Note: for best results, use with the app developer's proprietary
line
of Bluetooth headsets.
I've searched all over the Android app market, and found several
neat apps (2 specific examples are "Locale" and "Setting
Profiles")
that allow you to activate various phone settings when triggered
by
a variety of conditions. For instance, you can set it to activate
your
WiFi at a certain time every day, or activate your Bluetooth when
your GPS chip detects that you're within a certain distance of a
specified location, or without (?) a certain distance.
The Setting Profiles app allows you to activate Bluetooth as soon
as
you receive a call. This is a neat idea, in theory, except that
activating the Bluetooth in many devices does NOT automatically
put them into connection mode. One must still navigate to the
phone's settings menu to tell the phone to connect to the paired
device.
My idea is twofold, and designed to prolong the battery life of
both
the phone and the headset.
First, is a simple modification of the existing app technology.
Activate the Bluetooth, and connect to the headset that you've
previously paired with it. I timed my Motorola Cliq XT on its
connection time. From the second I clicked the button to activate
the Bluetooth and connect to my Motorola headset, it took 19
second. Standard maximum ring time (the length your phone will
ring before going to voicemail) on a GSM network is 30 seconds.
This means that I could answer an incoming call with 11 seconds
to
spare.
The advantage of using such an app, of course, is to prolong your
phone's battery life by keeping the Bluetooth radio off when not
actively in use.
The second part of the idea is a Bluetooth headset designed to
take
advantage of this app to prolong its own battery life as well as
the
phone's.
It has a passive audio pickup that is on during standby mode. I'm
confident that this will result in slower battery drain than having
the
Bluetooth radio running in standby mode.
When the phone app detects an incoming call, it emits a high-
frequency beep which is detected by the passive audio receiver
on
the headset. This activates the Bluetooth radio on the headset
and
puts it in pairing mode. Simultaneously while activating the
Bluetooth radio on the headset, it activates the Bluetooth radio
on
the phone. Headsets usually activate faster than phones, so by
the
time the phone's Bluetooth is activated, it's immediately ready to
connect to the headset, which the app handles seamlessly.
After the call ends, both devices go back to passive standby
mode. The importance of activating both Bluetooth radios as
near-simultaneously as possible is that headsets only stay in
pairing mode for about a minute after powering on. What this
means is that even with the app functioning perfectly, it won't
work unless the headset is actually in pairing mode, requiring
both good reflexes and timing on your part to activate it as soon
as you get a call.
This is why I suggest using the proprietary headset, which
handles this for you.