Bluetooth Mobile Phones

The first place where Bluetooth technology is taking off is in the cell phone world. This statement probably shouldn't be a surprise because Sony Ericsson, a huge cell phone maker, was the initial proponent of the technology, and other huge cell phone companies, such as Nokia, are also proponents.

Today just about every new phone being announced (except for the cheap-o ones) included Bluetooth technology. Sony Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, and Siemens, among others, are all selling Bluetooth-enabled phones. The adoption of the technology has been spectacular. A few years ago, Bluetooth was a rarity; now it's a standard.

You can do many things with Bluetooth in a cell phone, but the five most common applications are

• Eliminate cables: Many people use headsets with their cell phones. It's much easier to hear with an earpiece in your ear than it is to hold one of today's miniscule cell phones up to your ear - and much more convenient. The wire running up your torso, around your arm, and along the side of your head into your ear is a real pain, though. (Some people go to great lengths to keep from being tangled up in this wire - check out the jackets at www.scottevest.com.) A better solution is to connect your headset wirelessly - using Bluetooth, of course. Literally dozens of Bluetooth headsets are on the market, from specialized headset manufacturers such as Plantronics (www.plantronics.com) and Jabra (www.jabra.com), as well as from the cell phone manufacturers themselves.
• Synchronize phone books: Lots of us keep a phone book on our PC or PDA - and most of us who do have been utterly frustrated by the difficulty we face when we try to get these phone books onto our cell phones. If you can do it at all, you end up buying some special cable and software and then you still have to manually correct some of the entries. But with Bluetooth on your cell phone and PC or PDA, the process can be automatic.
• Get pictures off your camera phone: Many new cell phones are camera phones with a built-in digital camera. The cell phone companies promote this concept because they can charge customers for multimedia messaging services (MMS) and allow people to send pictures to other cell phone customers. But if your PC has Bluetooth capabilities, you can use Bluetooth to send the picture you just snapped to your PC's hard drive (or even use Bluetooth to transfer the file directly to a buddy's cell phone when he or she is within range - for free!).
• Go hands-free in the car: Face it - driving with a cell phone in your hands isn't safe. Using a headset is better, but the best choice (other than not using your phone while driving) is to use a completely handsfree system, which uses a microphone and the speakers from your car audio system. This used to take a costly installation process and meant having someone rip into the wiring and interior of your car. If you bought a new phone, you probably needed to have the old hands-free gear ripped out and a new one installed. No more - Bluetooth cars are here, and they let you use any Bluetooth-enabled cell phone to go handsfree. Just set the phone in the glove box or dashboard cubbyhole and don't touch it again. Keep your hands and eyes on the road!
  If your current car isn't outfitted with Bluetooth, don't despair. Dozens of Bluetooth retrofit kits are available on the market - ranging from simple speaker/microphone devices that plug into your 12-volt power source (the lighter, in other words) to custom-installed, fully integrated systems that can even use your car's steering wheel controls.
• Get your laptop on the Internet while on the road: We think that the best way to connect your laptop to the Internet when you're out of the house is to find an 802.11 hot spot, but sometimes you're just not near a hot spot. Well, worry no more because if you have a cell phone and laptop with Bluetooth, you can use your cell phone as a wireless modem to connect to the Internet. With most cell phone services, you can establish a low-speed, dial-up Internet connection for some basic stuff (such as getting e-mail or reading text-heavy Web pages). If your cell phone system (and plan) includes a high-speed option, you can get online at speeds rivaling (although not yet equaling) broadband connections such as DSL - all without wires!

Remember Some cell phones have Bluetooth capabilities but have been artificially limited by the cell phone companies. For example, some Bluetooth phones have had their software configured by your cell phone company in such a way that you can't use the phone as a modem for your laptop, as described in the preceding bullet. There's no easy way to know this up front - but it's a good reason to read the reviews in sources such as CNET (www.cnet.com) before taking a leap.