Sony Ericsson Develops Contact Headphones

TechnologyResource writes "Sony Ericsson has just introduced the MH907 headphones. The headphones will pause or play your music based on contact; eliminating the use of a pause or stop button. Removing one ear bud will pause the music. Removing both ear buds will stop the music. Both ear buds have to be in your ear to play the music. According to Sony Ericsson, this will allow you to 'play your music and answer phone calls just by inserting the buds into your ear or taking them out.'"

Good Idea...

[PrimaryConsult]

so long as it works properly. Many times I take my headphones off to order food, talk to a bank teller, etc and then three hours later, I find it has been playing the entire time. This will do wonders for battery life...

But what is more likely to happen is the contact mechanism will wear out in six months and it will be difficult to get them to play at all...

Re:weak sauce.

[dyingtolive]

Makes sense. How else would you notify the device playing music that you wish for the music to stop?

As an aside, I'm not sure about iPods, but the Zune will automatically pause music if the headphones have been removed. You could make an analogue to this technology by implementing something similar to that in an ordinary mp3/cd player and having a cutoff switch for the circuit in the ear piece (or on the cord, or wherever), and just trip it when appropriate. Resuming play automatically would be a trick, but then again, honestly how lazy are we?

Re:What if...?

[Tubal-Cain]

Ideally there would be a setting in software.

Re:weak sauce.

[fulldecent]

with a 4-port 1/4" jack... like the ipod

Re:weak sauce.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty well all SE phones use fast port. They don't have normal headphone jacks. Are you suggesting SE should make a headset that doesn't fit their own phones???

And even if they did make one that used a 3.5mm jack, they'd need some proprietary in-band signaling protocol to do the pause/stop, so it wouldn't work with a non-SE phone anyway.