The Wireless Dogtag

Finally, after more than two weeks, it arrived. I wanted a wireless bluetooth headset for my Nokia 5800 but with the condition that it can accept 3.5 inch stereo headphones. No more those hanging by the ears for the moment. And so, this verily cancels out a lot of headsets. I went to the Sony Ericsson shop and was amazed at their bluetooth devices, nevermind if they costs RM300 or so. But the letdown was that the stereo earphones are not detachable. The same can be said for those new Nano or somethinglike that. And so, I went back to eBay.

And I got this. A Jabra BT3030 Dogtag Bluetooth Headset. And for RM58.00 or so, I got it delivered to my desk! Originally, it would costs about RM300 or more. Too good to be true isn't it?

Yeah, OK. with eBay, you can get them at almost any price. But there is a real story in this. This model is called X2N-88 and not BT-3030. By now, you would know that this is a Chinese copy. But not knowing the history behind it, I can hazard a guess that it was OEM'ed out. I am not sure of the specs either but the real McCoy promises 230 hours standby and 7 hours of music. But then again, I have to take this with a grain of salt, though. So far, I di dnot have much problems with it and it quickly pairs with the Nokia 5800 without any problem, except when it hangs.

Anyway, hereare my observations, I am not going to review it much since I am not so "excited" about my Nokia 5800 anymore, no thanks to it always hanging:

1) When you have paired, whatever sounds from the phone, such as button taps and other programs, would be played in from the Dogtag instead from the phone's speakers. Except when the phone rings, that is.

2) After switching between the supplied headphones and my own, the music quality sounds a bit muffled. So, I have to use the equaliser in the Music Player to adjust but its still muffled.

3) Voice reconition is shot. I loved this feature ever since I got my Sony Ericsson T630 years ago. Here, the 5800 does not recognise what is being spoken. Then again, I have not tested the 5800's voice tag thoroughly. Maybe there is a feature to recognise a pre-recorded name just like the T630 but I doubt it.

4) Voice quality from the other side is subjective since those who answered my calls had mixed results, ranging from noisy to "OK" to "WTF are you saying?"

5) Its a DogTag. Woof woof woof woofie woof.

Clockwise from top left, a stereo headphone, single headpone,
the DogTag, USB charger cable and the mains charger. Oh,the
grey leaflet is the brief user guide. And I mean, brief.

The design reminds you as if it came from Motorola,
especially from their famous RAZR phones. Here, I
think its just laser cut metal stuck to a layer of silicon
See the buttons bumping out? It looks splashproof
but I am not going to test it anytime soon.

This is their headphone. If you do not have your
own, you'd have to use it until you find a better
one. Although the keypad has blue LEDs the
"X" symbol at the bottom has a hidden red LED
which is to indicate chargin status and also of
the Headset.