Source: Tom's Guide | Keywords: Bluetooth, hands-free, law | Themes: Smartphones
3. BlueAnt Supertooth 3
Style
A hands-free speakerphone is one of the best ways to combat the Bluetooth headset’s awkwardness and ugliness factors. You don’t have to stick it in your ear, and you don’t have to make a fashion statement with it — all you have to do is stick it to the sun visor or dashboard of your car, and leave it there when you exit your vehicle.
Some cars have a system like BlueAnt’s SuperTooth 3 programmed into the car sound system itself, but if you didn’t buy a car with that feature, the SuperTooth 3 is an affordable option. It looks like a shiny black candy bar, and adheres tightly to your sun visor via a surprisingly strong magnetic clip. It weighs only 4 ounces and is less than 5” long, with three visible icons: a round speaker, a talk button, and a hang-up button; the small volume buttons are on the top. A very tiny blinking blue light shows that the device is still on. The SuperTooth’s designers could certainly have made an uglier device.
With your visor in the “up” position, the speakerphone sits about 6 to 8 inches from your mouth. If you don’t like the way it looks in front of you, rotate the visor to your right or left. With the SuperTooth on your visor, you won’t want to bring the visor down to block the sun, so invest in some fashionable shades instead.
The downside to a speakerphone is, of course, the fact that anyone riding in the car with you can hear your entire conversation. That’s a vote in favor of headsets, so if you’re shy or often ride with carpool, bear in mind that any loudspeaker could cramp your style.
Usability
The SuperTooth 3 is more “hands-free” than just about any other hands-free device, including headsets and speakerphones, because it talks to you. It tells you who is calling so you don’t need to pick up your phone and look at it, and it allows you to answer calls without pressing a button on the phone or device: you simply say “okay,” or “answer.” This is called “text-to-speech.” If your phone offers voice dialing features — most Blackberrys do, for example, while the iPhone does not — you can also command the SuperTooth to call people in your phone book without actually dialing by hand.
Setup with the SuperTooth is easy, because it gives voice instructions about what you should do — push the send key, set the language, and so forth. We chose British English because, well, it sounds fancy. But you can also choose from American English, French, Italian, Spanish, German, etc.
Most phones will allow the SuperTooth to upload their address books — that’s how it reads off the names of incoming callers. In its memory it can store the address books of up to eight phones. If you have a SIM card, the SuperTooth can’t read contacts off the SIM, so store them on the phone itself.
All of these features worked as advertised in our tests, with the exception of the announcing of incoming calls. My phone rang twice before the SuperTooth beeped in recognition, then the phone rang once more before the SuperTooth could process the name of the caller (in one instance, the name “Marty” inexplicably sounded something like “Bruce” in the American English accent, prompting me to switch to the more decipherable British English). By the time the SuperTooth said the name, though, and I said “okay,” the phone had rung four times. It doesn’t take this long on every incoming call, but occasionally it does.
Battery Life
If a gadget is designed to stay in your car, its battery must be pretty hardy. The SuperTooth 3 is supposed to give 15 hours of talk time and an impressive 800 hours of standby time (that’s 33.3 days). So far, I’ve charged it once and left it in the car. It has been two weeks.
As if that’s not enough juice, the SuperTooth 3 also comes with a car charger, so you’ll never have to bring it inside (though an AC adapter is included as well). You won’t want to use the car charger while you’re driving, though, because the power cord will stretch from the sun visor through your field of vision down to the outlet.
Another feature, which may or may not be battery-focused, is the way the device pairs itself again with your phone every time you return to your car. If you’ve been away for more than 20 seconds, the device un-pairs, and when it returns, it senses your presence not by constantly searching out a Bluetooth signal, but by the vibrations it feels when you open the car door to get back in. When it feels you, it seeks to pair. I imagine that if the SuperTooth 3 were instead to always be seeking out your phone via Bluetooth, the battery would wear down much faster. This “jolt awake” method must save battery life.
Comfort
The pleasure of not sticking a piece of plastic and metal into your inner ear is notable, but any dash or visor-mounted speakerphone can provide that comfort. For those who’ve struggled with in-ear devices — perhaps they have unusual ears — a speakerphone may be their only viable hands-free option.
The placement of the speakerphone itself should not affect the way you hold your head while you drive, but if it does — for example, if you find yourself jutting out your chin and looking up at the visor — you should consider moving the visor to the right or left of your head.
Sound Quality
BlueAnt’s noise and echo cancellation technology works fairly well, even with the car windows rolled down. The SuperTooth 3 is supposed to automatically increase the volume of the caller when it detects ambient noise, but I found that I had to increase the volume manually.
In quieter conditions, people I called told me I sounded loud and clear, and the only time the call quality degraded obviously was when my phone battery began to die. This resulted in a lot of crackling and popping noises, and eventually the line went dead and the SuperTooth 3 emitted a high-pitched squeal for about 30 seconds — apparently, cell phone battery death thoroughly confuses the speakerphone.
