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Confirmed: The O2 XDA Atom Can Do Bluetooth Stereo Audio January 28, 2006 [Wireless (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ...)] | By Lutzh Haedrich. Since the brand new XDA Atom is out on the market people are asking if it really can do A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile). We put the XDA Atom on test - IT WORKS! This and other infos plus some screenshots of the software that is running on the Atom and some side-by-side shots with Universal and Wizard in our story!  by lutzh A2DP - Advanced Audio Distribution Profile - defines the standard for audio distribution via bluetooth. Imagine having a 2 Gigabyte miniSD in your Pocket PC Phone Edition, fully loaded with your favorite tunes and being able to use your bluetooth wireless stereo headset not only to listen to your music but also doing phone calls! Bluetooth headsets are available from different manufacturers. Hama is selling two versions of headsets: The Plantronics Pulsar 590A  Headset "Clip S"  Motorola offers the HT820 Bluetooth stereo headset.  It is more a question of taste if you like the in-ear version or a classic head phone. We choose the Hama Clip "S" (S like stereo), payed 99 € for it and couldn't wait to get home, charge the battery and pairing it with the XDA Atom. This is done like with any other bluetooth device too - press the pairing button on the headset, start the bluetooth search on the XDA Atom, enter the pin and there you go! Now you choose if you want to use the headset as hands free or wireless stereo device. A special icon on top of your today screen indicating a A2DP-ready connection. See screenshots below for your entertainment:  Some downsides of the XDA Atom and bluetooth wireless stereo: The A2DP icon on top of the today screen disappears after some seconds and there is no icon showing you that bluetooth is on. You may not find this disturbing, but since you will have to re-establish the A2DP-connection between the Atom and the headset manually after they were disconnected by going to Start/Settings/Connections/Bluetooth and then choose "Set as Wireless Stereo" PLUS starting your prefered music player software we just don't think that's smart at all! A little help comes from the brand new O2Plus version that is available for all Atom owners by simply using O2Connect, a software tool that allows to download patches, software and other stuff directly over the air to the device. Check out the screenshots from the newly designed ui that O2 offers! It includes a battery level bar on top of today, memory meter, short cuts, profiles for sound settings, shortcuts to prefered programs as well as an indicator for applications that are still running in the background!  Speaking about the usability of the XDA Atom. It definitly misses out on hardware keys. Not only that there are no hardware soft keys for contacts/calendar (ok, that's why they called it a touch screen!), but the other hardware keys (camera, voice recorder, volume slider) on the outside of the device are simply not good to handle. If you want to use them e.g. as Ok/Close or Voice Command button you'll find out what I mean: Not good placed and too deep integrated into the device for blind usage. On the other hand we love the XDA Atom for its small size, the strong CPU and A2DP!             If you have questions regarding the O2 XDA Atom - feel free to post them in the forum!  Post your comment (free registration is required to post, but if you register you can edit your posts later) [ 10 Comments ]
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