January 18, 2010

Aliph has just unveiled the Jawbone Icon, which promises to be the company's most sophisticated Bluetooth headset yet. We've had a chance to really put the headset through its paces for the past week, and we have to say it absolutely delivers. Not only does it look and sound great, it offers more flexibility than any other Bluetooth headset due to an industry-first software platform.

Note the Bluetooth headset battery meter next to the iPhone's battery meter. Aliph says this is possible due to the software platform on the Jawbone Icon.

It's called MyTalk, and the Jawbone Icon has what Aliph says is an operating system on a chip. This lets Aliph do some really interesting things with this headset. For example, when you pair the Jawbone Icon with the Apple iPhone, you'll see a visual battery meter of the Icon right next to the iPhone's own battery meter on the upper right corner. This way you can easily check on the Jawbone Icon's battery status. While this may strike some people as a small thing, we think it's pretty cool.

The big news with MyTalk, however, is that you can plug the Jawbone Icon into your computer and customize it with a variety of Audio and Dial "apps." Simply log on to the mytalk.jawbone.com Web site (which will be live shortly),

plug in the headset via a USB cable, and the Website will automatically detect it. You can then customize it with a variety of Audio apps, which are essentially voice profiles of different personalities. There are six different voice personalities--The Ace, the Hero, the Thinker, the Bombshell, the Rogue, and the Catch--plus a default that comes with the headset. The voices range from a deep male baritone to that of a sultry female. You can also have it in French, German, or Spanish. The different voice profiles are used for spoken alerts on the headset that announce things like incoming caller ID and the headset's battery status.

As for the Dial apps, they are essentially speed dial numbers you can map to the Talk button on the headset. Some of the Dial apps include Voice Dial; Directory Assistance; 1800Free411; Jott (a service that lets you dictate notes, reminders, and more); and Dial2Do; which is similar to Jott. Though calling these personalization options "apps" is a bit of a stretch, we really have to commend Aliph on the intuitive interface of the MyTalk Web site. Perhaps the best thing about the MyTalk software platform is that Aliph can easily send out firmware updates this way.

Source:-http://news.cnet.com