One annoying volume-related problem is that when the volume on the SuperTooth is turned up to hear the caller better, the text-to-speech voice is overly loud. The two audio signals are disproportionate, with the text-to-speech voice much louder than any caller’s voice.
Conclusion
Those with sensitive ears and safety sensibilities won’t find a better hands-free device than the Supertooth 3. At $99, it is hardly the priciest option, yet comes with more features than most hands-free devices. The SuperTooth 3 is a sound investment even — and perhaps, especially — for people without voice-dialing features on their phones. This device is the only way to get voice-activated features without voice-dialing enabled on the phone.
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first ruin it for the rest of us. When Im doing something distracting
the first thing I think of is how I must compensate by concentrating that much harder on the road. hands free laws make no sence for good drivers. I could almost see it(but not really) if it was applied to
standard transmission vehicles. The were many distractions just as bad as phones(or worse) before they came along. Its not the phones that are at fault, its the drivers. Holding it to your head is the easiest part. Some wiseguy researchers test a few people under what conditions I dont know, and they come up with idea that its some big hazard. I wasnt part of those tests. If you talk to me on the phone when Im driving it sounds like Im distracted and not really paying attention to you because Im not-Im paying attention to the road!
If you tested my reaction time would be similar. And while we are on the subject, reaction is a moronic catch-phrase that these researchers like to throw around. Your reaction time is just one little tiny tiny part of driving safe. Tou can have reactions twice as slow as a 16 yo and be 10 times as safe. Driving defensively, leaving plenty of space, expecting everyone else to mess up at any time etc etc is what makes you drive safe, not so much this
myopic aspect called reaction time. The whole movement is a sham since is focuses on that instead of encouraging overall safe habits and attitudes, which is REALLY WHATS LACKING. It's education that should be stressed not banning holding phone to ear. I acknowledge my driving experience (41 yo) counts for something but anyone can drive and hold a phone it they have thier attitude right.
They need to keep those drivers ed gruesome film images in their head.
And no matter how good a driver you are, there's always going to be situations out of your control that can and will lead to an accident. Driving while using a cellphone absolutely increases EVERYONE'S likelihood of being unable to avoid an accident if such a situation arises.
Oh yeah, and one more thing in regards to the author's summary...
"But the fact is that all cell phone-owner drivers are going to have to face reality at some point and buy a hands-free device."
Um, how about all those people who know better than to use a cellphone (hand-free or not) while driving? Seriously, I understand the desire, and all the rationalizing people do, but it wasn't long ago that you weren't able to make phone calls from the car...it's not like it's that hard to just wait. I have NEVER felt "Oh my god, I really wish I had made that call 5 minutes sooner from my car".
--Rachel Rosmarin, Editor of Tom's Guide
To "Annoyed": many folks who self-judge themselves as being able to handle distraction actually perform as poorly as anyone else in controlled experiments. It's of course possible that you are the one exception in 10,000 individuals, but public policy should not be exception based.
Better methods to improve driver control behavior would not be ones that many would accept - a separate sealed compartment for the driver (to avoid distraction by passengers), induction of stimulants (to improve attention and reaction time), and cognitive workload monitoring (to maintain appropriate levels of performance over time, fatigue detection, etc.).
Simpler and more appealing, perhaps, would simply disable use of a phone in a moving vehicle (you could use it while stopped); we found in general passenger distraction to be less than that of a phone participant because they shared contextual cues. In addition, food, loose materials that move while driving, etc. would also have to be banned (and at least according to a somewhat discredited AAA study were a larger influence on physical distraction of the driver than, e.g., holding the phone).
And even better would be just to make the road as well as the cockpit more predictable. Sealing roads in vacuum tunnels should do the trick ;-).
Frankly, once autonomous vehicle technology gets to the point of mass reliability, I can easily see that being mandated, with manual control eliminated. In general, driving as it exists today is too difficult a task for humans to perform reliably.
them with no detrement to safety. But that is unlikely to happen since its easier and cheaper to just ban their use. The really pathetic and depressing thing about this, as you deftly noted, is that hands free doesnt address the problem of cognitive distraction. The hand-free stipulation is yet another moronic knee-jerk shallow reaction on the part of law makers (likely politically motivated). Again I say: you'd be suprised how safely you can drive under potentially distracting conditions when you keep close and present in your conscious mind the heinous and urgent danger to yourself and others driving a car is to begin with. And I insist again, cell phones are not necessarily any more distacting that billboards, hot chicks, the fries in your lap, or a spouse next to you. It is NOT the distractions that are the danger. It is drivers that dont
subordinate them that are dangerous. I say this again because its important, and its true. I wouldn't argue that removing some distractions might not reduce accidents. But doing that is an arbitrary and mostly pointless endevor. And you could reduce accidents much more by instead holding drivers to a higher standard of competence. We could condence a lot of important experience and training into focused sessions in simulations. (they could probably even be our PC's)
I mentioned before when I talk while driving I do a poor job of talking. Sometime I ask them to hold on if something is happening that I know from experience can be dangerous. Or I might just check out entirely from the conversation an then later apologize. On a devided highway with fenced easments with very light traffic on a sunny day I might sound pretty normal. But if its pouring rain during rush hour on a two lane I might just say I'll call you when I get home. (and degrees of this behavior in between). To restate my whole point and reason for being so vocal- this whole idea that phones are the problem is actually a dangerous concept because it
take attention away from the actual problem-drivers and an infrastructure that has failed to adapt to the new technology.
