Sony Xperia Ear Bluetooth Earpiece: Control Your Phone with Head Gestures

You can use any Bluetooth earpiece for taking calls hands-free, interacting with your phone’s voice assistant, and receiving audio notifications. The Sony Xperia Ear, however, is designed to be different, giving users a new way to control their phones. It’s all about head gesture support.

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Head gestures allow you to trigger actions by nodding your head, turning left and right, and more. You won’t even have to talk to confirm an action, dial a contact, or anything. Just program the earpiece to perform the desired action when it detects a specific head gesture. It also comes with its own voice assistant, which is the same one that Sony debuted in its Xperia Agent home robot. It can answer questions, compose messages, and trigger other events based on your commands.

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The 65mAh battery will deliver up to four hours of talk time, with another 300mAh unit in the charging storage case that should extend that to 16 hours. It also features dual mics with noise suppression, and dual wireless connectivity (Bluetooth and NFC). The Xperia Ear headset will arrive later in the year for $225(USD).

It sounds good, but let’s hope that it isn’t a problem when you are nodding to friends or just turning your head to actually see something. I especially can’t imagine this thing selling well in India.

[Sony Mobile via Cool Things]

CKIE Product of the week – Bullet Bluetooth 4.1 Earpiece

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I have to admit, putting my love for anything audio aside, earphones are annoying to deal with in your pocket. Their wires get entangled, frayed, and you end up with a broken piece of tech. Bluetooth headsets do away with the wires, but at what cost? They’re not ideally pocketable. Not to mention you need to charge them every once in a while. Now the Bullet, it’s everything that conventional earphones are not. It does away with the wire hassle, it fits beautifully into your pocket despite being a Bluetooth earpiece , and it comes packaged with a svelte metallic charging capsule. Together, the earpiece and charging capsule give the Bullet its gloriously sleek and iconic design.

The Bullet comes loaded with great specs too. It’s powered by Bluetooth 4.1 and can pair with multiple devices simultaneously. It comes with CVC Noise and Echo cancellation (hallelujah), and even sports an inbuilt microphone for when you want to make calls. The charging Capsule that comes with this earpiece is a marvelous piece of innovation too. All you have to do is tuck the earpiece in and you can fully charge it four times over. To replenish the power in the charging capsule, all you need to do is plug a MicroUSB in and top-up its battery.

The Bullet earpiece is beautiful to look at, and small enough to go unnoticed. Loaded with the most cutting edge technology, the Bullet earpiece is perfect for you, whether you want to show off your earpiece, or make it look like you’re not wearing any!

Available at: CKIE [Buy it here]

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Apple seeks patent for hearing aids that deliver speech at an even keel

Apple seeks patent for hearing aids that deliver speech at an even keel

Although they're called hearing aids, they can sometimes be as much of a hindrance as a help. Catch an unfamiliar accent and the attention might be on just parsing the words, let alone moving the conversation forward. Apple is applying for a patent on a technique that would take the guesswork out of listening by smoothing out all the quirks. The proposed idea would convert speech to text and back, using the switch to remove any unusual pronunciation or too-quick talking before it reaches the listener's ear. Not surprisingly for a company that makes phones and tablets, the hearing aid wouldn't always have to do the heavy lifting, either: iOS devices could handle some of the on-the-fly conversion, and pre-recorded speech could receive advance treatment to speed up the process. We don't know if Apple plans to use its learning in any kind of shipping product, although it's undoubtedly been interested in the category before -- and its ambitions of having iPhone-optimized hearing aids could well get a lift from technology that promises real understanding, not just a boost in volume.

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Apple seeks patent for hearing aids that deliver speech at an even keel originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Aug 2012 11:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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