If you’ve tried Bluetooth headsets and speaker phones before and didn’t find them to your liking, I have another option to try for hands free calls. It’s the Earzee Bluetooth Wristband from MobileFun. This wristband pairs with your phone and vibrates when it detects a call. You can then pull the earphone speaker between your fingers, hold your hand up to your ear and talk into your wrist. It’s a toss up as to whether people will think you’re with the secret service, or crazy. The Stretch Earzee Bluetooth Wristband is available now for £19.99 ($32.32).

Filed in categories: Bluetooth Gear, Car Gear, News

Tagged: Bluetooth Gear, Hands Free, Spotlight Gadgets

Talk to the Hand with the Earzee Bluetooth Wristband originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on February 17, 2011 at 1:45 pm.

The Blackberry Visor Mount Speakerphone (VM-605) is a pretty, slick new device from RIM that combines a hands-free speakerphone with an FM transmitter to let you hear your Blackberry over the car’s speakers. In appearance and function, it is a piece of art.

Besides a hands-free speakerphone, it is also billed as your gateway to ‘Road Ready Tunes’ and as being GPS friendly.

Let’s get the specs out of the way-

• Nine Languages /Variants Supported- U.K. English, U.S. English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, LatAm Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese
• Caller ID Announcement- Audible, Visual — through car stereo’s LCD (RDS)
• Standby Time- 240 hours with Time-out shutdown
• Charging- Micro-USB 12/24V Automotive Charger will also charge Micro-USB BlackBerry^®smartphones
• Battery- 1100mAh Li-Polymer (enclosed)
• Bluetooth Version 2.0, class 2
• Audio Outputs- Onboard speakerphone (3.3 Watts), FM transmission with auto station scanning
• Echo and noise cancellation
• Size- 4.84 x 2.27 x 0.63 inches (123 x 57.6 x 16mm, and 3.03 ounces (86g)

The demo unit I was sent included the Visor Mount Speakerphone (VMO), an auto/DC charging cord, a CD-ROM, and a single page of printed directions. (The PDF on-line has more information.)

Includes: VM-605 unit and charger. (Blackberry not included)

THE DEVICE-

The VMO is a beautifully styled unit that is compact and passes the Creak Test with very minor noise. The front of the unit is actually both a large button, display panel for four icons, and the microphone. The very glossy surface shows fingerprints and dust, and has a tendency to reflect glare. Most of the icons have several states to help you figure out what is going on… if you remember them all or have the guide handy.

VM-605 front view, with 'pairing on' indicator

The sides of the unit have a Volume Up and Down button and covered charging port on the right, and an FM button on the left. The Up/Down buttons serve many functions.

VM-605 right side

VM-605 left side

GETTING STARTED-

To turn the VMO on and off, you press the front button for 2 and 4 seconds respectively. It will say “Connected’ or ‘Pairing Off’. A couple of minor things so far…

1. The instructions say ‘Press and hold front panel’. What they mean is to press the top edge of the panel. The panel is basically hinged at the bottom, so pressing the top gets you the best results. Pressing in the middle was often inconsistent for me.
2. The synthesized voices sound like an English woman and are a bit indistinct.
3. There is a pause between pressing the button and the voice, so there is a tendency to press for too long, turning the whole thing off again.

The instructions for pairing the unit take six steps, but it went exactly as planned and the instructions are well-written for this part. It was up and running in a couple minutes.

The unit was delivered partially charged, and plugging it in to charge is simple enough. I could perhaps wish for a longer cord, but I just charged it on the passenger seat- although an AC charger would have been nice. While there is not a battery indicator, there are indicators for charging, fully charged, and low battery. The battery lasted my entire testing period- about a week just sitting there and about an hour of active use. If your Blackberry uses the Micro-USB connector, it can charge your unit. Mine uses a Mini-USB so I am out of luck- a dual-tipped charger would be nice.

The VM-605 speaks nine languages, and you may have to change the language- but it is easy to do if you have the directions handy.

VM-605 showing that it is connected to a call and FM radio

FM TRANSMITTER-

The heart of this unit is its ability to transmit the Blackberry’s speaker to your vehicle’s FM radio. Pressing the FM button on the side starts the pairing process and it will announce a frequency. Play something over the Blackberry, use the menu to transmit it over the VM-605 (which should be a menu item), and listen. If you hear it over the radio, great! If not, just touch the Volume Up button for a second and it will announce ‘Searching…’, and a new frequency. A couple minor things on this point include…

1. It often sent me to a frequency that had a station on it- the ‘search’ feature seems to be more of a ‘what is on my internal list’ than ‘what frequencies are clear’ search.
2. Omaha is not a big city, but it is hard to find clear channels to use. The unit and I found two of them, both have some static.
3. An undocumented feature is that if you tap the Up or Down buttons, the frequency changes by one step. This can help you lock in a good channel.
4. Overall sound quality is about that of an AM radio or a bit better. Your results will depend a lot on the frequencies. Considering that this is sold as a music device, I was a bit disappointed- but it is no worse than any other FM transmitter I have tried, and better than many.

