When was the jawbone era release

Wearable maker Jawbone has begun liquidation proceedings, said tech website The Information on Thursday, citing a person close to Jawbone. Founded in , Jawbone was one of the early pioneers of Bluetooth wearables, even before the term "wearables" became widespread. While its demise now may be at hand — the company declined to comment to several CNBC requests — Jawbone innovations live on and may extract future economic value.

Many of its products integrated military-grade noise-canceling technologies Jawbone developed in-house. And it has left a lasting impact on consumer tech. Where the company really made a name for itself was in wearable and portable technology. Here are three gadgets that Jawbone created which — for a time — were novel in design and out ahead of many other consumer tech companies.

Press the main button, and you can tell the Jawbone Era things like, "Find a good coffee shop nearby," or "Wake me up tomorrow at 7 am," and the diminutive headset should follow your orders. All told, it's quite clever of Jawbone to leverage an entire, existing system of commands on your smartphone. The Era just makes accessing it much more frictionless.

After running through a few scenarios with the Jawbone reps, I thought that this piece of tech is just like Google Glass in utility, minus the obnoxious attention-grabbiness. Of course, it remains to be seen whether the Era will be that useful in real-world testing, but it's definitely got potential.

Battery-wise, the Jawbone Era lasts up to 10 hours of talktime and several days on standby. An optional charger for the headset gives you six more hours of juice on top of that. It links up to your devices via Bluetooth, and Jawbone is also releasing a smartphone app for the Era that lets you drill down into more granular controls.

Jawbone Era comes in four colors: black, silver, brown and red. CNET editors pick the products and services we write about. When you buy through our links, we may get a commission. For people who need to talk a lot on the go, only the freedom of a hands-free Bluetooth headset will do. The trouble is wireless handset makers have traditionally had difficulty delivering excellent call quality along with a practical yet, dare I say, fashionable design.

The smallest and most attractive mono headset I've ever laid my hands on, I honestly wouldn't think twice about wearing it in public, even in New York where people tend to be judgmental.

Of course the Jawbone Era won't satisfy everyone. Its short battery life isn't ideal for marathon chatterboxes, and those with big hands might find the device's small button and power switch tricky to operate. Even so, the Era's clean audio quality and powerful noise-cancellation are hard to pass up.

Design The newly redesigned Jawbone Era is, hands down, the smallest Bluetooth headset I've ever seen. In fact, the gadget is so small and inconspicuous it's the first product of its kind I'd seriously consider wearing without fear of judgment on the ruthlessly fashion-conscious streets of New York.

Not much larger than a piece of bubblegum, or perhaps very big pill, the Era's rectangular body is downright minuscule. In fact Jawbone claims this fresh creation is 42 percent smaller than its predecessor, the original Era.

Its six-gram weight is all but nonexistent as well. Essentially a little black bar also available in silver, brown, and red the Era consists of an earbud and soft silicone ear gel cover, and a power switch. Tech to kill the noise The headset's two microphones work in conjunction with the voice activity sensor -- the small rubbery nub next to the power switch -- to knock out background noise on calls. The company has dubbed the solution NoiseAssassin 4.

On the back side of the Era sits a Micro-USB port for charging the headset, a welcome change from many wireless headsets that require a proprietary connector and cable. Also here is the device's only physical control aside from the power switch , a multifunction command button. Pressing the button once will answer or end a call, and also switch calls if two are active.

Performing a double press does a redial while hitting the key three times will kick-start your phone's music player and resume the last queued track. One fault I find with the Era's one-button approach is that the headset lacks a dedicated volume control.

To adjust the loudness you must press the command key for a few moments to cycle volume up and down.