Jawbone Up

Jawbone of taking shortcuts with its fitness wearables. The Jawbone UP24 is the culmination of those efforts, now toting Bluetooth LE for real-time exercise and sleep updates on your iOS device. Meanwhile, Jawbone also has UP 3.0 ready for release, the latest version of its iPhone app, and which will also work with the existing UP (which stays on sale, too), Jawbone hasn’t strayed too far from the original UP with the UP24′s design, resisting the urge to add a display. The company tells us that’s because users are already carrying a far better screen in their pocket or purse, in the shape of their smartphones, to warrant the hit on battery life and weight including it on the rubberized band itself would involve. Jawbone says the change in size was to make clear to users that Bluetooth LE is used for transferring data; unlike the original UP, the UP24 won’t push across the exercise tracking by plugging it into the headphone socket of your phone or tablet. The flexible rubber band snaps around your wrist and is comfortable for extended periods – useful, since Jawbone suggests wearing it at night, too, to track your sleep – and pressing and holding the button switches it between active and sleep modes. Jawbone calls this “Today I Will” and initially it’ll cover sleep, steps, and drinking eight glasses of water a day. For example, if you’re getting close to your daily steps goal, it can ping you with a reminder to “nudge” you toward completing that goal; if you’ve accepted a “Today I Will” challenge, the app will use a push notification to remind you when your bedtime approaches. It meant we periodically lost a few days of sleep data every few months. Now, though, UP 3.0 offers sleep recovery. Each can be manually adjusted, and then the app will automatically figure out light and deep sleep phases for that period. UP24 gets not only real-time transfer of data from band to app, but it also allows the app to set Smart Alarms – which promise to wake you up with a discrete vibration at the optimal point in your light/deep sleep phases – without having to plug the band into the phone. That live data also opens the door to more timely integration with other services. Jawbone has had IFTTT (“If This Then That”) support for a while now, allowing UP events to trigger other services ranging from Google Docs or Evernote logging, through to sharing goals on Facebook and more, but with real-time communication there’s more that can be done with your data. There, Jawbone’s more qualitative analysis and habit-changing challenges give it an edge over rivals, encouraging you to stick with UP24 for the long term.