Those design nuts over at PSFK recently talked with Hosain Rahman of
Jawbone fame. The new headset is turning heads with its design chops and technical noise-canceling merit, so it's interesting to hear the impetus behind the upcoming product: "The market was crap and the offering sub-standard." Hosain's Jawbone headset, designed by Yves Behar (who also designed the original Slingbox), was built to be an alternative to the cheap Asian imports. The Jawbone includes frills like medical grade plastic, since a headset touches the skin for so many hours a day, and of course that vibration sensor (to activate the noise cancellation) and dual microphones are a nice step up from the average headset. Hosain views himself in the "audio gateway" biz, which sounds like a good place to be, with consumers increasingly tethered to iPods, cellphones and VoIP sessions, and Bluetooth convergence of all three imminent. Peep a Jawbone shakycam unboxing vid after the break, or hit up the read link for the full interview.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Mark @ Dec 22nd 2006 10:21PM
Picked one of these up today. The jury is still out. The ear loops are terrible. Very uncomfortable. My ear still hurts from trying to put the dog gone thing on. The charger cord is odd. Why couldn't they have used a more standard connector like the Blackberry and Razr? Oh well, I guess you could ask the same thing of Palm. Nevertheless, if this noise canceling works as advertised, I'll keep it, warts and all.
Gregg @ Dec 27th 2006 3:29PM
My jury is still out on this. I love the fact that everyone can hear me just fine, but I think the spring swivel is mounted backwards. It pulls the ear bud out of my ear because the ear loop mounting spring pushes against my scalp with too much force. If the ear bud was longer, like a flanged shooter's earplug, it might hold, but it creates too much space between the bud and the ear canal, and whatever noise cancelling it provides the listener on the far end, the design creates on my end due to the bad fit. Admittedly I have a large ear canal (big head) but even the biggest bud is pulled out by the spring. If anyone knows of custom ear buds for this situation, please post it here, thanks!
JIm @ Jan 4th 2007 3:22PM
"Jawbone IS Crap"
Shoddy workmanship from a company that is representing that its product is state of the art. I bought one on Saturday. The earloop that comes attached to the unit fit snuggly, but each of the other three earloops provided in the package fit very loosely, such that the Jawbone would slip off if held by the earloop. I walked back into the store and we pulled out another package--same problem. I like to wear my bluetooth on the left ear so that was unacceptable, particularly for a product for which they are charging $119. I never even got to sample the technology, although it does look cool. It's possible that they will resolve their quality control problems, but I don't think I have the patience to wait for that.