Originally posted on sciy.org by Ron Anastasia on Tue 27 Feb 2007 11:11 PM PST
 Date:25/02/2007 URL: www.thehindu.com/2007/02/25/stories/2007022500041400.htm
National
Special Correspondent
VALUE ADDITION: Sagem's my 700x music phone with alternative Bluetooth headsets. — Photo: Special Arrangement
Bangalore: When engineers at Ericsson, the Swedish telecom giant, invented a wireless way for personal computers to exchange data over short distances with cell phones, printers and other devices in 1994, it was an idea ahead of its time. It took four years for potential user companies to come together in a Special Interest Group (SIG) to actively promote the Bluetooth standard, which provided a radio-based way to exchange around 1 million bits of data per second over a distance that was typically 10 metres or less. Just when the mobile and Internet revolution peaked at the turn of the century, Bluetooth and other technologies that covered longer distances — like WiFi and WiMax — seemed poised to take over. (Bluetooth is named by its inventors after Harold "Bluetooth" Gormson, King of both Norway and Sweden at different times in the 10th century AD. The logo is, in fact, the Nordic initials H and G.) Indeed, the parent seemed to have given up on the child: Ericsson announced it was stopping the production of Bluetooth devices in 2004. But like the Prodigal Son, it staged a triumphant comeback in recent years: half-a-billion Bluetooth `radios' were sold worldwide in 2006. Less power requirement
Suddenly, it seems everything from mobile phones to MP3 players, printers to global positioning system (GPS) receivers has Bluetooth built in — `cutting the cord,' so to speak, from one device to another. With its tiny power requirement and unrestricted operating frequency band, Bluetooth has held its own against WiFi and carved out its own application space. Indeed, it seems to unshackle a new application every day from the old cable regime. Earlier this month, Canon launched a highly portable printer — the Pixma iP90v — to which one can send documents and photos from a mobile phone or notebook PC wirelessly by Bluetooth. And in the physics or chemistry labs, one can now use an array of Bluetooth-enabled weighing scales to send data to a central PC or notebook. Typical of the way Bluetooth provides new levels of customer comfort is the increasing use of the technology to `untether' the headphone from the portable player or mobile phone. The Hindu was able to try out the latest mobile music phone launched by Sagem in India. The `Bleu my700x' is a full-function GSM phone with GPRS Internet capability, a 2 mega-pixel camera and a built-in FM radio receiver. The music features include an MP3 player with 3D `surround sound' stereo, a 512 MB memory card and an embedded 32 MB memory for fast downloads. What might distinguish the `my700x' from other phones in this class is the cordless stereo headphone set which links to the phone via Bluetooth. Bought separately, wireless headphones like this typically cost around Rs. 5,000. Sagem bundles it with the music-camera-phone for under Rs. 14,000. The French makers have leveraged Bluetooth to add value to their phone lines with multiple headset choices. At the 3GSM World expo in Barcelona this month, the company unveiled what it claimed was the world's smallest Bluetooth phone headset, the H4.
© Copyright 2000 - 2006 The Hindu |
Attachment:
