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Bluetooth Car Stereo Offers More Than You Think

sonymexbt2500
I stumbled on this post by Stuart Henshall and couldn’t resist sharing. Stuart recently had his car broken into and the thieves stole his stereo. To replace it, he chose the Sony MEX-BT2500, which retails for under $200 USD. What’s so cool about this stereo?

It’s got Bluetooth.

For less than his phone cost, Stuart is now using his Nokia N81 8GB with his car in ways that I dreamt about several years ago, when I got my first bluetooth headset and started listening to music on my Nokia 6620 with it. Sure, he can connect his phone to his car’s sound system for handsfree calling and that sort of thing, that’s nothing fancy. Cars have been doing that for a few years now.

What’s cool about this setup is that his N81 8GB has, well, 8GB worth of music on there. And it can stream music via 3G (where supported). This brings a whole new bevy of options. When connected and a call comes in, the music pauses, and gracefully fades back in automatically. When he gets back in the car from a stop, all he has to do is press play on the phone, it’s already reconnected itself. Seamless in its true sense.

Personally, I’ve installed a 3.5mm lead in my truck, so that I can plug whatever device I have handy in and use my truck’s speakers and superior sound system. It’s awesome with my N95-3, as I can use HSDPA to stream internet radio, or download a podcast and listen to it on the go. Stuart and I agree that this makes connected MP3 players that much more attractive, and could be a devastating blow to iPods and Zunes that don’t support Bluetooth or the ability to connect to a cellular network to stream music on-the-go.

What do you think? Would you rather have an HSDPA-capable phone as your in-car MP3 player, with an 8GB microSD card installed, or a 160GB iPod?

9 COMMENTS

  1. I’m still a little in shock by how easy it is. Now I’m expecting little bluetooth ipod replacements for all those ipod ready speakers out there that we already have. When kids start bringing their phones to the party and the system can randomly share and shuffle across all of them. Imagine it just introduces… from Stuart’s playlist (groan!), as each new song is introduced as an option.

  2. I’ve got a Sony BT head unit in my car, too. The only problem with it is that Sony headunits aren’t that great. Other companies have been doing this for some time now (BT handsfree/music streaming), and Pioneer in particular have some quality products. I personally haven’t used the music streaming feature – except to test it – because the memory card in my E65 is only 256mb and a single CD of MP3’s is 700mb. The 3.5mm stereo jack however (which I have as well), is awesome. ANY MP3 Player of ANY flavour, my friend’s laptop, even some later model phones.. the 3.5mm jack is currently the most popular “output device”, and should be included as standard phones – instead of making every other device out there Bluetooth (and more expensive). Wires aren’t dead yet, man.

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