I purchased the LG TONE INFINIM Bluetooth Stereo Headset on Amazon to use with my iPhone 6+. I was so excited! From the reviews and description, it sounded like exactly what I wanted for listening to music while working out and still being able to take calls.
When I got it, I immediately paired it up and could hear my music with beautiful clarity. Great balance, nice highs and lows. I hate most earbuds, but these fit in my ears very well. There was just one problem—I couldn’t hear anyone on phone calls with my iPhone 6+, and callers couldn’t hear me. Hmm.
Thinking it was a problem with the headset, I exchanged it. Amazon is great about that kind of thing, you know? I got the new one, paired it, tested it—and had the same problem.
So I tested this one with the boyfriend’s (Android) phone—it worked just fine. I erased my phone completely and set it up as new, and still had the same problem. I sought advice from co-workers (I mean, come on, I do work for Apple) and checked out all the suggestions. No joy. I Googled and could find nothing about problems between this headset and iPhones. In fact, there were reports of it working nicely with the 5 and 5s models.
I went to the Apple store and they swapped out my phone. Same problem. Then we got the bright idea to try the headset with the tech’s iPhone 6 and found that we couldn’t hear calls on it, either.
Finally, I did what I should have done originally, and called LG. After finally getting the idea across to a man who didn’t have a firm grasp of the English language, and didn’t even ask what model iPhone I was using, or what version of iOS it was running. He just put me on hold and went away for a bit, then come back and said, “The HBS-900 is not compatible with iPhone.”
I said, “With any iPhone, or just my iPhone?”
“We have not tested with latest,” he said. “You have latest, yes?”
“Yes, the iPhone 6+ running iOS 8.4,” I replied.
“We have not tested,” he said again.
Now that seems a major oversight on LG’s part, and while the product description mentions an Android app for easy pairing, it also says there’s a manual pairing mode (which I used) for other devices. That’s nothing like saying, “This won’t work with iPhones” and it is misleading marketing. I am very unhappy that LG has overlooked such a huge market segment with this poor decision, and that I have wasted so much time on this thing as a result. I’ve had decent experiences with LG products in the past, but I’ll think twice before buying anything from them in the future.
