Remember when I wrote I was going to try to cheat the Jawbone UP24? Well, that didn’t work out. I would have been over the moon if it had. Unfortunately I can now say I think the Jawbone UP24 has a design flaw. Probably not what the developers want to hear from me, but hey, I’m paying for this awesome gadget to work. Not to feel limited in what it can and cannot do.
Anyway, here’s the story so far: I bought a Jawbone UP24 in the US (thanks again, travelling friends!), without checking most of the specs first. Stupid, I know. So I found out too late that it didn’t work with my iPad2, and the Android app isn’t ready for use with the UP24 yet. According to Jawbone, the Android app will be ready in early 2014.
Without Bluetooth, the wristband is useless. It doesn’t have the 3.5mm jack like the Jawbone UP has, only a 2.5mm jack – which can only be used for updating and charging via a usb-converter (wth?). I figured a developer always builds in some kind of fall back, redundancy being king and all that. But with the UP24, this apparently is not the case. I tried to ‘cheat’ it with a 3.5mm-2.5mm jack converter, but no luck. The only reason I could think of why Jawbone would choose a 2.5mm jack over 3.5mm jack (with sync option) is the size of the wristband. The first UP was a bit thicker. Being a nerd and all, I wouldn’t mind if the UP24 was as thick as the first one, if it had two sync options. I feel like I’m paying for an upgrade to the first wristband, when it basically is not really an upgrade. It just syncs differently and is somewhat smaller.
And even then, some really expensive high-end smartphones also only support older Bluetooth versions, but while Bluetooth 4.0 should be backwards compatible with those versions, Jawbone chose not to support these. It is unclear whether this is purely a design choice or a consequence of how the low-power profile of Bluetooth 4.0 works, but either way it is hard to explain it to an end user like me. At any rate, this lack of compatibility means they are missing out on sales to people who want a cool new gadget, but not necessarily a new device.
Then there is the existing user base of the Jawbone UP. They also might well want to upgrade their Jawbone, but not their iDevice – or Android device as soon as the app is finally updated. Speaking of Android, the same goes for out-of-the-box support for Android users. While I get that it might be not as easy to develop a nicely polished app for Android as it is for iOS but Android users also want cool gadgets. In addition, the Android user base is by now significantly larger than the iOS one. After publishing the first part of this story, I received several questions from Android users about Jawbone support. Android users do not, I repeat: not want to wait months to be able to purchase a cool new gadget and use it. So basically Jawbone is limiting itself in sales by only making it available to users with up-to-date (mostly expensive) Apple devices, at least at this point. And I can think of some other manufacturers of these kind of gadgets that would gladly fill the gap in due time. Maybe it’s just me who is this bothered by all this, as this is a regularly occurring phenomenon, but the Apple-first philosophy thing really should be a thing of the past by now, if you ask me (and the common opinion does agree with me on that, at least).
So, no redundancy in syncing the wristband, no backward compatibility with older Bluetooth versions (and thus older phones). These two things do put a dent in my enthusiasm for Jawbone, even though I still think this wristband is pretty awesome when one does actually meet all its requirements.
What I have done for now is activate the UP24 using the app on a colleague’s iPhone. In a week or so I can borrow an iPod touch 5th gen to play with the app for a bit, finally. That would be the time to really discover the benefits of the Jawbone UP24. It would be another device to carry around, but I’m hoping Jawbone is making progress with updating the Android-app, so I don’t need to walk around with another device, as I already have three phones with me every day.
One cool thing I noticed already: every hour from the moment you wake up until around 5 p.m., the wristband buzzes every hour when you’re not moving around, just to make you walk some more. So at least I am getting my daily tea intake (walking to the tea machine is another 20 steps ;-)).
Full review will follow as soon as I have a supported device with the app.
