GIN INC JOURNAL

Mobile audio developer Aliph has announced its new Jawbone Prime noise-canceling Bluetooth headset, promising an order of magnitude improvement in noise reduction, plus a swath of fashionable colors to appeal to even the pickiest fashionistas. Aliph's original Jawbone headset was released about a year ago to solid reviews; the Jawbone Prime aims to improve on the original with improved noise reduction that takes out an additional 6 to 9 db of background noise while leaving the speaker's voice strong and clear.

"We watched our customers closely and saw how they struggled to be heard in extreme noise environments. So, we focused our engineering team to go deeper on the tough problems like crying babies, pounding jackhammers, beeping elevators and the like," said Aliph CEO and co-founder Hosain Rahman, in a statement. "We are excited to announce Jawbone Prime, with orders of magnitude better noise suppression, so our customers can continue their conversations wherever they happen to be."

The Jawbone Prime's NoiseAssassin 2.0 technology implements a digital approach to wind nois reduction, and the headset also includes Acoustic Voice Activity Detector technology as a fail-safe mechanism when the Jawbone Prime's voice activity sensor does not touch a user's face: if the activity sensor loses contact, the headset switches to a traditional noise-canceling mode Aliph says is as good as any other headset on the market. But when the activity sensor touches a users' face, the NoiseAssassin technology kicks in. The Jawbone Prime supports Bluetooth 1.1, 1.2, 2.0, and 2.1+EDR.

The Jawbone Primes will be available in a broad range of colors, including black, brown, platinum; special "Earcandy" colors include red, yellow, green, and purple.

The Jawbone Prime is available for pre-order now for $129.99; the units are set to go on sale May 2 at selected retailers in the U.S., and are available in the UK, France, Germany, Greece, Norway, and Canada.