Jabra Launches Elite 25e Headphones with Best-in-Class Battery for Wireless Calls and Music

Providing up to 18 hours of battery time, seamless switching between calls and music, superior design for optimized comfort and fit using wind- and water-resistant materials, and with a dedicated Siri and Google Now button, the new Jabra Elite 25e, in-ear stereo neckband headphones, are one of the highlights from GN Group's consumer brand at the IFA Berlin show 2017. As impressive as the specs, including the newly designed 10mm dynamic drivers, is the USD $79 price.

We are witnessing a pivotal moment for the audio industry with the prominence of far-field voice recognition and connected speakers now top of the mind for consumers. In the aftermath of Apple's recent HomePod speaker announcement, the home audio experience, by itself, was confirmed as the key selling argument, with its potential as an interface for interaction with consumer electronic devices and services, paving the way for the Smart Home.

The audio industry was once again shaken to its foundations by Apple's announcements at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2017. The product updates and sneak peeks made at this Apple Special Event, on June 5, 2017, were extremely rich in surprising technology revelations, even though its implications might not become clear until a few weeks or months later. After all, the WWDC conference - a developer's conference - is traditionally where Apple builds the foundations for what will be its underlying short-term/long-term strategies, serving mainly to motivate developers and strategic partners.

Apple's opening keynote for its Worldwide Developers Conference 2017 (WWDC17) at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center, was a swirl of long expected announcements, wrapped in surprising underlying technology revelations. Among the many announcements was the preview of Apple's new home music speaker with built-in-far-field voice recognition powered by Apple Siri, the HomePod. As expected, the design is a powerful combination of electroacoustic mastery, digital processing and smart connectivity.

The new miniDSP UMA-8 is a high-performance yet low cost multichannel USB microphone array built around XMOS multicore technology, designed for voice-recognition application development. Seven high-performance MEMS microphones are configured in a circular arrangement to provide high-quality voice capture for a wide range of applications. Leveraging the onboard DSP processing, the UMA-8 supports voice algorithms including beamforming, noise reduction, acoustic echo cancellation and de-reverb.

Amazon announced its latest member of the Alexa voice service hardware family, following the original Echo Dot ($49.99) and Amazon Echo (now $149.99) devices that kick-started the whole Voice Personal Assistant (VPA) trend, motivating every single consumer electronics and mobile devices brand to respond with similar concepts. The only problem is that the new Amazon Echo Show ($229.99) is not so much a speaker but a complete Alexa "videophone" and home automation interface with a camera.

Bose launched the new SoundLink Revolve and SoundLink Revolve+ which could very well be an Amazon Echo killer, except that Bose is not pitching them like that, even though they feature voice-prompts and work with Siri and Google Assistant. Instead, Bose calls it "its best Bluetooth speakers ever", accentuating its true omni-directional performance, and an entirely new acoustic design from a seamless aluminum cabinet designed to be portable.