[8525, TyTN, MDA Vario II, JasJam Accessories] Zilch:
Ok...

I haven't found anyone else that would admit to trying these headphones with my phone (Dopod 838 Pro).

The headphones themselves are pretty cool. They fit pretty well, don't look toooo dorky, and the buttons click nicely etc. I haven't had them go flat on me yet. They could have come with a protective case though, and you have to take the microphone off to charge them, and I'm always afraid I will lose it.

When I first got them, they sounded crap. AM radio crap. I updated them to the latest firmware from the BlueAnt website (what a drama).

Tested, and they worked ok with the dongle - not exactly hifi sound, but the quality was ok to listen to.

Next I called BlueAnt HQ here in Australia, and after getting put through to a tech support guy he told me "They should work fine, I tried them with an iMate JasJam - no problems. Do a reset and try re-pairing them" (Duh).

Then I called the Dopod support line in Australia. During business hours. It goes through to an answering machine that doesn't even have an introduction message. Left a message. No reply.

Just as I was about to return them, I found the A2DP software tweak/patch on the wiki. First let me just say:

AAARRRGHHHH! What they hell are Microsoft thinking? Why have a registry setting \HKLM\StereoMusic\MakeMyMusicSoundLikeCrap=1 setting in the first place, and THEN why ship all phones with that enabled as the default? How many people have returned perfectly functioning Bluetooth headsets because of that? STUPID. I reckon Microsoft/HTC owe BlueAnt (and others) a truck load of money.

Secondly, that helps. Music is now stereo. I've been using them every day for a few weeks now. The bad news:

1) The quality is still very poor. There is a metallic hissing/sizzling/sibilance sound, especially noticeable on female vocals, which sounds (to me) exactly like a poor bitrate encoding error. The quality is much worse than when I pair it to the dongle it came with. I suspect it is the phone (or the MS BT stack) at fault not the headset. I would really like to be able to fix this.

2) With Wifi enabled, the music cuts out every few seconds. Unlistenable.

3) With Wifi disabled, I get the occasional glitch. I can live with that (if I must)

4) Using the headset profile during a phonecall, the sound I hear isn't too bad (a little muffled) but people tell me I sound really distant and hard to hear.

5) The AVRCP support is dodgy. Most of the time it works. Often when I first hit Play, it plays for a few seconds and then stops. I have to hit Play/Pause again and it starts. Track seek and volume up/down seem to work well. Answering a phone seemed hit and miss at first, but seems to mostly be working now. Not sure if this is the phone or the headset.

The iMate JasJam listed in the compatitabilty section of the BlueAnt website, but the Dopod 838 Pro is not. I emailed BlueAnt with my findings, and suggested they add the A2DP hack to their FAQ for other users. Hasn't appeared yet.

So, my questions:

1) Has anyone tried these headphones on a Hermes device? Does your experience mirror mine? Or is one of my devices faulty? Is the voice quality on the headset profile ok?

2) Is there a Widcomm (?) stack that works on the Hermes that may fix the problem, or...is it likely to be any better with WM6?

3) Does anyone have an A2DP headset of any brand working on a Hermes with "Crystal clear CD quality sound" like it says on the box the headphones came in. If so, what brand? If it is possible to get a good sound out of the MS BT stack, it might be worth pushing BlueAnt to release a new firmware to fix the issues.

4) Would a Bluetooth 2.0 headset give a better result? (Is it a bandwidth issue?)

Any replies would be helpful.

Thanks guys,

Zilch.