MOTOROKR S9-HD: Meh.

One of the features that really got me excited about the Cupcake update (also known as Android 1.5) for my T-Mobile G1 was (finally!) support for stereo Bluetooth. What did this mean? No longer would I have to listen to music on my phone through wired headphones that I had to plug in through an adapter cord -- the G1 lacks a stereo headphone jack, so you have to plug your headphones into a cord that then plugs into the mini USB port in the bottom of the phone.

So I was eager to get the Motorola MOTOROKR S9-HD wireless hi-def Bluetooth headphones. There's some good and some bad about them. First, the good. They sound really good, most of the time, both for listening to music and for phone calls. Especially the bass. And they seem pretty durable. I wouldn't let your dog loose on them or anything, but I'd feel comfortable throwing them in your backpack with a bunch of other things. The buttons work pretty well for controlling playback and answering calls.

Now the bad. Note that, I said they sound good "most of the time." The key word here is "most." Unfortunately, I did notice a couple of glitches. First, while the range of the headphones is supposed to be 33 feet, I noticed that if I moved more than about 10 feet from my phone, the audio would cut out...a lot. That would be ok (how often would I listen to music more than 10 feet from my phone?), but it also cut out every now and then even when I was only about 2-3 feet from my phone (i.e., the phone was sitting on the table next to me). The other glitch I noticed was that songs seemed to slow down and speed up during playback -- it was as if either the data rate of data going from the phone to the headphones was inconsistent or the processor inside the headphones couldn't quite handle the streaming audio data. I'm thinking (hoping?) it's the former.

One more thing -- if your head is of an appreciable size like mine is, you might find these headphones uncomfortable. I found that the speakers fit snugly in my ears -- as long as I kept my head relatively still. If I turned my head, however, the back of my head would push the back of the headphones, causing the speakers to slip out of my ears. I don't think they'd ever actually come off of my head, but my listening experience was affected. This isn't Motorola's fault -- I acknowledge that my head is pretty large, maybe even abnormally large, and that this type of form factor just won't work for me.

I think these headphones would be just about perfect if the Bluetooth were improved for more consistent data transfer between the phone and the headphones. It could be my phone, but I doubt it -- my phone works very well with my Plantronics headset. Ultimately, I decided to bring them back to the store.