The FM transmitter function shuts off after a minute if it is not in use. I also noticed that it did not always automatically reconnect when starting the car, but a quick tap of the FM button solves this.

SPEAKERPHONE-

To answer or hang up, you just click the front panel (at the top) quickly. The calls were quickly transferred to the radio and sounded good on my end. The people on the other end usually reported that the quality and clarity was the same as a call straight from the Blackberry- so the microphone is obviously doing a good job of picking up my voice and filtering out the background noise- just as it promised!

You can ignore a call by holding the front panel for a second, or mute a call by tapping the panel while on a call. You supposedly come back from muting by tapping the Up button- but every time I tried it, it changed frequencies.

OVERALL-

This is a nice unit. It has a few minor glitches, but overall works nicely and offers good sound quality on calls. I heartily endorse hands-free devices for drivers who use cell phones (the crash statistics are scary!) and this is a good option. My biggest complaint is the nice, slick front panel.

Besides showing fingerprints and glare, it also acts as a multi-function button with no cues on how to use it. How long do you press it, and what functions can it do again? You would quickly master it in use, but I think that any learning curve or distraction while driving should have been engineered out. I understand that adding buttons makes distractions worse, and I applaud the use of voice cues to make this easier, but I can wish it was a bit less ambiguous.

I do not have voice commands set up on my Blackberry, so I was unable to try them with this unit, but others have noted they work well together to make an even more hands-free experience. I was also unable to test it with a GPS system, but again, other reviewers liked this feature.

At $99.99 suggested retail, it may be a bit high but I would expect the price to drop as other retailers start to carry it.

Filed in categories: Blackberry related, Car Gear, Wireless

Tagged: Blackberry, Bluetooth Gear, Hands Free, speakerphone

Blackberry Visor Mount Speakerphone VM-605 Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on July 15, 2009 at 7:28 pm.

Despite my extra geekiness and my affinity for electronic gadgets and toys, I only very recently acquired a cell phone with bluetooth. I’d been using a Motorola V325 with Verizon for three years (try this – they’ll start begging you to upgrade to a new phone a few months after your “New every two” date), and it was bluetooth-free. Then I upgraded to an iPhone, which got me a little more interested in the world of bluetooth devices.

iVoice is a small company that specializes in bluetooth voice devices for phones. I was sent both the R1 car kit and the Baby-Ai headset. We’ll cover the headset in another review.

The R1 is an interesting concept – rather than rely solely on a headset while driving, this is a speakerphone that clips onto your car’s sun visor. It has buttons for making and receiving calls, and it’s designed to be easier to use while driving than a traditional headset. It also employs iVoice’s technology to cancel out background noise and provide “face-to-face quality conversation”.

The iVoice R1 comes with a sun visor clip, USB cable, and two chargers – one for home and one for your car. This is a nice feature; I like when a product comes with a car charger – it’s one less thing I have to buy.

The R1 itself is a small black box with four buttons – end call, answer call, and volume up/down.

The visor clip is removable and is very secure and tight. It easily slides on and off your car’s sun visor without feeling loose or cheap.

Syncing it up to my iPhone was easy – I just followed the included directions, and I was ready to go. One nice thing about the R1 is that it can be synced up to two phones simultaneously. My boyfriend also has an iPhone, so we can both use it whenever we need to.

The R1 also has dual microphones. When used in the car, the second mic acts as noise cancellation. You can also enable “conference mode”, where both mics receive normal speech, so that the R1 can be used as a makeshift  speaker for on-the-go conference calls.

In testing with the R1, I found that as the caller (using the R1), voice calls were very, very clear. The speaker is plenty loud and works great in the car. The end call and answer call buttons are easy to hit while I’m driving.

The R1 also supports voice dialing and announcing who is calling, if your cell phone supports these features. Unfortunately, the iPhone doesn’t support voice dialing, so this feature doesn’t work. It does, however, announce the phone number of the person calling. I’m not sure if it would announce the name of the person calling, if your phone had such a feature.

On the receiving end (someone else calling me with the R1), I could tell that the person was on a speakerphone, but the quality was good, and the audio wasn’t too muffled or distant. I called a few people with the R1, and got a few complaints that I sounded too quiet. Overall, however, the opinions I got from others were pretty positive.

At $99.99 MSRP, the R1 is a little pricey. However, if you travel and frequently use your phone in the car, it’s one handy device to have around. I will definitely be adding it to my collection of travel gadgets.

Filed in categories: Car Gear, Wireless

Tagged: Bluetooth Gear, Hands Free, Mobile

iVoice R1 Bluetooth Car Kit Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on February 17, 2009 at 1:00 am.