jawbone 2

Never owned a JB2 but have had a JB1.


Never experienced this with any of my current BT headsets that I use. Some suggestions.

1. Unpair the Device and Repair it back to the iPhone and test sound quality

2. Totally drain the JB2 battery and fully recharge it and test sound quality again

3. Try and pair the JB2 with another cell phone and test sound quality


If you find the sound quality is not all that great on different cell phones. You might wish to contact JB support or take JB back to place of purchase and seek a replacement.

I recently replaced my Jawbone with a New Jawbone also. Although I can't exactly prove it, it seems to me that the sound quality isn't quite up to the level of the previous model. Also it seems to be susceptible to interference in certain place where I did not notice any before. When this happens, the sound quality degrades to the point of being unusable. Has anyone else observed this? I'm trying to decide if it's defective or if all New Jawbones are like this.

I have the JB II, and had the JB 1 before that.

Not had any of the issues you describe - the only way I can get poor audio on incoming calls is to either move away from my iPhone to the limits of BT range, or shield the iPhone so the BT signal can't transmit to the JB II.

Outgoing calls - you must make sure the white sensor on the JB II is pressed against your cheek - if not, the JB II will not pick up spoken audio clearly - this may be your issue.

Yes,
I purchased the JB2 as well, and was very disappointed. I actually had a $15.00 Jabra that out preformed it. Sound quality was very poor, people on the other end said I was in a hole. That forced me to plunk down $350.00 and purchase the Bang & Olufsen EarSet2 and I couldn't be happier!

I too sold my original Jawbone and purchased a New Jawbone. The original Jawbone always worked perfectly - never had any complaints about audio quality. After a number of people told me that they couldn't hear me very well on the New Jawbone, I realized that the problem was that, unlike the original which had a spring-loaded ear loop that kept the sensor pressed against my cheek, the new version had no mechanism for doing so. Thus in order to get any consistent audio quality, I needed to hold the it against my cheek with my hand. I ended up calling Jawbone and the customer service rep I spoke to said that this was the number one complaint they were hearing from New Jawbone customers and that there currently was no fix for the problem. He suggested I return it to the place I bought it. He also hinted that I should keep an eye out for an upcoming product from Jawbone that would address the problem.

So I ended up returning the New Jawbone and getting another original Jawbone. There is a world of difference. One thing I find shocking is that not one of the reviews of the New Jawbone mentions this problem. Did they really test this thing before they wrote their reviews???

I too bought the Jawbone 2 with high hopes and was flabbergasted at the horrible sound quality, like listening to someone on a really lousy intercom.

Well, I went to the AT&T store to by a replacement unit on the slim chance I had gotten a defective unit -- after all the reviews and fanfare and the way my Jawbone original had performed it made no sense that it could be so horrible...

And, sure enough, the store manager told me that the first batch of Jawbone 2s they had received were almost entirely defective! He said out of the first ten they sold, seven came back within a few days -- all with the same complaint about the sound quality being like a cheap intercom with lots of static. He said he had to explain this problem and show the numbers to the Jawbone rep, and that this new, recent batch had not had any of those problems or complaints or returns as yet. And, sure enough, I haven't had any of those problems with my replacement unit.

I have had DIFFERENT problems, though, which I don't see ever being resolved and which I'm amazed I don't see anyone mentioning in any forum threads or reviews. One is this issue of touching the cheek, which it seems can sometimes be resolve by rotating the unit in the ear so that it points higher or lower on the side of the face -- it seems a little higher or lower raises it off the cheek and you have to play with it to find the sweet spot and then replicate it.

The main issues I have, which have me close to giving up on it completely, are:

Any pressure on any place on the entire faceplate from end to end and tip to tip results in a button click, and this is causing me to disconnect callers inadvertently more often than not whenever I try to grab it in order to wiggle it to get it snugly into my ear -- even though I try to grab t from the sides near the earpiece and try really hard to avoid touching the faceplate at all (and I have average sized fingers and am a martial artist with superb manual dexterity). In fact, pressing the Noise Assassin button with considerable pressure will inadvertently result in a press of the Talk button for this reason as well. Very bad since pressing the Talk button is how calls are ENDED!

