I’ve been trying to find a decent solution to a headset for my PDA phone. Because the built-in Bluetooth (BT) on my phone (a Siemens SX66 or a HTC Blue Angel (generically)) sucks, I’ve been using a Jabra A210 … and it’s much more powerful than the built-in BT so it’s much more reasonable.
But yesterday I went into a Starbucks and the call quality was terrible. I don’t usually make calls from coffee shops, but this time I did.
Why the bad sound quality in the headset (lots of static and weak signal)? It occurred to me that Starbucks has wi-fi. Both Bluetooth and 802.11b/g use the 2.4 GHz frequency range. Thus, they interfere with each other. I have noticed the same thing at home, where I run an 802.11g network … my BT headset can be really poor in certain spots of the house (where the wi-fi must be really good!).
The only headset that works consistently? A wired one. The Plantronics MX300. I like it because it’s retractable. I don’t like it because … well, it’s wired. But it seems like I don’t have much choice. At more and more coffee shops and places in general have wi-fi, there’s very little that can be done. I’m most likely going to take a step back to wired.
Technorati Tags : Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Cellular
