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Jawbone Up24 update doubles battery life

Not only has a new firmware update for the Up24 fitness tracker significantly improved battery life, Jawbone has opened the software to data from rival devices.

Nic Healey Senior Editor / Australia
Nic Healey is a Senior Editor with CNET, based in the Australia office. His passions include bourbon, video games and boring strangers with photos of his cat.
Nic Healey

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A new firmware update for the Jawbone Up24 fitness tracker will double the battery life of the device, according to the company.

The firmware, which is available now via the Jawbone Updater software, increases the Up24's lifespan to 14 days on a single charge, Hari Chakravarthula, executive director of systems engineering at Jawbone, said in company blog post on Monday.

Jawbone noted it's essential that a user has the most recently version of the Up app before applying the firmware upgrade.

At the same time, Jawbone is opening up its software to accept data from rival devices and developers, according to a report from Reuters. Jawbone said that the Up app can now take data from the likes of FitBit, the iPhone and even Android Wear devices. The data will include both fitness and sleep tracking.

The change means that a person could track regular step counts from one device, such as an Android Wear watch, record specific workouts with the Up24, then monitor sleep via the iPhone, and have all the data pool together in the app.

Jawbone has been quick to stress that this doesn't mean it intends to withdraw from hardware development like Nike did. In fact, the company is touting a number of changes in sensor technology coming soon.