If it had a spring to keep the voice sensor against the cheek, this need to really manipulate it into a snug position in the ear wouldn't be so important, but it doesn't have a spring and thus you must snug it up so the voice sensor can stay against the cheek!

Note that upon talking with their tech support, the tech conceded -- quite graciously, I might add -- that this issue of inadvertently clicking the Talk button when trying to just grab the sides of the unit and manipulate the unit into the ear was definitely a design flaw that they had become well aware of at tech support.

Another design flaw, by the way, is that when you're on a call and the Jawbone is on, regardless of whether the handset is activated or the Jawbone is activated at the time, the Jawbone stops giving you the blinking white light that tells you the unit is powered on. You have to either guess or go through the step of turning it off-or-on (pot luck) just to find out if it was on or not in the first place.

Really bad designing of this thing... in spite of all the fanfare, aesthetics, and sophisticated noise cancelling technology. They forgot to ever field test the **** thing before going to production and marketing! What a shame. It should be the hands-down choice for a businessperson wanted top notch performance and practicality in actual use, yet I've gotten to where I'm about ready to give up on using it at all and am now hunting for a viable alternative.

Hopefully soon there will be a new model with not only a spring to keep it against the cheek (what an amazing act of neglect on their part to omit it in the Jawbone 2 when it worked so functionally in the original Jawbone and when it's so obviously necessary) but also fixes for these other issues -- especially that it's so difficult to grab it and snug it into your ear without inadvertently clicking the Talk button and disconnecting the call you're on!

So, not wishing to offend anyone, but if you can't work out how to follow the instructions that come with the device, i.e. placing the sensor on your cheek, and pressing the call answer button, then maybe the JB is not for you.......

Really, it's just a headset, not a pulsed syncatron or something.

The original JB was a huge leap forward in BT headset tech, and the JB II just makes it smaller, and more comfortable to wear.

After a week of daily business use, I can say that it's performed flawlessly - and when asked, people have said that they assumed I was on the office phone, rather than driving my car whilst on the call.

Can't say fairer than that.

It goes quite a bit beyond not understanding instructions.

I like my JB2 but agree that the fit issue is absolutely crucial to performance. The only times I have had complaint from others about call quality is when the sensor loses contact with my cheek. The smallest rubber earbud supplied is too big for my ears (which I'll call "average" because other earbud systems work fine in them).

One workaround for the button problem - and yes it is a design flaw - is to start with the JB off, then as you put it in your ear the long press-and-twist turns it on. You can also practice the end-call push and get it down pretty well by watching your iPhone's screen to see whether your first try has succeeded or not.

-dan

If I may say so, I'm practically of the competency level of a surgeon when it comes to manual dexterity, and of a top-tier, profession-level, mission-critical tech support person at MS when it comes to understanding technology.

And let me again point out that a tech at Aliph emphatically told me two days ago that this issue of users inadvertently clicking the talk button when trying to just manipulate the unit into position in the ear is "definitely a design flaw." That's the kind of statement that could only be based on plenty of internal meetings they've had on the subject lately after plenty of complaints.

This is a basic, major design flaw. (If your brake pedal was so close to the accelerator that you often hit the gas when trying to stop, that's a problem!)

I've adopted a reasonably viable workaround for now, and will be trying to make things work along these lines:

Before attempting to manipulate the unit into the ear, or even re-snug it up while on a call, I go to the Blackberry and don't just tell it to switch the call to the phone ("Activate Handset") but then go the next step of going into the Bluetooth settings and telling it to "Disconnect the Jawbone." That way, nothing I do on the Jawbone is going to affect the call in any way. (Also, once I have done the Disconnect step, the Jawbone goes back to "properly" indicating whether it's powered on or not with the blinking white light.) Then, with it disconnected, I can reposition it in the ear, or I can reliably look to see if it's on, or I can power it off (or on) for that matter, all with no risk of affecting the current call at all. If I wanted it on and repositioned and have achieved that, then and only then will I again "Connect" the Jawbone to the Blackberry and activate it.

