Jawbone has announced the latest member of its UP fitness and health tracker family, UP24.
The band looks and feels similar to its predecessor, but communicates wirelessly with iPhones 4s and newer. That’s right, there is no Android support at all out of the box.
But what the UP24 does better than its predecessor is make the synchronization process seamless — something that rival Fitbit has been doing right for a while. It uses Bluetooth LE, something that has been present on iOS since 2011’s iPhone 4s but has only been universally added to Android in 4.3 Jelly Bean, to facilitate background sync, and pushes updates to you when you achieve goals.
Moreover, with UP 3.0, the accompanying iOS app, users can set goals in the form of “Today I Will,” a slightly accusatory prompt that makes you promise to get things done. For example, if you are 500 steps away from your goal and the day is almost over, you’ll receive a motivational push notification to help you the rest of the way.
Though the company claims that Android support is coming soon, at launch UP24 costs $149, $20 more than the plug-in UP. It’s available in two colours, Onyx (black) and Persimmon (orange), and should be available soon in Canada at Apple Stores.
