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No, it’s not the one to the right.

Headsets, headphones, and handsfree devices have sucked through the ages and it’s high time someone did it properly. It appears that in this age of Bluetooth and A2DP, we are stuck with the following bad ideas:

The Bluetooth headset

This seems the most ubiquitous. It’s the type that attaches to one ear, is small, convenient, sounds terrible and makes you look like a prick. They aren’t too bad I SUPPOSE, but they are so dorky, somewhat unstable, and are useless for music. A headset should do voice AND music. So it’s out.

Sorry, Jawbone. There’s more, though:

A2DP “Street Style” retardophones

A few years ago someone smart introduced a new Bluetooth profile that could transmit decent audio. It has been gaining prominence, but nobody has been able to produce a decent set of headphones based on the idea. And not all of them have microphones! They tend to look like the picture above, and are uncomfortable, offer poor sound quality, are hard to pocket, and make you look almost as stupid as a Bluetooth headset does.

It’s an obvious form factor, but it doesn’t work. It’s not surprising that designers faced with the problem of integrating a battery, aerial, two speakers seem to settle on this design.. after all, why bother with earbuds, isn’t the point to be wireless? They’re kind of right, but they’re still stupid and not worth using. Do you know anyone who actually owns these? Exactly.

On the other hand, someone might own the above variation of the same idea and actually leave the house wearing it:

Clearly, this is no solution for anyone but douches.

The wired handsfree headset

Nokia bundles these with everything now, and Apple perfected it with the iPhone headset. These have the amazing property of not making you look like a douche, and the sound quality is passable. While wires are a bit of a pain, there’s no charging and they’re easily pocketable.

These are a pretty good solution, but we don’t need the wires and everything needs to be in-ear now. With noise cancellation. These don’t offer that.

Me, personally?

I use a convoluted system of some Sony MDR-NC32X headphones plus a cheap headphone adaptor with a mic and a button. The adaptor takes care of the microphone bit, and provide the iPhone’s wonderful headset button (for those who don’t know - click to play, pause or hang up, double click to skip song.) The NC32NX headphones are the fanciest of Sony’s current crop of in-ear noise cancellation headphones, and provide the intriguing combination of a necklace\lanyard thing, a battery pack that sits on your neck, and very nice in-ear earbuds.

It’s not perfect - it’s wiry and confusing sometimes, I have to replace the AAA battery every month, the microphone hangs down near my chest and needs to be held or clipped to my shirt collar if I want to speak using it, and while it doesn’t look stupid when under my shirt, if I neglect to tuck it in I look like a confused electrician in the middle of a job.

On the other hand, it sounds great, the noise cancellation is indispensable on trains, planes and busy roads I walk by, and it’s very normal looking (under the shirt, I mean.) Invisible except for the earbuds coming from my collar.

The perfect headphones

Ok, so now we reviewed all that, what can we do to achieve nirvana? I think Sony’s necklace is the right idea. Bluetooth headsets are super convenient and futuristic, but make you look like a cyborg. A2DP is the future for portable music, but street style headphones suck. The NC32NX are nice headphones, but awkward as a wired headset.

Here’s my idea for the ultimate solution. It’s designed as an iPhone headset, but there’s no reason it couldn’t be done by Sony or Creative or Motorola for all A2DP devices. Bear with me if you’re not a fellow iPhonefag. Here goes:

Okay, so it’s a necklace, with in-ear earbuds, a battery pack behind the neck, running on A2DP, non-removable battery, chargeable by a dock connector, with minimal buttons. The earbuds have microphones on them for the noise canceling system, and it uses the same type of button\mic the wired iPhone headset uses. All the circuitry is in the battery pack, and apart from this it’s extremely simple, clean and lightweight. Let me talk more about the design:

I think it should have an unusual method of switching it on and off. The segment at the front of the necklace should be magnetised, and when clasped, the headset would activate and connect to your phone. When disconnected, it’d just turn off. Controls for volume and enabling\disabling noise cancellation should go on the iPhone itself, which would also communicate its battery level.

As another idea I think it should be both retractable (so that you press a button and the cords are sucked into the battery pack) and adjustable in length (as the Sony ones I have hang way too far down on my chest, but I can imagine some would prefer that. I put in controls for this on the back of the battery pack in the mockup here, but as this would be a very mechanical thing to do I’m sure it may look different. Forgive the plain round rectangle.. it would be angled in a way that the dock connector part would rest on your skin and the big length adjuster lever would be partially visible, if you can imagine that.

It’d come with two cords. One USB dock connector charger cable, the other a dock connector that goes to a 3.5mm plug, so the headset is usable on wired devices. The dock connector should have a button on it to enable or disable noise cancellation, which isn’t always preferable as it drains battery and adds white noise. I guess it’d be a little weird to have the cord lead to the back of your neck, but I think it’d be manageable. As it’s plausible that a person might also have a laptop, or a handheld game console, or other item they will use the headphones with, it’s important to offer this feature.

Oh, and the cords should be thin, clear and completely inconspicuous. Wouldn’t it be cool if the battery pack and earbuds came in colours, though? That could be done. But beyond the little aluminium clasp, the flat battery pack, and the earbuds, the rest of the headset should be invisible. I think it’d be neat if the battery pack vibrated on a message or call, and if they could make sure the removable rubber ear plug bits never fall off, I’d appreciate it.

With this, I think it’d be ideal for many people (not everyone.) It’d be perfect for wearing all day long, would sound fantastic as a headset and headphones, not look dumb, be relatively pocketable (if you must) and provide the same convenience and control the wired iPhone headset offers. Plus the non-removable battery could offer long talk times and convenient charging.

I long for this type of thing to be made. Even if Apple just puts A2DP on their phone and makes a retarded street style one to go with it, I wouldn’t mind if this design was from another company - they’d just need to add a battery level indicator and inbuilt switch for the noise cancellation stuff to it, which is clutter I could live with.