Posts Tagged ‘Bluetooth’

Motorola Endeavor HX1 Review.

A Google search for “HX1″ will normally only get you a “Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX1″ review, which barely helps.

Recently, we have acquired a Motorola HX1 bluetooth headset. We don’t do unboxing, as there should be a plentiful of them on Youtube. We did, however, take a couple of photos of our very headset.

Price
We got this piece of small headset in Hong Kong at HK$1280 (€110), it was easily the most expensive bluetooth device we’ve bought – we could have gotten the Jawbone Prime thing below this. We picked the Motorla “?” Endeavor HX1. It’s the second product with a Chinese model name – the previous one was the A1200 “?” Linux based phone.^

Setting up
I couldn’t wait to unpack the phone in office, I dismounted the packaging on metro. Setting up a connection is amazingly easy and user-friendly – as I wore the headset and turn it on, it has internal voice instruction in English to help me pair up the machine with my HTC Diamond. It took me no time to finish the whole pairing thing. Note that I didn’t even need to read the manual.

Voice Quality
I tried to make a call when I was in an East Rail Train, the railway notorious to every Hong Kong citizen as each compartment of the train is equipped with five televisions which keep spamming ads very loudly, damaging the ears of the passengers. My friend took my call and found that my background voice is acceptable and my voice was able to be heard quite clearly. Then I tried to activate the stealth mode with a single press on a button which I suspected to be the stealth button, and poof! I heard “Stealth Mode On”, while my background noice was vanished, as reported by my friend.

My friend was astonished and could not believe that I was on the loudest train on the world. He commented my voice was a little bit “stacked” though. (After reading manual, it does say the voice will be a bit distorted when the stealth mode is on)

Further tests involving talking in front of a loudspeaker was equally impressive for the recepient (although you might be unable to hear them because of your own noisy environment)

Comfortability
Despite that the package was bundled with two sets of clips and earplugs of various sizes, we found it quite a challenge to obtain the best result. Both the two earplugs will make the ear painful after using for an hour or two. Besides, it would need experience to calibrate the HX1 for the other side of phone to hear clearly. A misplacement inside the ear canal could result in hearing hasard on the other side of phone.

Overall comment
Despite being dissatisfied by the awfully designed phones, Motorola impressed us this time with the preipheral. If you need to work or stay in a noisy place for long time, this HX1 will be your choice (providing your budget allows – the price seems to be vary greatly among different countries, as we heard the retail price in mainland China for HX1 is double that than in Hong Kong). Normal users can buy a headset paying a less prohibitive price.

Caution when buying
Interested users have to notice that the headset’s voice instruction has different languages but should be not changeable. So if you buy in mainland China, you get Mandarin voice instruction, if you buy in Hong Kong, you get English.

^ Side note: ? means bright, ? means clear, but ?? is the Ching Ming festival, the grave-sweeping festival (wiki here))

Review Update: Bad bugs for Philips GoGear LUXE SA24

After the extensive tests by our team, we have found problems which might seriously affect your interest in acquiring one of these MP3 Bluetooth headsets.

1. The software of the GoGear is disturbingly unstable for us. Calls, regardless incoming/outgoing, sometimes do make your LUXE halt. And by sometimes we means around 25% probability, which is absolutely too high to tolerate.

   The 25% probability means you have to drop the bluetooth connection and return to phone, and sometimes this machine won’t respond unless you pin the reset hole.

   To make things worse, you need to bring your own pin.

2. The shuffle list is seriously bugged. It has really stupid shuffle system. You turn on the machine in shuffle music mode, play the first song (A), and the next song is (D), and (F)(B)(E)(C) for example. Now you turn it off or reset it due to the bug in problem (1).

   Restarting the machine and the GoGear LUXE will go back to the ADFBEC sequence, with absolutely no reordering. Someone please tell us how on earth is it qualified as “shuffle”?

3. The reception of headset is unstable and depends on luck. If you switch back to phone, the problem is gone, so we’re 100% sure it’s the headset that matters.

Without a viable update of firmware, we have to downgrade the headset to a 3/10, for it fails to provide an acceptable quality of telephone conversation.

First Review – http://geektechpost.blogspot.com/2009/01/review-on-philips-gogear-luxe-2gb-sa24.html
Initial Introduction – http://geektechpost.blogspot.com/2009/01/philips-gogear-luxe-sa24-perfect.html

Review on Philips GoGear LUXE 2GB SA24 (the red crystal one)

We have acquired the bluetooth headset of the Philips GoGear LUXE 2GB in red color(SA2420BT/97) (the white one is SA2422BT/97), and we have some feedback here.

The GoGear LUXE is packed in a plastic box and placed like a wristwatch. It is tricky when taking out the LUXE from the packet. When plugged into USB, the LUXE updates itself’s ROM to 2.1.5 – and this version of ROM is not of a satisfactory stability as we tested though.

We have tested it with LG KU990 Viewty and HTC Touch Diamond for the bluetooth connectivity.

Pros:
– Exceptional reasonable voice quality.
– Excellent reception. Chat uninterrupted with obstacles and a closed wooden door.
– Nice design.
– Able to display multiple languages in the monocolored OLED screen.
– Very fast switch to radio/MP3 player after telephone call.
– Good radio reception.
– Reasonable battery life.

Cons:
– There is no stereo connection for bluetooth, just normal bluetooth connection.
– Have problem switching to phone call: The other party could hear us, but we can only hear music – probably a firmware issue.
– Difficult to use without reading the manual. Worse, there is no menu in the package, and no menu in the driver CD (this is absurd) – you have to connect the machine and read the PDF inside the machine!
– No backlight at the dark, entire display unreadable at night.
– Slow response with “Next” / “Prev” function, might make user press twice.
– Battery indicator are not easy to find. (Currently we only see the indicator when turning on the machine.

With the high price of the headset HK$690 (around US$89), we will give GoGear LUXE a 5 out of 10 for its price-performance ratio. This is surely a good bluetooth headset, probably better than iClip according to our call parties’ feedback.

IMPORTANT UPDATE – Read before deciding to buy: http://geektechpost.blogspot.com/2009/02/review-update-bad-bugs-for-philips.html

Philips GoGear LUXE (SA24) – The perfect bluetooth headset for HTC Touch Diamond

We don’t know why Philip regards LUXE as an MP3 player with bluetooth. With such a clip brooch design, we will definitely categorize LUXE as a bluetooth headset with an MP3 function.

Why do we say that LUXE is the headset for HTC Touch Diamond?

MP3 function - Battery drain for HTC Touch Diamond is pitiful, the battery of Diamond will go out earlier than most bluetooth headsets.

Design - Look at the picture, the crystal-like structure is so elegantly consistent with the outlook HTC Touch Diamond.

OLED display – Capable to display caller ID. Most popular Bluetooth headsets just plain don’t do that. Don’t expect it will project a flashlight in the diamond area. This Chinese site, ZOL, shows you where the display is.

Limitations:
Not friendly to navigate. You will find the device full of “features. To start with, a series of buttons might probably overwhelm you at the first glance: Volume up, volume down, fast forward, rewind, power/pairing. There is a knob for mode selection too. In addition to these, you will see the display screen, the microUSB port, the microphone hole and of course the earphone.

For the price of US$80, We wouldn’t say it’s prohibitive, but we do believe if there are competitors the price will go down quite easily.