Zagg Smart Buds

When I came to Japan, I brought along my Sennheiser CX-500’s with me so that I can use them with whatever mobile phone I happen to purchase from here. Sadly, I had to buy an iPhone (sadly, because I always wanted to buy the new Windows Phone) and to add more misery, it came with some crappy pair of earphones. I was OK with it because I had the CX-500, but there was one little problem. See, I have to make a lot of VoIP calls, mostly to my girl friend at home and hands-free was a must, not just the earphones. iPhone earphones worked OK for that purpose, but they would sound terrible when listening to music and keeping them fitted in the ears was a difficult thing to do. They must have the worst ergonomics out of all! 

I never intended to replace my CX-500, because they were as good as they get, but with the lack of a mic, they were not very useful to me. I knew that Zagg made some iPhone compatible earphones with all their wisdom and quality, so I paid their site a visit, hoping to buy a set of earphones. There they were, the Smart Buds, with all the features and relatively cheaper price (compared to the others that they had compared it to) but still, the price was a lot. $80 + shipping for a pair of earphones, especially which might not be as good as the CX-500 in terms of the sound quality? No way! But the good news is that Zagg gives discounts once in a while, and sometimes as high as 50%. I waited for them to do this, but they never gave that discount. But a friend gave me a working 50% discount code. I quickly ordered a pair. That was on 2nd of August. 

This is what I ordered. http://www.zagg.com/audio/smart-buds.php

Zagg Smart Buds

The package arrived yesterday, the 10th of August. Quicker than when I ordered stuff when I was in SL.

So I opened the package, plugged in the earphones only to remember that I didn’t have any music in my iPhone as I had recently restored the firmware. I synced it with iTunes and listened to “Love the way you lie” by Eminem – this is what I have been listening to the whole day – and I was very disappointed with the audio quality. I plugged in the CX-500 and sure enough, something was not right with the new earbuds! The Smart Buds gave no bass at all. For a second, I wondered if I got bitten by some good marketing ploys. But I kept listening to the music with the Smart Buds for a while, and I felt a bit of pain in my ears. The earbuds were not good. They were hard. Felt most like plastic instead of rubber.

The Smart Buds came with a set of replaceable earbuds of different sizes and shapes, just like the CX-500's. I replaced the existing ones with the biggest ones that were available, and tried it out. Wow! What a difference. Now they felt almost as good as the CX-500. (BTW, I’m only talking about the bass here. I’m not much of an audiophile really) Phew! I was beginning to feel relieved.

Now that the audio quality problem has been resolved, I wanted to test how securely they would fit when doing some activity. I wore them and went out on a bike ride and they worked excellently. They never felt as if they were about to come off. (It would not have mattered even if they came off because they would never fall off my neck). 

They say they are very durable because the wires are coated with the same material as the Invisible Shield. But I would use them carefully because they are new and I’m still not convinced that they won’t break. It will take some time for me to accept their claims. They don’t seem to tangle much either, just as advertised. But I didn’t take them in my bag yet.

Mobile VoIP apps suck!

Yesterday Fring released their latest iPhone version with full iOS4 compatibility. They did not just add iOS4 multitasking support, but they also added video calling capability to the iPhone 3GS and the rest. Yes, the 3GS doesn’t have a front facing camera, but you could use the main camera for video calling. That’s better than nothing.

But later, they had to disable Skype completely because they couldn’t bear the network traffic caused by this video calling. Now the Fring client is almost useless. Without Fring’s Skype video calling support, it is nothing. That is the main reason most people use the phone for. I mean, they didn’t just disabled Skype on the iPhone. They took it down from all of their clients, on Symbian and Android as well.

Now, I found out that you can do video calling on the native Fring protocol. But how stupid are they, that they don’t have a PC version of their software. So whenever I need to make a video call to Ama, I have to come online on the phone. And this is not even tested yet. We tried to test it, and then I couldn’t see her in my contact list and the battery on her phone died, so it was a failed attempt. I will surely try it again, because this could be the only way that we can make video calls in the future. Of course I can’t see her because her phone doesn’t have the traditional front facing camera, but at least she can see me.

And this doesn’t end here. The Skype client on her phone has gone haywire. It doesn’t work anymore. I don’t know what is wrong with it. The Skype client wasn’t supported on the phone anyways. But we could install it and it worked well when it worked. It gave the best delays. Now it doesn’t work anymore.

So there are two more clients. Nimbuzz and Fring. Fring was the only option for video calling. Now that it doesn’t work (at least the way it used to) there is not preference. But I can still talk to Fring through google talk and the quality it pretty good. Google is the next stupidest of them all. They have video calling on gmail website, but the binary client doesn’t support video calling. How stupid is that? Usually people give the lesser options to the web version of their apps. I guess it is the other way round with Google. They are without a doubt the rulers of the internet.

Couple of more things about Fring. Ama cannot make a call from her phone to me whenever she is connected via Fring. I have to make the call from my end. And the other thing is that it takes ages to connect to the service. When Skype was working, and when she was on Fring and I was on the PC, it might sometimes takes 10 minutes for her to appear on my contact list. You can’t make a video call whenever you want. So what I did was, I talked with her on GTalk and when she appeared on my Skype, I would disconnect the GTalk call and make a video call. Sucks!

With Nimbuzz (and Skype when it was working) this was not a problem. She could make the call. But today in the morning when I tried Nimbuzz, I could not see her, but she could see me and she made the call. I couldn’t make a call because she didn’t appear in my contact list. So weird.

The issues with Nimbuzz doesn’t stop there.

Sometimes in the evening when Ama connects to Nimbuzz, there is a huge delay. You might think this is like 5 seconds or something. LOL! I’ve got delays as long as 1 minute!! Can you imagine that? None of the other clients give that much delay. Fring’s delay is pretty awesome. Nimbuzz sucks in the department, and “sucks” is being too lenient. The other issue with Nimbuzz is that I cannot make calls from GTalk to it. It never connects. I don’t understand why.

Basically everything sucks when it comes to mobile VoIP calling. On the PC, Skype rocks and it is as steady as one can be. I just hope they will bring iOS4 supported version soon and with video calling as well. But, we won’t be able to make a video call because that would mean installing it onto Ama’s phone. That won’t work.

Best thing to do is to make her get internet at home and use a PC!!! But she will be away from home for another 4 months. >_<

Some COD4 multiplayer scores on NRNS server playing as a Sniper using Barrette .50 Cal

Following screenshots were captured while I was in Sri Lanka, with high ping on a slower PC.

Following are with my new PC, and now I’m in Japan. So, better pings, but not amazing at all.