
Jawbone UP3 Activity Tracker - usaphp
http://jawbone.com/store/buy/up3
======
thanatropism
I have a Jawbone UP, the first iteration that requires you to plug into your
phone audio jack to sync.

That itself isn't a problem. It's probably part of the recipe for awesome,
week-plus battery lives. But the band itself, while fitting fine on my wrist
when brand new, started to degrade quickly.

To be clear: the electronics are fine. The rubber enclosure seems to have
expanded up to the point where the button was completely covered by it. Upon
"folding" the end so one could access the button, the rubber continued to
extend, etc.

Finally, maybe eight months in, the button snapped out. I can't use a lot of
the functions of the band now, such as exercise/run tracking; I can't even
tell it _when_ I'm going to bed, although the app still auto-discovers when I
was sleeping.

When the band starts to vibrate (unless it's my half-hour inactivity buzz),
you can either stick with it for two solid minutes or plug it into the app.

The main reason I still wear it is that the motion-aware/light sleep estimate-
cognizant wake-up alarm is _the only way to live_. It's the snooze button
rebooted: rather than waking up to hit a button and then enjoying some more
light sleep, the band will just wake you up when you're already semi-awake.

TL;DR: this band broke down very soon after purchase but even as it does a
fraction of its original functions it's really really cool.

~~~
robert_tweed
> plug into your phone audio jack to sync

Wait a sec, are you saying it uses a software modem to communicate over the
audio jack, or am I misunderstanding? That seems oddly cool, if true.

~~~
jessaustin
Hmmm, can we call that a modem? Maybe? Anyway it seems similar to all those
credit card readers.

[https://squareup.com/reader](https://squareup.com/reader)

------
bobbles
"Coming Soon"

 _Snore_

Does anyone think people will care enough to 'check' when they can get one?

just announce a date, and if you _can 't_ announce a date, don't announce
it...

~~~
rickyc091
The marketing was probably put out in response to the Microsoft Band. I've
been looking to replace my Jawbone band for quite a bit of time now, but I was
waiting to see what Jawbone would release. If they didn't release any news, I
would have definitely jumped on to the Microsoft Band.

Not announcing a date also works to their benefit since news outlets will put
out another PSA when they announce the date.

------
dcalacci
The thing that sets Jawbone apart from other health wearables companies is how
much Jawbone has embraced the idea of providing insights to its customers.

The next iteration of these devices (Basis Peak, Jawbone up3, whatever fitbit
comes up with) will no longer be just about quantifying your physical life.
With more data comes an increased ability to make inferences about your
behavioral patterns, and that's going to be the killer feature of the future.

The first company that actively tries to answer how to instigate real
behavioral change in its users through notifications, insights, and other
motivational tools will be the first to make fitness wearables ubiquitous
devices.

Of course, the band has to be actually _wearable_, too.

Jawbone is doing both of these things, faster than the competition.

Basis is _just_ starting to try and do insight work, after years of perfecting
their sensor infrastructure. Fitbit is a toy in comparison, and afaik they
haven't even touched doing inference work on small individual user data.

The insights I get from Jawbone now suck, but they're doing those with _just
my steps and sleep_. Who knows what will become apparent with my heart rate
and automatic activity identification.

~~~
kolanos
As a former Basis engineer, we were doing "insights" almost three years ago.
In terms of biometrics, I don't think anyone comes close to Basis.

------
chatman
> "Our built in accelerator accurately counts your steps no matter where you
> go..."

No GPS makes it an inferior device than Microsoft Band.

------
kolev
Bold claims... but Microsoft Band or Basis Peak seem more advanced.

~~~
iM8t
Basis Peak does look much more advanced, but I wouldn't say that it has many
more features that other bands don't have. In my opinion, the bigest factor
for it is the design (both site and product). It just looks a little less
futuristic and as something that regular people could actually use on a day-
to-day basis.

~~~
Void_
Yeah, from all these devices, this one seems the most fit for 24/7 wear, if
you want to track sleep.

Also it looks like just a bracelet, so you can wear it on right hand, and
still wear a watch.

------
charlie_vill
I've always been a fan of Jawbone for it's design centric approach. Their UP
and UP24 are both eye catchening and intriguing. But I'm afraid their new UP3
is a bit dissapointing, not to mention the price tag. Perhaps they rushed
development to catch up with other players entering the market? Am I the only
one here? It's pretty terrible.

Also, the puffery: The most advanced activity tracker known to man, UP3™ is
packed with state-of-the-art sensors that give you the full picture of your
health.