I can see potential for study design flaw but I dont argue that
many people get distacted. I know reaction time is used since its
an objective measurement. But I wonder if an effort is made to gauge
general attentiveness to potential danger ahead, which is what I insist is more important. shaving a 1/10 of a second or two off your
reaction aint squat if you let yourself get in the wrong place at wrong time at the wrong speed. Thats what driving safely is really about. As I said before I think reaction time is a total hype
catch phrase that's mostly only relavant in drag races. So called experts like to convert reaction time in distance on the ground and say it could make the difference between a wreck or not. Maybe so but only if you put your car in an unsafe attitude to begin with. So I strongly disagree with them. I say they are missing the point and filling everyone's head with concepts that are of secondary relevance. They make it sound like cellphone distractees get into accidents because they reaction a fraction slower. HOGWASH. Distractees CAUSE accidents. But I think they mention that too (lol)
I think that belittles human potential. If all drivers took their
task as serious as airline pilots AND THEY SHOULD, and were required to safely pass/train on computer simulations of dangerous and distracting conditions, with many various distractions including
phone use, accidents would be lower than in history. I think that's
a fair assumption. Why it probably won't happen I dont even savour to contemplate. Automated driving is an interesting thing that may
eventually work, but is so complex and would require so much development of for example 'safe' parameters to program the behavior of the cars under differnt conditions etc. But maybe automated cars can be made to be as safe as the best human (and obbiously more reliable). It would take sensors as good as human, and judgement as good (that AI doesnt exist yet). Getting all that to work is no small order. I can see cars like that coexisting with manual drivers. I doubt we would ever want automatic only. Even the safety features would need to be optional.
On rare occasions you may really need to hop a curb or drive over a bush. And you may need to ignore someone trying to block your path
if you fear they intend harm.
as safe as just driving. Call it 'momentary feild evaluation' combined with 'verbal subordination'. Like preparing for any task while driving (like finding something in glovebox), I first check the road and imagine all possible developments until the next road check (like 2 or 3 sec later, it varies and I never measured it).
So thats for answering the phone, dialing etc. While talking Im doint the same thing only my eyes dont leave the road. I stay aware of the diffence between my eyes on the road with at least frequently if not constantly (when required) thinking about what could happen/is happening, and just my eyes on the road with thinking too much about conversation. It took me a few times of realizing I was being dangerous (although luckily no close 'calls') to realize I had to adjust and treat calls as a continuous 'trip to the glovebox'. Nothing less will suffice, but it does work quite well. And I cant imagine, really, me being the only one doing this. And as I said I intentionally and perhaps even excessively let my verbal skill and attention to the caller suffer. I have neglected to say that I also
regard calls in the car as mainly for brief convenience, not for any
discussion of any length or depth. While I think even that could be done safely, its just not something that I personally choose to do.
And if conditions are difficult I'll fatigue more quickly anyway and get off the phone. I recognize proper multitasking does take more effort. But I know a driver can be completely safe on the phone as long as the proper techniques and judgement is used, and all the relevant aspects of cognition sharing appropriate for conditions are
learned. A supplemental trick to aid this behavior is to regard distractions like phone calls as THREATS. Imagine the phone call means road conditions just changed and a MACK TRUCK's in the oncoming lane, with a cyclist to on your right and potholes ahead. So for any given conditions, the call means you escalate the light traffic to medium, and heavy traffic means your
dont really want to talk very long right now. Yeah Im one of those people that acutally always allows safe distance to car ahead whenever possible (and just about every other safety behavior I can think of). If that means a few novices are always filling the gap and I back off again, not my problem. I know my dropping back from the pack a few hundred yards on my 10 mile trip is meaningless. I think of intersections as places to miraculously avoid a terrible t-bone. BTW I talk on land lines whenever I can. Cellphone audio sucks by comparison. Think about how much more often you have to ask people to repeat themselves on cellphones. The companders they use jack up the background noise like crazy. They're a lot less audibly intimate and subtle than a decent land line phone.
But of course I love my cellphone when no land line is around.
THATS when you know you are doing it right.
I think it is far safer to answer the call on the handsfree and then leisurely find a quite spot to park and talk.
My new carphone works through the stereo with a button on the steering wheel and is much better.
I would be interested in updating the old car's cd player to a hands free, bluetooth, mp3 etc. all singing dancing sort of thing. Have you done any research on these?