B l u e t o o t h N e w s . c o m   

By: David Shier - Managing Editor

The International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) was held in Las Vegas in January and Bluetooth technology was very prominent. I literally lost count of the number of Bluetooth headsets I saw there. While many of them are from companies in Asia that were looking for importers and may never be available in Europe or the USA, some were worth noting.

The Instant Speakerphone Car Kit

The Auto-Tooth is what I call an “instant speakerphone car kit”. Basically, the Auto-Tooth is a small hands-free kit that plugs directly into your cigarette lighter adapter, which provides the power for the speaker amplifier. Unlike a standard car kit, no installation is required. Since I’m always nervous about having some installer tear up my car’s interior, the Auto-Tooth really appeals to me. Another advantage is that you can take it with you when you travel and pop in the rental car. Since a number of jurisdictions are outlawing driving and using a mobile phone without a hands-free kit, this can be an invaluable feature.

Of course, there are times when a speakerphone is less than ideal. Perhaps you’re in noisy traffic, or you have someone else in the car and you want to have a private conversation. Wouldn’t it be great to combine the speakerphone with the headset? Well FreeTop thought of that too and calls it the Multi-Tooth.

The Multi-Tooth is an Auto-Tooth with a magnetic holder for a Micro-Tooth. When the Micro-Tooth is in the holder, the speakerphone is enabled. At the same time, the Micro-Tooth is charged so as I hinted above, battery life is no longer an issue. When the earpiece is removed from the holder, the sound transfers from the speakerphone to the Micro-Tooth earpiece.

Needless to say, I’m looking forward to getting my hands on this one.

The Ultimate Bluetooth Headset?

First, there is the Adaptive Noise Compensation (ANC) which constantly analyzes background noise and adapts the audio signal to optimize the intelligibility of speech. I got an impressive demonstration of this feature in one of the worse possible environments for taking a phone call: the trade show floor. With all the background noise, I was given a Sound ID earpiece to listen to. Then I was provided an audio control that raised and lowered the volume for a simulated police siren from a speaker next to me. Regardless of the volume, the apparent volume of the voice from the Bluetooth earpiece, remained constant and clear.

Next, they tackled the sound heard by the person at the other end of the phone call. The device incorporates an innovative two-microphone system. In a quiet environment, a directional acoustic microphone captures your voice. As background noise increases, a special microphone within the ear picks up the skull vibrations produced by your voice to directly capture your speech before your voice is mixed with environmental sounds.

But the tricks don't end there! Sound ID has a feature they call the EarPrint^TM Internet hearing evaluation system that creates an individual hearing profile. This profile is used to adjust the incoming sound to accommodate for hearing changes that limit the perception of sound.

Once again, this is a product that is only in the prototype stage. We will certainly let you know when it's available and when we can do a thorough evaluation.

Other Products of Interest

Toshiba was in the SD Card pavilion showing their Bluetooth SDIO Card. They also had a prototype of a Bluetooth external hard disk. This would be a great addition for users of Pocket PCs with Bluetooth or the Palm Tungsten T. You could keep the hard drive in your briefcase and still have access to gigabytes of data for far less money than using flash memory.

A couple of vendors were showing electronic pens that digitize your writing on special paper which also used Bluetooth to transfer the data to your computer or PDA.

Along the same lines, the folks at eBeam now have a Bluetooth version of their clever electronic whiteboard reader. At $999, this is not a personal toy. But business users will love the elimination of cables compared to the less expensive USB version. Once again, we are working on getting a unit for evaluation. We'll let you know what we find.

Not so much a consumer product, but 3e Technologies showed a Bluetooth to RS-232 adapter. The target markets for this product are industrial, automated test equipment and medical equipment. 3e Technologies also had a prototype of a Bluetooth GPS receiver, which was not based on the Emtac unit being sold by Socket Communications.

Hewlett Packard and Palm Lead With Integrated Bluetooth

Both HP and Palm have Bluetooth integrated in their top of the line handheld, the HP iPAQ h5450 and the Palm Tungsten T. The iPAQ h5450 is a Pocket PC with more built-in features than any other handheld available. Not only does it provide Bluetooth, it has Wi-Fi built-in as well. Plus a clever fingerprint scanner for login security. See our detailed review of the new iPAQ for more information on the Bluetooth software HP is providing.

Other devices with Bluetooth integrated included the BluePAD from Greenbell Systems out of Korea. The BluePAD is an Internet tablet type device that can run Windows CE.NET or Linux 2.4. with a large 104 inch display. By using Bluetooth instead of Wi-Fi, the BluePAD can offer easier "ad hoc" connections for such applications as delivery services or field-force automation.

As you can see, we have a lot of work ahead reviewing all these new products. Details will follow as soon as we get each item from the vendor.