Someone in the marketing department should go back to the basics, we are now
much more educated consumers and we don't fall for these cute bold statements
anymore.

Plus let's face it, we'll soon be inbetween an Apple Watch or Moto 360,
especially when these reach the $200-$250 price range in a couple of years.
Thinking out loud here.

------
rtpg
I'm still so confused as to why any of these pedometers cost so much. I'm
really interested in picking one up, but the price is pretty prohibitive for
something whose value-add I can't really judge ahead of time

~~~
wwwhizz
Multiple reasons:

\- Because they can. People are willing to pay this much for this product.

\- It takes a lot of research and development costs, which have to be included

\- You also buy a (lifetime?) service that tracks and stores your data

------
lhl
One thing to note is that while Jawbone has a nice API[1] and summary data
export, there isn't a way to access device/raw data.

There _does_ appear to be some reversing of undocumented API calls that
provide some better resolution, although I don't know how up to date that is:
[http://eric-blue.com/projects/up-api/](http://eric-blue.com/projects/up-api/)

[1]
[https://jawbone.com/up/developer/endpoints](https://jawbone.com/up/developer/endpoints)

~~~
nythrowa
If you sign into the Jawbone website you can download .csv files for each year
you had the device.

~~~
lhl
Summary, not detailed data, however. Did a bit more looking into it and here's
an updated post on the reversed api:
[https://niklaslindblad.se/2013/07/jawbone-up-api-
updates/](https://niklaslindblad.se/2013/07/jawbone-up-api-updates/)

------
Void_
Are there any other heart-rate monitoring devices? So far I've counted 4:

\- Microsoft Band / $200 (available)

\- Basis Peak / $200 (November)

\- Jawbone UP3 / $180 (soon.. probably before Christmas)

\- Apple Watch / $350 (2015..)

~~~
rndmio
The Angel band ([http://www.angelsensor.com/](http://www.angelsensor.com/))
looks like it should be out in a few months, from their updates they're doing
FCC/CE testing now. The nice difference between all the other bands is they
aren't selling an ecosystem, it's designed to be fully open for people to
write their owns apps to interface with their data.

(I'm not related to this apart from being a backer on indiegogo)

~~~
Phr34Ck
Do you know how to pre-order? Whenever I press shop I get directed to a
password protected page.

------
charlie_vill
I think this paints a better picture of the product:

[http://www.fuseproject.com/work/jawbone/up3](http://www.fuseproject.com/work/jawbone/up3)

------
BinaryIdiot
Every time I think I'm going to try a Jawbone product that isn't a headset I
look at reviews and see far too many people complaining about how horrible
their software is.

Is their software really this bad and if so are they ever going to fix it?

~~~
rickyc091
Jawbone has always been more of a hardware company to me. The issue with the
software is that it's not up to par with competitor's software. FitBit,
Withings, Garmin all have amazing web dashboards along with a mobile app.
Jawbone? Mobile app only...

I don't foresee them improving their software in this sense since they've
mostly bought companies thus far to fix their software. The food tracker
software is a lot better than when it first started. People have been asking
Jawbone to make a web interface for years now, and to date it's still not
available.

Basically they are focused on product, design and big data. That's where the
money is at anyways.

------
gregr401
Wait, it does NFC based payments as well? Huh?

Details are buried in the FAQs, mentions it supports AMEX only. There are some
duplicate FAQs as well, wonder if that was not ready for prime time (though
NFC is listed under the available sensors).

~~~
anthonys
I saw that too. They must have been trying to save that one for later!

------
ajolly
I wish one of the new activity monitors would give me HRV data, not just heart
rate.

~~~
TomAnthony
What does HRV (heart rate variability) data allow you learn? I'm guessing
medical insights of some sort, but what exactly?

~~~
gadders
Recovery from previous sessions - [http://www.t-nation.com/training/heart-
rate-variability-trai...](http://www.t-nation.com/training/heart-rate-
variability-training)

------
CmonDev
Does not even support Windows Phone. Too little too late.

~~~
theg2
I've looked at Jawbone for 2 years but their lack of Windows Phone support
will prevent me from ever buying one.

------
dguaraglia
The "See full list of compatible devices" link leads to a page that doesn't
list the device... so basically I'm still wondering what devices it'll be
compatible with.

~~~
dguaraglia
This comment was downvoted for some reason. I don't know who I offended by
providing an unbiased, informative comment that could've saved some marketing
critter a headache down the road, but whatever.

