iphone music over bluetooth headset

In my previous blog post when I wrote about bluetooth file transfer in iphone using iBluetooth, I mentioned that we cannot listen to the music or video in the bluetooth headset. I explored more about this topic and am happy to find that I am wrong. There are couple of tricks to workaround this limitation. It is possible to listen to the iphone music or video in the bluetooth headset. The trick here is to exploit the capability of iphone to transfer audio during calls over bluetooth. The beauty is that these tricks does not need any hardware or software changes. The following tricks assumes that you have already coupled your bluetooth headset to your iphone.

The first trick is simple but not practical to use. As the phone can export audio over bluetooth during active call, the trick is to play the music while you are active on the call. While you are on the call if you press home button, it will give access to the main screen when you can select ipod and play the music. But the problem is that the music will stop if the call ends. So, this is not practical as you do not want to burn out the phone minutes.

The second trick is to exploit voice mail. You do not need to be on active call to use this. Go the voicemail tab in the phone menu. If you have voice mail enabled and configured, you will see a button for audio source. Tap it and select your bluetooth headset as the source. Then open the ipod and start playing your music. You will hear it in your headset.

The third trick is the geeky way. It reminds me of the days we used to jailbreak by making a fake call. As an active call is needed to have voice over bluetooth, we make a fake call. If you dail *#301#, the iphone will call itself. You can answer the call and it will be active till you end it. As you are calling yourself, you do not pay for the minutes. But there is a catch. You cannot get calls while you are on this unless you have call waiting enabled. See this video which explains the procedure.