I’m a robotics researcher. My interests include cybersecurity, repeatable & reproducible research, as well as open source robotics and rust programing.
A while back, I tried looking into what it would take to modify Android to disable Bluetooth microphones for wireless headsets, allowing for call audio to be streamed via regular AAC or aptX, and for the call microphone to be captured from the phones internal mic. This would prevent the bit rate for call audio in microphone being effectively halved when using the ancient HFP/HSP Bluetooth codecs, instead allowing for the same call quality as when using a wired headset. This would help when multitasking with different audio sources, such as listening to music while hanging out on discord, without the music being distorted from the lower bit rate of HFP/HSP. This would also benefit regular VoLTE, as the regular call audio quality already exceeds that of legacy Bluetooth headset profiles.
Although, I didn’t manage to tease apart the mechanics of the audio policy configuration files used by the source Android project, given the sparse documentation and vague commit history.
I’d certainly be fine with the awkwardness of holding up and speaking to my phone as if it was in speaker mode, but listening to the call over wireless headphones, in order to improve or double the audio quality. Always wondered what these audio policies fall back to when a Bluetooth device doesn’t have a headset profile, but it’s almost impossible to find high quality consumer grade Bluetooth headphones without a microphone nowadays.
For the call setting under Bluetooth audio devices, I really wish they would break out or separate the settings for using the audio device as a source or sink for call audio. Sort of like how you can disable HSP/HSF Bluetooth profiles for audio devices in Linux or Windows.
Image Transcription: Meme
A photo of an opened semi-trailer unloading a cargo van, with the cargo van rear door open revealing an even smaller blue smart car inside, with each vehicle captioned as “macOS”, “Linux VM” and “Docker” respectively in decreasing font size. Onlookers in the foreground of the photo gawk as a worker opens each vehicle door, revealing a scene like that of russian dolls.
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I fell for it. It took me a minute into the game time to figure what was up and double check today’s date.