Bluetooth Headsets

[tom_porter]

Any comments regarding which bluetooth headsets work well with the IP565 phone?

[cburgy]

Plantronics Discovery 665 has been working great for me since January 2008.

[JasonC]

I got a Motorola H500, which is alright...

[jmccumber]

Plantronics Voyager 520 seems to be working well for most of our users and they were fairly inexpensive. Personally the one I have has some issues so I use a Jabra BT350 that works well. The Voyager supports two connections so we can not go offhook using just the headset button unless the phone is ringing. Which is not a big deal.

[Jlorenz]

Just do not go cheap, I found in testing the $19 - $40 Frys specials or Costco specials arent worth spit. Find a Bluetooth with Noise cancellation and specifc for indoor outdoor usage. I used a Siemens/Alcatel on the 565 and it was flawless, it did cost about $65

[tom_porter]

I did a review of five Bluetooth earpieces and have attached what I observed. Basically my conclusion:

Most any Bluetooth earpiece will work with the Shoretel IP565 phone. The Shoretel phone's Bluetooth implementation is basically limited to answer and disconnect (Shoretel needs to enhance this feature). The more advanced Bluetooth features of mobile phones are not supported on the IP565. Audio quality has definitely improved in the newer earpieces but they also seem pickup more office background noises. I didn't experience distance issues in my environment and found the newer earpieces worked with no issue near the phone. Reconnecting to the phone has been the most frustrating issue with the Bluetooth earpieces. Each earpiece may or may not connect to the phone when turned on and sometimes requires repairing the earpiece to get it to connect. The Ant earpiece was the most troublesome and the H710 getting confused when paired with more than one phone when reconnecting to the phone. The Bluetooth earpieces were evaluated running ShoreWare build 13.10.4203.0 on IP 565 phones. See the attached PDF for more info.

Regards,

Tom Porter

[cburgy]

I did a review of five Bluetooth earpieces and have attached what I observed. Basically my conclusion:

Most any Bluetooth earpiece will work with the Shoretel IP565 phone. The Shoretel phone's Bluetooth implementation is basically limited to answer and disconnect (Shoretel needs to enhance this feature). The more advanced Bluetooth features of mobile phones are not supported on the IP565. Audio quality has definitely improved in the newer earpieces but they also seem pickup more office background noises. I didn't experience distance issues in my environment and found the newer earpieces worked with no issue near the phone. Reconnecting to the phone has been the most frustrating issue with the Bluetooth earpieces. Each earpiece may or may not connect to the phone when turned on and sometimes requires repairing the earpiece to get it to connect. The Ant earpiece was the most troublesome and the H710 getting confused when paired with more than one phone when reconnecting to the phone. The Bluetooth earpieces were evaluated running ShoreWare build 13.10.4203.0 on IP 565 phones. See the attached PDF for more info.

Regards,

Tom Porter

Great contribution Tom! I love our customers... they rock!

[peter_benton]

New Jawbone

excellent, how about someone figuring out how to get a jawbone prime to work?

I'll send them a $25 Starbucks card!

Pete

[tom_porter]

Jawbone Prime Supports Multipoint Pairing

Does your Jawbone pair at all? If so, the Jawbone Prime might have trouble connecting to the IP565 if paired to another phone. Will it connect reliably if it is only paired with the IP565? I haven't experimented with the Jawbones but I have basically given up on multipoint Pairing and just re-pair to the IP565 every time. Some earpieces work great and others don't. I have basically come to the conclusion that the IP565 bluetooth implementation leaves much to be desired. In my office I provide users with a moto H715 or H710, bluetooth earpiece just for phone use. It happens to work well with multi device pairing (no multipoint) and infrequently needs to be repaired.

[peter_benton]

Nada

Thanks Tom,

I think I've tried everything..

unpaired
reset the jawbone prime to factory new
reset the 565
tried to re-pair
no dice....

but the prime can pair flawlessly to my blackberry and the original jawbone will pair every time to the 565.

so back to two headsets which defeats the purpose of buying the prime (i have two orig jawbones allready)

Peter

[waltermixxx]

before our shoretel installation in our new office, I had one test phone loaned to me by our supplier. I tested a number of bluetooth headsets and settled on the H610 and the Affinity found at "the source" (radio shack in the U.S.) both worked great with the one phone, so I ordered based on that, and based on our old office environment.

when it came time to setup the 40 or so affinity head sets, and about 20 motorola 610, i had nothing but trouble.

We paired each one, one at a time, and tested on the weekend of our office move,
and plugged it in for charging, then setup the computers etc. Come monday morning
unplugged the charger on the affinity bluetooth headsets and they either refused to reconnect, or would reconnect then randomly drop the connection...

would concrete floors and ceilings and the fact that there are 60 head sets cause interference? it's a strange issue... and the only blemish on an othewise flawless
office move and new phone system install...

[tom_porter]

Interference

from my experence i find 2 issues that may relate to your situation:
1. BT devices drop off and need to be repaired with the phone occasionally.
2. WiFi especially from the computer near the BT device interrupts/conflicts with BT communication.

Solution for 1 is just repair as needed. not much of a problem as the user may use the earpiece for mobile phone also causing frequent repairing. 2 is more troubling expecially if you need wifi to connect to the network. i turn off wifi at the desk and use cable (laptop). may be a way to change channel of wifi so doesn't interfer with BT but haven't dug into details.

Tom

[waltermixxx]

we do have wifi scattered throughout, and when I did my tests I was in an area where the wifi did not have a much if at all strength... the new office there is lots of wifi... I will see if killing the wifi works.... interesting....

[aggy100]

Motorola H500 is what i use. It is good.
Regards

[Gnakas]

I use a Plantronics Voyager Pro with no problems so far.

Still testing to see how well it will work in an environment with multiple IP565s each with a Voyager Pro paired with them. Concerned that with 10 IP565 phones and 10 Voyager Pro running at the same time, there may be some problems.