Hasta La Gadget!

Are you ready to change your impression of Bluetooth headsets? Forget the blinking ear appendage that you already know, Jabra has just announced the HALO, a sleek foldable stereo headset that you’ll want to take everywhere.

The HALO has a 30-foot range and works with stereo Bluetooth devices, including the BlackBerry, iPhone, iPod Touch, many mobile phones, laptops, and more. You can pair it with two devices, and there’s a corded option, should you prefer. It includes a microphone for making calls, and offers a big 8 hours or talk or music time or 13 days of standby time.

To give your music a little something extra, the HALO includes Zirene Power Bass for a richer listening experience. Songs fade out when you get an incoming call. I like that it folds away and even comes with a carrying case.

Look to Jabra’s site for more info for pick up the HALO at Best Buy stores starting this week. It lists for $129.

Plantronics has unveiled the Discovery 975 Bluetooth headset, which replaces the Discovery 925 in the company’s lineup.

The dual-mic Discovery 975 features AudioIQ2 DSP and WindSmart technologies for compensating for noisy environments. They’re in effect all of the time; as part of the design, the 975 includes grooved vents on the boom and acoustic fabrics that envelop the mics in order to block wind noise.

The headset also features an adaptive 20-band equalizer to keep voices sounding natural and maintain volume. There’s a rechargeable carrying case that triples talk time from 5 hours to 15 hours, complete with a built-in LCD to show battery and earpiece levels as well as Bluetooth status.

The Plantronics Discovery 975 costs $129.99 and is now available from Plantronics.com; you can also pre-order it at Best Buy and Amazon.com ahead of its release in those outlets later this month.

For more on Bluetooth headsets, read PCMag.com’s How to Buy a Bluetooth Headset guide.

Samsung has announced three new Bluetooth headsets, all of which retail for under 100 bucks, that will hopefully improve on its most recent model’s ineffective noise cancellation.

The Samsung WEP470 is a small, lightweight headset with background noise filtering and echo cancellation. It’s not a dual-mic design, but claims to offer the same benefits due to its packet loss concealment technology. It also includes an LED battery indicator, power switch, and crystal ear hook for $39.99.

The WEP850 (pictured), meanwhile, offers a minimalist design with a true dual-mic configuration for improved noise cancellation and echo reduction for $69.99.

Finally, the complex $89.99 WEP870 offers everything the WEP850 does, plus multi-connection technology for pairing two Bluetooth devices simultaneously. It comes in chrome and graphite, a detachable stereo earbud for listening to music, and the ability to switch between music listening and incoming or outbound calls. It also has a tiny LCD screen that displays battery level, call status, and connection status. All three are available beginning today at www.samsung.com/accessories.

The connected PND, by most accounts, is a dying breed. Dash couldn’t pull it off, TomTom’s execution was downright pathetic and no one even remembers that Insignia made one. But considering that Garmin’s nüvi range has always delivered, we’re going to let the nüvi 1690 ship before passing judgment. Said navigator, which just slipped into the FCC’s database a fortnight ago, didn’t have too many details attached to it, but a recently discovered user manual reveals that although Garmin’s local-data service will be powered by Google, the company has branded it with the virtually-unpronounceable name “nuinfo.” Yeah, we have no idea, but we’re definitely interested in finding out what the ultimate plan is — the shots of the device in the manual lead us to believe that local weather information will be on tap in addition to the usual waypoint searching and so forth, but unless Garmin throws these so-called “connected services” in gratis, every smartphone owner on the planet will simply laugh and move on.

[Via GPS Tracklog]

Filed under: GPS

User manual for Garmin’s connected nuvi 1690 reveals “nuinfo” service branding originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Aug 2009 15:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re not sure why we didn’t hear more about this way back at RIM’s WES conference way back in May, but it was apparently mentioned by VP Antoine Boucher at the time that they’re working on a Bluetooth-enabled watch. Furthermore, it’s said to be more advanced than the models Sony Ericsson has put forth so far, featuring streaming audio (3.5mm jack on the watch, perhaps?) and Twitter / Facebook updates in addition to the usual things like caller ID and text messages. Note that the image floating around today of this thing isn’t real — it’s just a Sony Ericsson MBW-100 with a swapped logo — so it remains to be seen what this magical wrist accessory will look like, assuming it’s real and coming to retail. It seems Boucher also mentioned a high-end Bluetooth headset codenamed “Alpha 1” that’ll allow you to stream music and get navigation directions through some sort of totally awesome silicone earpiece boasted to possibly be “the best solution on the market.” It’s pretty hard to pique a lot of interest these days with something as vanilla and ubiquitous as a headset, but at any rate, it’s interesting to see the depth of RIM’s apparent commitment to the accessory market right now.

[Via techfresh.net]

Filed under: Cellphones, Wearables

RIM working on Bluetooth watch, other spellbinding accessories? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Aug 2009 16:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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