Jawbone Era: The First Bluetooth Headset With an Accelerometer - Pics

Aliph has unveiled the Jawbone Era, the next generation of the company’s high-end Bluetooth headsets. Not only does it boast the company’s noise-cancellation technology, but it is the first Bluetooth headset with an accelerometer.

The device, which will retail for $129.99, has a similar look and feel to the Jawbone Icon, but comes with a slew of new features. The most important one is NoiseAssassin 3.0, an update to its military-grade noise-cancellation technology. Aliph says the Era is also capable of playing HD audio. The rationale behind the improvement in sound technology is that people not only want to make calls with their device, but listen to music and their apps.

Now, users can simply tap the headset twice to answer and end calls, a feature the company calls “TapTap.” Shaking the Era four times, “ShakeShake,” will place the Bluetooth (Bluetooth) device into pairing mode.

These are the only accelerometer features available for the Jawbone Era currently, but Aliph promises to add more actions in the near future. While TapTap works almost flawlessly (we’ve been testing the device), the Era still comes with the Icon’s top button for answering and ending calls, as well as initiating voice commands.

Aliph has added a slew of new voice-to-text features to the Jawbone Era as well. Like the Icon, it can utilize MyTalk, which lets users access their contacts and even mobile apps through voice commands. Users can even post tweets via MyTalk, if they really want to tell the world about the massive traffic jam they’re stuck in.

New to the Era is the ability to upload one’s entire address book to the Era’s flash memory. The advantage of this feature is that this enables voice-based caller ID. When people receive a call from someone in their in contact list, the Jawbone Era will read the caller’s name, most likely in a human voice. That’s because Aliph has hired a female voice actor to read off thousands of common first and last names. In fact, the voice actor comes into the studio weekly and reads off the most common first and last names not yet added to Aliph’s system. For names Era doesn’t recognize, it falls back to a Nuance-based computer voice.

The device will ship on January 23 at AT&T, Best Buy and Apple stores nationwide and will come in four flavors: Midnight, Smokescreen, Shadowbox and Silver Lining.