Looking forward to finding something that isn't so problematic. Unfortunately, I do want the best sound quality since I use it for business, and I do like the smallness and that it can be used without an ear loop (which just gets in the way and, in fact, with me, tends to pull the voice sensor away from my cheek -- really brilliant designing to omit that little spring that would prevent that).

Heck, maybe in time I'll get used to it enough to grab and manipulate it without disconnecting the call -- though after a week it seems like "pot luck" at best and I've lost too much good will in important business negotiations this past week to keep risking it.

I must be some super being from dimension X then.....

I just charged the thing up, paired it with my iPhone, swapped out the ear bung for the larger size, and the rest was a walk in the park.

Seriously, I can't imagine it being much easier to use, unless they can make it work by mind control.

Don't worry... you're definitely not a super being. If you were, you'd be very familiar with basic concepts like "field trials" and "statistical significance" and would know very well that one person having one experience one time is not a set of data that means anything whatsoever in the overall picture.

I'm sure that you had the experience as you relate it, and I'm sure you believe that that means you will "always" have that same experience "every single time" you use it forever, and that that means everyone else will also always have that same experience, too.

Well, sounds kinda silly when I put it that way, doesn't it?

Please be sure to report back after the first time you inadvertently hit the Talk button when trying to re-snug the unit into your ear... or after the first fifty times you use it in real-life scenarios -- whichever comes first.

I had the same experience as you the first time I used it, and even the second.

But within a few hours and days, after a few dozen times of using it, I found the percentage of times it presented me with these issues was entirely unacceptable.

What percentage of business calls being unintentionally disconnected is acceptable to you? 30%? 10%? 5%? 2%? Some users will have it never happen, while others will have it happen occasionally and others frequently -- some very often. What percentage of users having this happen often is acceptable?

Well, I'm not after a debate or battle of wits. I'm just interested in helping others benefit from my experience. That's what these forums are primarily about.

Chris, I now see that you reported having used it for a week in business use. I can only say I'm glad you can use it with no issues. I would love to be able to say the same. It's cost me tons of time (and thus, money), let alone goodwill with some important business contacts, due to this issue of disconnecting calls. Again, given that I'm pretty good with these things, and considering that Aliph tech support told me they've been finding that it's a real problem and told me "it's definitely a design flaw," I'm pretty sure it's not just me.

I would LOVE for it to be just a matter of getting used to it. I like virtually everything else about it. But major issues like disconnecting calls and having people say they can't understand me because of it not touching the cheek are just not cutting it for me.

As of today, I've decided it's going back. I'm done wrestling with it.

So... Sennheiser VMX100? Plantronics 510 or 815? BlueAnt Z9i? Samsung WEP500? (BlueAnt V1 or the Joby when they come out?) I'm open to suggestions. (Have read a lot of reviews and may have to just end up trying a few models myself.)

AppleJN - I find your tone condescending - but that's probably just me being sensitive...

50 call mark has already been bypassed this week on the JB II - It's my primary business phone, and I make and receive a lot of calls every day.

I have had zero issues with use, either for myself or the folks on the other end of the calls.

So either I have mysterious hidden skills, or the folks posting here about their 'problem's are simply not completely representative of the JB II community.

Sounds kinda sensible when I say it like that, doesn't it?

I'm sure the folks posting here for the very first time are genuine users, and not just Astroturfing shills - but given that I handed over $129 at my local AT&T store for the JB II a week ago today, I couldn't be happier.

Just to keep the argument balanced: I don't have any problem holding a call while adjusting the headset. I've had a number of Bluetooth headsets from Motorola, Jabra, etc. This is the only one my wife doesn't complain about when I talk to her. I don't think she even knows when I'm using it.

Regards,
-Peter