Looking to get a Bluetooth earpiece without actually upping your tool factor by 40x or so? Good luck. Helium Digital’s so-called alternative (that’d be the HDBT-990 Bluetooth wristband ) was recently reviewed by our iPhone-lovin’ pals in the Great White North, and while they found it to work well when it came to handling calls without actually using the speaker and microphone within the iPhone 3GS, everything else about it was ho hum at best. There’s no inbuilt LCD for watching Caller ID streams, the mini-USB jack was “flimsy,” and there’s still the issue of this unit being at least somewhat unsightly.

This Helium Digital HDBT-990 Bluetooth wristband could be a godsend for businessmen who want to avoid sticky wires and phones to answer a call while jogging, except it does look kind of bland (too hard to add a watch ?). If appearance isn’t what you’re after, this wristband does offer audible caller ID, A2DP (although it’s unclear if you can get stereo output — we see no headphone jack here; probably just for higher mono fidelity), noise cancellation, and vibration alert for both incoming calls and when your phone is out of range — the latter kind of mimicking the nio Bluetooth tag . Battery-wise it’ll do 4 hours of talk time and 160 hours for standby. All yours for $87 starting in February. Helium Digital straps your wrist with HDBT-990 Bluetooth communicator originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 Jan 2010 15:36:00 EST.

I know I speak for absolutely everyone here when I say, wtf happened to our watch phones? Other than that one model by LG , the industry has passed the formfactor by. Sure, the technology is a lot more convincing in comic books than at your desk, as you awkwardly crunch your neck and shoulders to speak into your upper arm, immediately aware that the free cologne sample was a mistake. And Bluetooth headsets (which is exactly what the $85 HDBT-990 Wristband Communicator actually is, just strapped to your wrist) already make far more sense in terms of practicality and ergonomics. But I just want it on record, the future I’ve been getting is NOT the future I signed up for. Mine includes a boombox that zaps my bare feet to make high tops appear