Jawbone Up iPhone health and fitness band on its way, we go indepth

What is it?

Good news if you are an iPhone user or willing to buy one shortly. Another iOS specific application is on your way. Jawbone, the renowned Bluetooth device maker, has come out with UP. This is a wearable wristband with motion accelerator within it. The sensor counts every movement you make and don’t make and on that basis it decides how much active you are through out the day, how is your sleep and how your meal is affecting you health.

Jawbone Up

Key features

The tiny little wristband is definitely not short on features. UP can be renamed as “your all time health keeper”. Do you want to know why? Just roll on:

1. With motion accelerator within, UP can sense and count every step you make and every inch you walk and every physical gesture you make. On the basis of those counts it calculates how much physical activity you make everyday. Physical activity means flexing muscles and shedding calories. So it reminds you, even without going to gym, what you can do to your health by simple regular physical exercises like walking, using stairs and so on.

2. Often we work on desk with very little physical activity for hours. Armed with motion accelerator, UP also remind you during those hours of inaction for a short indulgence in physical activity.

3. UP can even sense your sleep cycle. When we sleep, the intensity of sleep doesn’t remain same through the hours. Sleep can generally be divided in different stages of REM or rapid eye movement and NREM or non-rapid eye movement. Jawbone device senses those repetitive cycles and on that basis it can even wake you up at the best refreshing moment of your sleep. A tiny vibrator within the device nuzzles up without any external noise. And who doesn’t know good sleep boost good health?

4. Besides all these, this device can even advise you on meal you just took. You only need to take a picture of your meal with your iOS device and send that UP. However, UP cannot tell you exact calorie content of the food.

What’s innovative?

On innovation side the device has many feathers on its hat.

1. Though it is from Jawbone, it does not sport Bluetooth connectivity. Instead, you need to take out a cap attached to the wristband and insert it in the headphone jack of your iPhone. Bluetooth eats lot of battery power. Lack of it allows you to wear the band for continuous 10 days without charging.

2. The wristband has a steel structure covered with rubber material. This makes it sweat resistant and water resistant up to 1 meter below the water. So you can wear it almost everywhere. However, if you are into diving and heavy swimming better avoid wearing it during those times.

3. The device interact with iPhone with a free UP application, which you can download free of cost. The app interface provides you vivid and graphical understanding on the data collected by UP wristband.

4. UP can also interact with other UP devices, which enables you to build up a team of UP wearing people. And with this you can also throw physical challenges within the team. For example, challenges could be like walking certain miles within a day or certain number of stairs within certain timeframe. This could be a healthy fun. If don’t have a team don’t worry. Still you can set challenges for your own. Of course for that you need to self-motivate.

Price and availability

The device, jawbone UP, has been in the market since this November 6th in North America for $100. However, global launched is scheduled on 17th 2011. In UK, price would be around ₤ 79.99. Initially, you can purchase it from Apple store, Best Buy, AT&T, Jawbone’s online store and few others.

The upside

You just don’t sit idle through out the day. Regular activity demands a level of physical action. And every physical action flexes your muscles and burns calorie. So even with out seeing gym you can remain in good health if you engage yourself in good food habit and sufficient physical actions and good sleep. Jawbone UP just accommodates you to do this. So in this sense it is an innovative piece of technology.

The downside

First of all, it does support only iOS based devices like iPhone, iPad etc. Secondly, the device interacts with iPhone and your phone stores most of the data on your health. If you loose your phone than details on your health could fall on others’ hand, which would be creepy. Besides, to many older people idea of wearing a band, which would track your every move, might not be very pleasing.

Our experience

The device is yet to be launched globally. But sleeping tracking and waking up feature is very handy. Sleep disorder is common problem among urban population. Even after a 6 hours of sleep we often find drowsy when wake up. The reasons are thinner deep sleep and disturbed sleep cycle. We now have a peaceful night and refreshing morning with Jawbone wristband.

The bottom line

As a whole the device is interesting. Though many such devices are available to measure your sleep or regular physical moves, UP is a sleek way to do all these. With different color options, you can flaunt it as a piece of intelligent ornament and make every seconds of your life meaningful.