Eli Hodapp’s large collection of words.

Outside of the two dozen people lucky enough to find the iPhone Bluetooth Headset at various Apple Stores around the country a week or two ago (Most Apple stores got 2 to 3?) and the small hand full of big-wig bloggers who get products sent to them early to review, I haven’t seen a single thing on The Internet about Apple’s newest iPhone accessory.

I got mine this morning, it actually arrived a day early- FedEx is notoriously lazy around here so believe me, I was blown away. If you have ever bought an iPod, iMac, or any other Apple product you’re no doubt aware of how over-engineered the packaging is. Apple’s iPhone Bluetooth Headset is no different.

Great, it looks cool, the box is neat- but how does it work?

If all you’re looking for is a minimalistic Bluetooth headset, awesome.

Included in the box is a new dock for the iPhone which includes a socket for the iPhone Bluetooth Headset. You drop it in the hole on the right of the dock and it secures itself with a magnet, similar to the MacBook and MacBook Pro mag-safe power adapters. Also, when you drop both the iPhone and iPhone Bluetooth Headset in to the dock, the iPhone displays both battery meters as they charge:

This is an amazing revolution in both cellular and bluetooth technology, believe it or not. The main reason I’ve avoided Bluetooth headsets as a whole is because if there is one thing I don’t need more of in my life, it’s more power adapters. I seriously have a 25 gallon Rubbermaid storage bin in my closet filled with miscellaneous wires that all have to do with powering and or charging random gadgets I’ve collected in my life. 25 GALLONS of wires.

25 GALLONS!!!

I absolutely refuse to carry around another adapter of any sort in my man-purse of a laptop bag. Also included with the iPhone Bluetooth Headset is a cable to charge and sync both devices without the dock. The cable even works with both my iPod Nano and iPod Video, an unadvertised feature which really needs more attention. Instead of having four individual ridiculous power adapters I only have to carry around one cable, this is such an amazing advance in mobile technology that I almost feel the need to alert the major news agencies.

Enough about wires. To pair the iPhone Bluetooth Headset to the iPhone, all you have to do is drop both in to either of the chargers. No cryptic key combinations to kick the headset in to discoverable mode, pairing passkeys that you forget, or digging through your phone’s menus to try to figure out where to initiate the Bluetooth connection. The setup is completely idiot-proof.

Another really cool integration feature between the iPhone and the iPhone Bluetooth Headset is the menu which comes up after you’ve initiated a phone call on the iPhone. After entering in the phone number and pressing call, calling a number from your contacts, or your recent call list a window pops up for a few seconds asking where you would like the audio from the call to be routed to.

You can either make a selection and the call will be placed immediately, or you can wait a couple seconds and the call will automatically be placed over the iPhone Bluetooth Headset. If you would like to switch from the iPhone Bluetooth Headset to the iPhone or the iPhone’s speaker phone feature, all you have to do is tap the “audio source” button in the top right of the call menu to get back to the window displaying the three audio sources.

On the back of the iPhone Bluetooth Headset is a single button which controls several features:

• One press will answer an incoming call or end the current call.
• Holding the button for one second until you hear a beep will decline an incoming call, sending it to voicemail.
• To switch to an incoming or on hold call and place the current call on hold, press the button.
• To end the current call and switch to either an incoming call or a call on hold, press and hold the button for one second until you hear a beep.
• When not in a call, pressing the button once while the headset is on will result in a beep and the hidden light on the side will light up displaying the current battery level.
• Pressing and holding the button for a few seconds will turn on or turn off the headset.

If you answer an incoming call using the iPhone’s touch screen, the call will be routed through the iPhone instead of the iPhone Bluetooth Headset. If the iPhone Bluetooth Headset is on and ever loses its connection to the iPhone it is paired to, it will reconnect as soon as the iPhone comes back in to range.

The audio quality is in my opinion, very good. The iPhone Bluetooth Headset actually seems louder than the iPhone itself, and according to the callers I’ve surveyed today sounded “the same” or “a little better” than using the iPhone itself. Compared to the included iPhone headphones which also act as a hands-free kit the audio was “much clearer” or “tons better”. Scientific tests, I know. Another neat feature in regards to volume is while you’re in a call on the iPhone Bluetooth Headset, volume is controlled using the side buttons on the iPhone itself.

