Rage Against The Status Quo

I recently purchased a Jawbone Bluetooth Headset. For those not familiar with the product, it has a distinct design. Instead of the usual telephone operator style, or foo-foo ear-sessory, you get something that appears as a solid rectangle with a grid of circles across the frame. Looks nice, not too much blue shining light.

What makes this one special is the design you don’t see. It uses the noise coming from your jawbone to pick up your voice, not a standard microphone. Consequently, you get superb voice quality without a lot of back ground ambient noise picked up. What you’d hope for is that you could hold a conversation and not have the other person you are talking to ask you if you are driving. Even better, it adjusts automatically to the ambient noise, and increases or decreases volume accordingly.

These little gizmos were hard to find for the last year. I believe ATT Wireless or one of the US carriers had an exclusive on the distribution for a temporary period. Now you can pick them up at Apple, on Amazon, or at Fry’s. They around about $90 and come in a small variety of colors.

The unboxing of a new gadgets is part ceremony, part gift to one’s-self. I found, to my surprise, the Jawbone ships with not one but four earpieces and not one but four ear buds. Odd, I thought, but quite nice they’d considered the different shapes of ears and preferences of users.

The charger is pretty cool. You get a USB connector to a proprietary charge receptacle. You can either plug in to your computer or the AC power supply provided. Charge time takes about 1-2 hours.

To begin any good bluetooth test, you must remain objects. I must clarify, my choice of bluetooth has little to do with style, status, or a need to feel important. I am one person who feels embarrassed about the need to wear the bluetooth headset in public occasionally. But this is exactly what I set out to do.

I begin day one with the Jawbone turned on, perched on my left ear for an entire day. I apologize to all in advance who experienced the idiocy of wearing off-balance headgear. I only did it for artistic reasons. I figure to really understand the capabilities of a BT headset, one must live it, wear it, experience it.

I am happy to say, the first day went well, without a hitch. I was able to wear the headset comfortably all day. On that day, I walked over three miles to and from work, and rode public transit for an additional hour each way. It worked fine to have this thing on while walking around. It was a particularly windy day, but the wind didn’t blow the thing off. One quick drawback I noticed was that my call quality degrades as the handset gets below my waste. Don’t know why. Also, callers couldn’t hear me while I was standing in the wind. Otherwise, all went well.

The subsequent week, I made a point not to wear the device all the time. I got about 2 days or so of standby time. Not bad. But what was bad was when I decided to fit the headpiece into my pocket. When it emerged again, the earpiece had broken away. I decided it was a fluke, but then it happened again. I’d barely owned the device 3 weeks, and already, it had broken two times. Jawbroken, I say!

Time to write the company. I wrote them, explaining how cheap and brittle the earpiece was. I suggested some ideas for redesign, and suggested they take immediate action, as Nintendo had done with the Wii-mote. It struck me as impossible that they didn’t know about this design flaw after having the product on the market already for a year.

The company responded back, offering to provide two replacement head pieces. This wasn’t the answer I was looking for, generous though it may be. I’ve yet to take them up on the offer. What I really want is a better version of the head piece, possibly some variations in material, variations in how it attaches, etc. Clearly the design flaw is in the choice of metal. A break away design might prevent the ear piece from breaking. But maybe metal is not such a good choice, given the properties under stress. Why not a flexible metal like the ones available at the optometrist? How about an operator style head piece?

If Jawbone doesn’t end up providing a general fix on the market, I am seriously going to look into the local machine shop to see about fabricating a plastic or rubber replica of the earpiece. The design is just too good to have a testing oversight blow the quality of the product. Anyone own a Jawbone who wants to comment on the product?

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David