I love products and services that are executed flawlessly. I find Broadway musicals intellectually uninspiring, but I love how the performance and production values are flawless. Everyone on stage can sing, dance, and knows their lines. These are the best of the best. The sets, transitions and lighting are all top notch. The show unfolds like origami, every aspect perfectly planned.

You would not expect to find that type of magical execution in something as mundane as a Bluetooth wireless cell phone headset but the new Jawbone is remarkable. I recently got a Jawbone after Walt Mossberg reviewed it and said the thing finally works. The performance is inspiring.

I am a bit of a stickler when it comes to cell phone voice quality. When I travel, I typically take both my Blackberry and family-share flip phone because, when in noisy places, the Blackberry picks up too much background noise to be bearable to the person on the other end of a call.

Background noise seems to be a general problem with any phone device where the microphone is far away from your mouth. To pick up your voice, the microphone needs to have a higher gain, and that means picking up background noise. The problem is exacerbated by any headset that keeps the microphone near your ear, as most Bluetooth ones do.

Ok, so how good is the new Jawbone? I made calls standing on Connecticut Avenue in Washington, DC while scooters whizzed by and the person on the other end, when asked, thought I was inside.

Then I performed the ultimate test. I made a call while driving with the windows down, sunroof open, going 40mph, with the radio playing loud enough for me to enjoy it inside the car. The person on the other end reported he could hear something in the background but could not make it out. When I switched back to the handset for comparison, the other party asked that we please end the experiment immediately. It was torture.

The real significance of the Jawbone is the increased utility of your cell phone. While it is an attractive idea to make a business call while walking on the street, the background noise is usually so loud that it would be insulting to the other party. But with the Jawbone, the other person thinks you are inside!

How does the Jawbone work? They read the vibrations off your face and use it as a reference signal to filter the audio. Audio that tracks the signal coming off your face is accepted, other audio is rejected. Great idea. Of course, the devil is in the implementation details and with the new Jawbone, they finally got it right.

Only caveats? Wireless headsets are a bit of a hassle since they need to be charged separately, and of course, wearing a Bluetooth wireless headset makes you look like a bit of a dork. But since the thing actually works, and as an Engineer, I really can’t completely lose the dorkiness anyway, those are drawbacks worth living with.

(Note, it seems that Amazon only has the older Jawbones stocked. I bought mine off the Jawbone company website. Took about a week to come)

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 1st, 2008 at 10:38 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.