One of the complaints that I had with my new PDA-phone is that the volume is actually too loud straight out of the phone. So on top of the headphone port adapter required to use my preferred headphones, I had to get a volume control adapter, which after it was all connected made my headphone cable ridiculously long. This really become a hassle on my latest trip to Asia, as I was using my phone to listen to music and podcasts while traveling.

So while researching a solution, I discovered that bluetooth headphones have become much more common and usable. It was just earlier this year, when I was with Elijah in Hong Kong, we saw some bluetooth headphones in the computer mall, and we commented that we couldn’t see any actual use for them. And here I am seriously considering them.

Some of the advantages of using a bluetooth headphone adapter are that the headphone cables aren’t directly connected to the phone and dragging all over the place and also that as a phone adapter, I can take calls without getting my phone out or taking my headphones off. One of the more recent improvements is that these adapters can also control the music player remotely.

After some searching, I settled on the i.Tech Clip R35 because I could use my own headphones and i.Tech products are much more available in Asia, where I was at the time. I ended up getting them at my second stop in Singapore, because I didn’t have time to search for them in Taipei. Turns out that if I waited to get them in Malaysia, I would have saved a few bucks :p.

Once I got the R35 adapter, I configured it with my PDA-phone and tested it out with different settings and players. Unfortunately, the bluetooth stack that comes with Windows Mobile 5 is not that efficient with the limited memory and the sound quality is pretty bad. I tried some different hacks and eventually got a configuration which required installing a hacked third-party bluetooth stack. The sound quality was better but not optimal (some minor skipping).

For software, I then tried both the included Windows Media Player and Conduits Pocket Player. Pocket Player has better playlist management and saves your ‘last played’ position among other features. But I ended up settling on the included player since it didn’t take up additional memory and the basic operation worked well enough.

As a bluetooth headphone adapter, the R35 itself works pretty well. The sound quality while talking on the phone worked fine, and the battery life is remarkably good. But I guess I expected too much, forgetting to pack the charger on my 30-hr flight back and running out of juice. In the end, the limitation is more with the device that I was pairing it with.

Fortunately, after I got back from Asia, I upgraded my phone operating system to Windows Mobile 6, which has a much improved bluetooth stack, and works as you would expect (good sound quality and no skipping). I still stuck with the included player because for some unexplained reason Conduits Pocket Player didn’t work with the remote bluetooth controls as it did with the old operating system.

One unrelated observation is that I use these a lot more when in Asia than I do back home. The primary reason being that in SoCal, most of my ‘traveling’ is spent in my car where I don’t need to use my PDA-phone to listen to music and I can just connect it to the in-car bluetooth for hands-free phone calling. While in Asia, most of my time is spent walking or in mass-transit and on planes, and with the bluetooth headphone adapter, I have my own self-contained media/phone environment.