About a month ago, Jabra sent a little bag out to its regular reviewers. Inside was a stone—a literal, polished stone—and that was it. It was a cheesy PR stunt, the kind we see all the time, but when I got the headset itself, it made sense. The Jabra Stone, when docked, is a near-seamless pebble, broken only underneath, at the headset's hollowed-out ejection point. It's a stunning headset, actually, which sounds weird coming out of my mouth. (Or fingers! Who's counting.)

The Stone's specs are appropriate to its pricepoint: it'll pair in regular and A2DP modes for voice or music listening, respectively, has a minimalist status display, a noise-cancelling mic, volume controls—though here they're managed with a touch-sensitive shell rather than buttons—and a charging dock. The claimed talk time is two hours per charge, and the dock is good for three extra charges. Standby time is a respectable 12 hours 12 days.

And to be honest, aside from eking out a little extra battery life over competitors' products, there's not a whole lot a company can do to make a Bluetooth headset technologically interesting. What they can do, and what Jabra has done with the Stone, is focus on style and feel. Bluetooth headsets look dumb, and they're awkward to wear. The Stone is a headset designed with these thoughts in mind—it looks as not-dumb as a headset can; it feels as not-awkward as a piece of plastic in your ear conceivably could. It's self-conscious, almost embarrassed for what it is.

Long-term testing might bear out some initial concerns about battery life and the practical convenience of carrying around a slippery little battery rock, but my first impressions were uniformly positive. The Stone paired almost instantly with an iPhone, a Pre and a Hero right out of the box, sound quality was clear, and three ears of varying shapes and sizes found the angled earpiece plenty comfortable.

The Stone will be available at AT&T stores from November 8th, priced at $130 right alongside the Platronics Voyager. From the looks of it the Voyager edges out a win on battery life, but the fact that Jabra's put even the tiniest bit of sex into their newest piece goes a long, long way. [Jabra]

Our tipster also said that the headset fits directly into the charger, and when docked, the two look like a stone. Hence, Jabra Stone. The ultimate test, of course, is how well the Stone fits onto your ear, since that's where it counts. [Thanks tipster!]

Update: Here's a second pic from another tipster. Thanks guys!

Electric Pig says that the headset will have noise cancellation (as does many of the headsets out now), and it won't need a boom mic (again, same as a bunch of other Bluetooth units you can buy now). So what's special? Besides the "soft rubber padding", we have no idea until the 20th. [Jabra Stone via Electric Pig]

The Pebbles Grill concept is sort of like a George Foreman reinterpreted with a net of blazing-hot rocks. Electric elements heat a series of "pebbles" to deliciously dangerous levels—as indicated by warning lights—before you fold the mesh-like grill over your food. We're betting that the resulting dish would come out polka dotted with scorch marks. But I for one have never turned down a piece of food that resembled a 1990s fashion staple. [Yanko Design]

The Zen Stone of old will now be available in blue, pink, champagne and black colors, as well as in 1GB or 2GB flavors, and besides the novelty speaker, not much has changed. The Zen Stone Plus will also get the mono speaker treatment. The higher end models will be available, as before, with an integrated FM radio, voice recording capability, OLED screen and in either 2GB or 4GB varieties.

The new players will ship with a silicon skin; a sports armband and carry case keychain will be available separately. According to the CEO of Creative "It's hard to believe that such incredibly small players can have a speaker that sounds so good..." Beyond possible, we would have to say. The 1GB model will ship this February in Japan, retailing at 4,980 yen ($48.) Further pricing and shipping dates are not available at present. [Creative]

It's internal components aren't actually from a Creative because they're too expensive in the Captain's home country of Norway, but it does provide 4GB of SD card storage space. The wooden Zen also has a rechargeable battery, but I wouldn't want to attempt carrying this thing around. [Captain Ødegård]

It's only been a month and a half since Creative introduced the Zen Stone, so we know either the first version wasn't selling well, or the second version wasn't ready in time to get out the door by May. Why they didn't just wait until now to do things right is anyone's guess. – Jason Chen

Product Page [Creative via EpiZENter]

Follow the jump for some hands-on reviewy nuggets and 12 red-hot pictures.

Performance-wise the Stone does what it should. However, like most of the competition, Creative's earbuds are one-size-fits-some. I for one can't keep them in my ear. But I pretty much toss the earbuds that come with music players anyway. In addition to the headphones, the package comes with a USB cable as well.

