fiddling
with my glasses to find just the right way to wear it, but that's
to be expected when learning how to adapt to a new piece of wearable
gear. The headset's speaker is a slight bulge that rests on your
ear, not painfully jammed into it like an ear bud, and the microphone
is just a little hole at its bottom, so no mic boom hanging down.
It's stylish, compact, and weighs next to nothing. Overall, I'd
rate its ergonomics a 9 out of 10.
Unlike
some Bluetooth devices, you don't need to install a driver on
your 650. First, charge the headset up for two hours. Included
is an international AC charger with four different swappable heads
to work on different continents, so it's perfect for travelers.
This same unit will charge your Treo 650, or the phone's charger
will charge the headset. palmOne even tosses in a slick little
drawstring nylon carrying bag for the charger and headset.
Fully
charged, the headset should give you about seven hours of talk
time, or a week of standby time.
After
charging, run your 650's Bluetooth app and ãpairä it with the
headset. The included multi-language manual painlessly walks you
through the procedure. The multifunction button on the headset
has a very bright, throbbing blue light on it, which flashes in
different sequences depending on which mode it's in. It's important
to spend some time with the manual to learn what different button
presses and light flashes mean. And remember, when you're wearing
the headset you can't even see the light unless you take it off
your ear or look in a mirror. This could be confusing for new
owners until you get the hang of it.
Once
paired with the 650, charged up and in standby mode, you can do
the following with the buttons on the headset:
ð Answer an incoming call
ð Turn the volume up or down
ð End a call
ð Mute and un-mute the mic
ð Redial the last dialed number
ð Reject an incoming call
ð Put a call on hold
ð Take a second incoming call (call wait ing) and switch between
two calls
ð Turn the headset off
The
headset works only with the Treo 650's phone functions. You can't
listen to MP3s with it, and why you'd want to listen to music
in no-fi mono in only one ear is questionable.
Bluetooth
is short range radio; you can expect to get about 20 feet away
from your phone before the audio starts to break up and whoever
you're speaking with complains they can't hear you or you both
hear crackling noises. In my brief tests on a couple calls, I
found this to be an accurate distance estimate. One gripe is that
if you're out and about in public with your 650 in your pocket,
purse, or on a belt hook, the headset's flashing blue light will
advertise to anyone who looks at you that you're on a cell call
(or think you're a cyborg). Unless the headset is powered off,
that light is always going to be flashing in one sequence or another,
and it is pretty bright.
The
rubber ear grip might not be tight enough for especially active
people. Again, it depends on the size and shape of your ear, and
how well it grip hangs onto it, so like the Fossil Wrist PDA reviewed
elsewhere in this issue, before you shell out the bucks for the
palmOne Treo 650 Bluetooth headset, try to find an open demo unit
at a store, put it on, see how it feels. But if you decide its
right for you, I think you'll find its build quality good, and
its functionality excellent. Note: this headset is not compatible
with the Treo 600, 300, 270, 180, or 90.
öHarv Laser
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