The main drawbacks of the iPhone Bluetooth Headset are price and lack of features. At $129, it is one of the most if not the most expensive Bluetooth headsets on the market today. Due to its simplicity, it lacks features like voice dialing, redialing directly from the headset, battery life, and advanced noise cancellation.

I’ve never been a big user of voice dialing. I’m nowhere near important enough that I simply don’t have the time to dial phone number or look up contacts, and I’ve always thought that there is no better way to look like a colossal dork than having some gigantic blinking headset in your ear while you proclaim for all the world to hear, “Call John Smith!” I also have a really hard time getting worked up over the lack of a redial button. Living in the Chicago area, I’m hard pressed to ever drop down below a solid five bars of signal, and I don’t remember the last time I dropped a call. I don’t get hung up on, so really, I’m not sure when I’d ever use redial enough to require a dedicated redial button. Complaining about this is on par with complaining that my mouse sucks because it doesn’t have a button to print on it.

The battery life isn’t as great as some other Bluetooth headsets, both in standby time and talk time. I assume this is mainly contributed to how ridiculously tiny the iPhone Bluetooth Headset is. Either way, 5.5 hours of talk time and 72 hours of standby time is more than enough for me. It could have half that and I’d still be fine.

In my biased and jaded opinion, the only drawback (if you’d even call it that) of the iPhone Bluetooth Headset is the lack of advanced noise cancellation technology seen in the Aliph Jawbone and Blue Ant Z9. Both use different methods to eliminate background noise, the Jawbone uses a microphone coupled with a sensor which picks up vibrations from your jaw. The Blue Ant Z9 uses two microphones to determine what is and isn’t background noise. There’s no doubt about it, these two headsets pack some neat technology. Each of their respective web sites have demos of how well the headsets work, completely eliminating ambient noise whether it is music, a leaf blower, of people talking at a bar.

Fortunately (or unfortunately?) I never find myself making calls during Space Shuttle launches, from a mosh pit at a GWAR concert, or while standing next to jet engines, so even though the noise cancellation these headsets have is cool, I don’t have much use for it. The Jawbone also seems to be developing a reputation online for being rather flimsy, and a few people have had the headset break in one way or another during the actual review. Being able to ram a device in my pocket is a big feature for me, and I’m not sure how comfortable I’d be pocketing the Jawbone, given the reported flimsiness.

Also, the Jawbone is kind of big and kind of flashy. Here is a photo I found on Flickr comparing the size of the two. At the end of the day it’s in the eye of the beholder which headset makes you look like a bigger nerd. The iPhone lacks any blinking lights, and is small enough and black enough that it doesn’t draw attention to itself. (Unlike those goofy Motorola headsets with the 80,000 lumen blinking LED.) To the left is a photo of some dweeb wearing the Jawbone, to the right is a photo of myself wearing the iPhone Bluetooth Headset, looking equally dweeby.

I think the main stopping point for most people with the iPhone Bluetooth Headset (assuming they already own an iPhone) is whether or not it fits. As seen in the photos, the headset itself lacks any additional ear pieces, ear loops, or anything else to assist in having it stay put. The iPhone Bluetooth Headset gets wedged in to your ear similar to the iPod headphones. If you can comfortably wear a pair of iPhone headphones without having problems with them following out, the iPhone Bluetooth Headset will work for you. With my ears, the headset fits snug, and I’ve been unable to knock it out by shaking my head, jumping up and down, and doing other stuff trying to get it to pop out. Unfortunately, if you don’t get along with iPod headphones, there is no room for adjustment in the iPhone Bluetooth Headset.

You also apparently can’t use it while you mine for coal, diamonds, or anything else which requires blasting. (Which really puts a major kink in my usage patterns since I spent a good 2/3 of my day blasting for diamonds.) Anyway, I think that’s about everything I can come up with after using the iPhone Bluetooth Headset today.

If you have an iPhone, pick one up. If not, wait for the Blue Ant Z9 to come out.

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