listening to music on iphone 3g with bluetooth headset

I came across an interesting dilemma today….how can one use an existing bluetooth headset to listen to music on the new iPhone 3g or 3g s? You would thing this was something fairly easy – especially considering the popularity of the iPhone and the ease and functionality of bluetooth. Surprisingly, this is not the case.

After doing some digging, I came across a detailed explanation of the different types of bluetooth profile – of which helps one to understand why a standard mono bluetooth adapter probably won’t work, and more importantly, what to look for in order to use the same adapter for both your phone calls and listening to some tunes! Here are the three profiles:

• Hands Free Profile (HFP) is the most common type of bluetooth headset profile. This allows you to simply answer and make phone calls hands free.
• Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) is a bluetooth profile that allows for stereo listening and is required to support streaming of music to the headset. Some of these headsets also have a microphone which allows for hands free calls too.
• Audio Video Remote Control Profile (AVRCP) is a hands free bluetooth headset that also has controls built-in to manage the playback of audio/video such as Play, FF, Rewind, Pause, Stop, etc.

If you are looking to use a single headset to make your calls and listen to music on the go – do a search for A2DP compatible bluetooth headsets on Google or Amazon…you should get a list of plausible results.

Filed Under: mobile devices

Tags: iphone