That's right, I bought the Jawbone... and here's a real shocker (no not that kind), I love it!!

So far this headset has done everything the advertisements and "here say" said it would do. Yesterday, right after purchasing the headset, I was required to charge the unit for a mere two hours before use. No extended charging time of 18 hours, or even 5 hours before the first use... a good sign.

The unit comes with 5 different ear bud contouring shapes and 4 over the ear pieces. It is a tandem operation of over the ear hook and ear bud that keeps the device snugly attached to the side of your head.

Use of the device is super easy. The side of the device actually has two buttons. One is for the power/answer/voice dial functions, the other being for turning on/off the noise cancellation feature and manually adjusting the volume.

Oh snap, did I forget to mention that the volume is pretty much 100% self adjusting, with the exception of giving you the option to adjust it yourself if you don't like the setting that the Jawbone picked for you based on the ambient volume in the room/situation you are in.

So, now for the meat and potatoes of the review... yesterday evening, as I was driving to one friend's house and talking to another friend. The friend on the phone couldn't tell that I had my window rolled down... on the freeway!!! This has been a big problem in the past, and I'm super happy to say that it looks as though it's finally been resolved!!

I'll post more as I learn more, but I just wanted to get every one's mouth watering first...

...mission accomplished...

UPDATE 06/08/2007:

So I've been using the headset for a few days now, and I've noticed some really cool stuff, and some other things that I don't really like so much. I'll split them into two lists, the cool things and the not so cool things:

Cool things:

1. When my phone is out of bluetooth range, the headset gives me three quick beeps and then stops. My Motorola H800 continued beeping until it got back into range, something I found to be very annoying.
2. When I am on a call on my phone, and power the headset on, the call is instantly transferred to the headset. I mean INSTANTLY. My Motorola H800 would occasionally just not take the call over, and when it did... took forever to make it happen.
3. The noise reduction is by far the best I have seen. Yesterday I was in my car with the radio on, both windows open, my navigation unit spitting directions at me and coming down the freeway to boot... I was on the phone with my mom and she found it odd that I asked her if she could hear me. She found it odd because I was coming through CRYSTAL FUCKING CLEAR.. bitches...
4. The earpiece volume adjusts itself automatically, so I'm not constantly pressing up or down on the volume depending on the situation like I had to do with my H800.
5. The voice commands (a feature of the phone more than the headset) are picked up very well. I guess this basically means that the headset has an awesome microphone in it. Either way, I've never used my voice commands for anything before, simply because the phone never seems to recognize the command given after I have set it up. This could be due to a noisy environment, shitty software, whatever... the point is, I like it now.

Not so cool things:

1. There is a small rubber cover for the charging port that stays on as long as you don't bump it by accident. It's easy to bump it when adjusting the headset or pressing the button to turn off the noise cancellation or rotate through the volume settings. The rubber piece is so light, that unless you stop and look for it on the ground, you would have no idea that it even fell off. Bad design here.
2. The ear hooks come in two sizes, normal and large. Normal is too big for my ear so it leaves much of the "hold on for dear life" work to the rubber piece that goes into my ear canal. Not suitable for running or leaning forward to pick something up off of the ground. More bad design, or really just a lack of appropriate options. This could be solved by adding one more ear hook to the package that is smaller than the "normal" size.
3. While the self adjusting volume kicks ass, it doesn't always make the right choice on volume. This could be attributed to the headset not fitting snugly on my ear, and therefore being further away from my ear and thus requiring a louder volume to actually hear things. You have the option of "rotating" through 6 different volume settings by pressing and holding one of two buttons on the device. That's right, rotating... this means that you go from 1 to 6 and then back to 1 again. No reverse... no jumping to... just one direction rotation. It's this "pressing and holding" that inevitably causes me to dislodge the rubber cover on the rear of the device. Frustrating.
4. The ear hook for the device seems a bit fragile. I could be wrong here, but the connection for the ear hook seems like it might wear out as it's just a tension fit holding it in. Also, I am constantly worried about actually breaking the ear hook if I were to place the device in my pocket or were someone to step/sit on it as a result of me setting it somewhere while inside a house. This could be all me and my paranoid tendencies... either way I think the device would benefit from a more rubberized ear hook or a simple way to make the device more compact. I'm not sure how a folding ear hook would work, so probably making it out of a more malleable plastic/rubber as opposed to the current construction of metal and rubber would be sufficient.
5. There doesn't seem to be a mute button. Now I could be wrong, but I didn't see one in the documentation, nor have I found one accidentally during my use of the headset. The device only has two buttons, one on the rear of the device to control the noise reduction and the volume rotation. The other button is used to power on the device, answer calls, initiate the voice command prompt, end the call and power off the device. That's quite a few functions for one button if you think about it. If I had the choice, I don't think I would add another button to the configuration, but maybe employ a dual button press for the volume rotation thereby allowing room for a single press on the rear button for mute functionality during calls.

Anyhow, that's the remainder of my review. I hope this helps you make a decision. I opted to keep this headset so far, albeit the ear snugness issue for two reasons:

1. This headset received the best review on CNet, both from the writer of the review and from the users. It beat out the Plantronics Discovery 665 - 7.7 staff rating, 5.6 user review rating, and the Motorola H9 Miniblue - 7.7 staff rating, no user review ratings. The Aliph Jawbone (gray) received an 8.7 staff rating paired with a 7.6 user review rating. Pretty damn high to ignore.
2. The second reason is that this ear snugness issue is not permanent. Apparently some smart genius mother fucker found out that the Jabra ear gels will fit over the round rubber ear piece that comes with the Aliph Jawbone. I plan on getting a pack of those today, and I think this will allow me to possibly remove the ear hook if I wanted a super sleek look... we'll see. I mentioned that to a friend and the first thing he thought about was the device falling on the ground, and while the ear hook isn't snug, it does prevent that nasty result.

Now the review is really over... if this helps you, then awesome. If not.. then you should have stopped reading long before you got to this, the insult segment of the review. Only a moron would continue reading something useless to them, and then stay around to get ragged on... way to go prick face...

-link

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