Jawbone: Second Time’s A Charm

About a year ago, I tried to fall in love with the original Jawbone. I never got to ‘like’ with it – forget about ‘love’.

Jawbone’s maker Aliph released the New Jawbone last month. First and foremost, it’s a lot smaller:

Two things prompted me to check out the New Jawbone (which, in my opinion, is a moronic name for the new product, but whatyagonnado). First, I’m a geek, and Aliph’s noise processing technology continued to intrigue me even after I returned the original Jawbone. Second, the boss positively hates my Motorola H700, and she had in fact gotten into the habit of berating me about it each time I spoke to her using it. Presumably everybody else I spoke to with it was politely “putting up with me” if it was really that bad.

I told the sales guy at the ATT store that I had purchased and returned a Jawbone 1 and expected to do the same with the Jawbone 2 – he was cool about it – 30 days and all that jazz. Net-net, I have been surprisingly pleased! I have no intention of returning it. Some thoughts and comments:

• You still need to have that little nub touching your cheek in order for it to work right. Couldn’t get that to work reliably with the old version. It took some experimentation, but with the New Jawbone this is totally not a problem: all contact, all the time.
• They make noises about how you can use it without the ear loop. I could not get that to work.
• The two buttons are in fact ‘invisible’ but once you grok them, it’s a non-issue. It takes a couple times to figure out exactly where the right point is to depress the casing – you don’t forget.
• It’s definitely not as “pocket friendly” as my Moto H700, but I’m learning to deal with that.