There's essentially zero setup here—it's a USB disk with a standard folder structure. The manual suggests that "for the full experience" I should download Creative Media Lite software at creative.com/zenstone. I skipped that, because I like unfettered access. It takes a little over a minute to dump each album (I was using 192Kbps MP3s). In addition to MP3s, the Stone takes unprotected WMAs and purchase-only WMAs. The manual says charging takes about two to three hours, and since its just mini USB, you can probably charge it with a RAZR or BlackBerry charger instead of on your computer.

When we introduced the Stone, we mentioned a folder-skip switch. If there's anything that differentiates the Stone from Apple's shuffle, it's the ability to store multiple albums and jump from one to the next. As you can see in the gallery, on top of the Stone there's a switch with icons for shuffle and repeat plus a green Play button. When you thumb the switch to that green button it snaps back, having jumped to the next folder. I put three folders within a larger folder entitled MUSIC. It basically treats the loose contents of the master folder as a fourth folder.

Is the Zen Stone better than the shuffle? I suppose that depends primarily on how many DRM songs you have purchased from iTunes. I will say this, though: the $39.99 Zen Stone currently offers the better cost-benefit ratio, and not a lot of room for disappointment. – Wilson Rothman

Creative Zen Stone Video Review [Gadgets Town]

Well, it looks like Apple's still got the upper hand. Although thicker (0.41 vs 0.33 inches), the shuffle is shorter and less wide. Add to that the fact that the shuffle already has a clip built in, as opposed to the Stone, where you have to buy a separate clip, the shuffle seems to be the winner in today's Sizemodo.

Hit the jump for the full Sizemodo.

– Jason Chen

Zen Stone [Gizmodo]

Thanks to Sizeasy

Creative's $39.99 1GB Zen Stone will be out this month, in six colors: black, white, red, blue, pink and green. Follow the jump for details, plus some very sweet photos you may not see anywhere else.

For $40 you get the 1GB player itself, about half the price of that other screen-less multicolored baby flash player you may have heard about. Creative says it will get 10 hours of playback from a fully charged internal battery. It's a basic USB-drive drag-and-drop interface.

The clip will cost you $9.99 extra. "What clip?" you ask. You know what clip.

Other accessories, shown below, include a keychain ($12.99) and an armband ($15.99) In July, Creative will introduce TravelSound Zen Stone, the tiny docking speaker system shown below, for $39.99. Powered by two AAA batteries, it will run for 20 hours.

The Stone supports MP3, WMA and WAV files plus Audible formats 2 and 3. It supports for-purchase WMA DRM files, but doesn't support portable subscription WMAs. On that subject, Creative told us:

Subscription support would have required much more processing power, which would have increased the cost and price of the player. We felt that the vast majority of folks would have 1GB of non-protected content and so it would be best to go with the great price of $39.99 instead of trying to support everything and offer a more expensive player.

The Stone is obviously a marketshare move against Apple (there, I said it) and SanDisk. But it's also a statement about the flash-memory business. Creative told me that because they are buyers of flash memory, they can get all Mortimer & Randolph Duke and stockpile it when the price is low, like so many pork bellies. The gist is that makers of flash, such as SanDisk and Samsung, suffer more at the mercy of the market. It's an interesting point, and at least a plausible explanation of the $39.99 Stone price point.

I think this is a good place for Creative, playing hardball at the "value" end of the flash-player business. Creative products have always been stylish, but this whole DRM thing has really thrown the company for a loop. In this segment, style counts almost as much as price—just think of the SanDisk revolution of 2006. Whether or not you can sync to iTunes doesn't matter nearly as much in this part of the playground.

A few weeks ago, I held one in my hand, and I liked the feel. The Stone is smooth and little, a skipping stone maybe, but certainly not something you could use to slay Goliath. More of a PEBL pebble, some have said. Still, I like the name. After all, it's the condition most of my favorite musicians were in when they recorded their finest work. – Wilson Rothman

Creative Labs Corporate Information [Creative]

Our gut reaction is this Stone is going to be shaped somewhat like the MOTO PEBL—you know, like a stone—and have playback buttons on the front and a minimal screen. Or maybe even no screen, if they're going up against the Shuffle. – Jason Chen

New Zen coming Next Month? [EpiZENter]