Bluetooth Car Stereo Offers More Than You Think

I stumbled on this post by Stuart Henshall and couldn’t resist sharing. Stuart recently had his car broken into and the thieves stole his stereo. To replace it, he chose the Sony MEX-BT2500, which retails for under $200 USD. What’s so cool about this stereo?

It’s got Bluetooth.

For less than his phone cost, Stuart is now using his Nokia N81 8GB with his car in ways that I dreamt about several years ago, when I got my first bluetooth headset and started listening to music on my Nokia 6620 with it. Sure, he can connect his phone to his car’s sound system for handsfree calling and that sort of thing, that’s nothing fancy. Cars have been doing that for a few years now.

What’s cool about this setup is that his N81 8GB has, well, 8GB worth of music on there. And it can stream music via 3G (where supported). This brings a whole new bevy of options. When connected and a call comes in, the music pauses, and gracefully fades back in automatically. When he gets back in the car from a stop, all he has to do is press play on the phone, it’s already reconnected itself. Seamless in its true sense.

Personally, I’ve installed a 3.5mm lead in my truck, so that I can plug whatever device I have handy in and use my truck’s speakers and superior sound system. It’s awesome with my N95-3, as I can use HSDPA to stream internet radio, or download a podcast and listen to it on the go. Stuart and I agree that this makes connected MP3 players that much more attractive, and could be a devastating blow to iPods and Zunes that don’t support Bluetooth or the ability to connect to a cellular network to stream music on-the-go.

What do you think? Would you rather have an HSDPA-capable phone as your in-car MP3 player, with an 8GB microSD card installed, or a 160GB iPod?