American mobile carrier Cingular has got very excited about its new Bluetooth headset, announcing it "in time for Christmas" - and has successfully generated an astonishing amount of hype. Surprisingly, there is no mention of the number one mobile phone vulnerability: wind noise.
Most mobile phone users will know that in fact, noisy traffic is not a major problem for the phone user. What stops conversation absolutely dead, is a breeze of more than about five miles per hour; the wind makes a roaring sound in the microphone.
Motorola has tried to solve this problem for motorcycle users, building a Bluetooth microphone into a crash helmet. Not everybody will want this solution, of course.
The designers have a great demo of the Jawbone device working while the wearer is surrounded by industrial equipment or traffic. If they had a solution to wind noise, it's rather hard to imagine why they might forget to mention this... so we'll have to assume that when the wind blows, it blows your words away just as it always does on any exposed microphone.
The other sad fact is that it's a single-ear job.
These days, Bluetooth headsets for MP3 players are common, and much in demand. But there's a more important point: if you're in a noisy environment, it's nice to know that the person you're calling can hear you, sure; but what about you hearing them? For that to work, you really need noise-cancelling headphones - and Jawbone claims that it does help, but with only one ear working, that help is going to be limited.