I look forward to completing my port…

from [iPod plus (Palm Centro on Palm Desktop) & Thunderbird on WinXP]

to [Pre or iPhone & Thunderbird/Sunbird with Google IMAP/Contacts/CalDAV on XP/Mac/Fedora].

Finding decent, reliable, stereo headset over BT supported by both Pre or iPhone would be nice so thanks, in advance, for any helpful suggestions on that.

1.) I’m just trying to find out whether this is an AT&T firmware / iPhone 3G-specific bug. If it is, then, it easily explains why Sascha had dramatically different results.

2.) OK, I agree I was a bit too attacking – I apologize. However, I still have problems with Sascha’s aproach in general.

As I’ve pointed out in my article, A2DP is the world full of incompatibilities. (There’s a reason why I evaluate the A2DP / AVRCP capabilities / compatibility of each handset or firmware version I review using tons of A2DP headphones – I want to be absolutely sure I don’t run into a particular incompatibility problem.) In a magazine article one may not want to publish a bad review of a given handset just based on tests with a single pair of headphones. Sascha may have preferred, after seeing the disastrous results, either testing the iPhone 3G with other headphones or completely dropping the subject and not mentioning it at all. Nevertheless, just telling his readers the iPhone 3G has very bad and sub-par BT stereo wasn’t the best approach.

When there’s chance a given headset + BT headphones combo produces very bad results, it may be a simple compatibility issue. Which is very common with A2DP, the standard’s being new and a lot of handset / headphones manufacturers simply not following the standard / trying to make their gadgets compatible with everything else (see for example the play/pause incompatibilities with Symbian S60 phones.)

Note that I’m in no way an Apple fanboy. I’ve published a lot of negative reports on its A2DP and AVRCP support. Yes, it does lack – but certainly not at the audio quality department (at least when it comes to the T-Mo specific firmware). As far as audio quality is concerned, the iPhone 3G has equally good (or bad, if anyone feels A2DP simply can’t deliver Hi-Fi audio quality) sound reproduction as ALL of the competing smartphone operating systems. I’ve run some very thorough tests and I can say that there’s no difference in audio quality between a T-Mobile firmware-based iPhone 3G and Windows Mobile (with a new, 6+ OS; that is, already with decent A2DP support) / Symbian S60 / Blackberry 8800.

Note that, being a T-Mo subscriber, I could only test the T-Mo firmware (without any hacks – my iPhone 3G isn’t even jailbroken). The AT&T firmware may indeed have completely messed up A2DP, which AT&T and/or Apple didn’t find out. That is, I’m not stating Sascha’s results just can’t be right. It’s highly possible AT&T / Apple have indeed messed the A2DP support in their AT&T-specific firmware royally. Hope someone will be able to conduct some comparative reviews (the AT&T 3G and any other smartphone) – I’ve cross-posted my request (original at http://www.iphonelife.com/blog/87/anyone-att-iphone-3g-stereo-bt-headphones-and-another-a2dp-phone-or-3gs ) to many iPhone boards. As soon as I have some comparative results, I tell you all.