It's pretty, but they're continuing to compromise core features (waterproofness, battery) which make Pebbles unique, while their software and abilities and displays lag far behind the pack (partly due to vendor lock-in).
I loved my OG Steel. But they won't compete against the Apple Watches and Moto 360s of the world by mirroring their shortcomings and price while providing none of the deep integration, apps, and features.
I think ultimately, the Pebble line will need to become the leader of the "Smart-ish" watches. They'll display notifications, and allow some very limited interactions, but will always be more watch than smart. This will work great for non-geeky people who would love to get notifications quickly and silently, while still retaining the advantages of a more conventional watch (don't worry about charging, water, durability or daylight).
Then, the wrist computers (e.g Apple Watch or Android Wear) will exist for somebody who wants the geekier, app-ier experience and will take some compromises for it.
I like the "Smart-ish" angle. Swatch owns the entry level watch market:
Swatch was originally intended to re-capture entry level market share lost by Swiss manufacturers during the quartz crisis and the subsequent growth of Japanese companies such as Seiko and Citizen in the 1960s and 1970s, and to re-popularize analog watches at a time when digital watches had achieved wide popularity. The launch of the Swatch brand in 1983 was marked by bold new styling, design and marketing. [1]
Maybe they can be the market leader in the entry level market and not have to compete against the Apples and Motorolas who are all fighting over share in the mid-market smartwatch.
Indeed. In my personal not so humble opinion, it's Pebble that leads the actually smart watch pack; Apple Watch and Android Wear are shiny toys for non-geeks who like fitness. It saddens me that Pebble seems to turn toward this audience. Not that mind "normal people" having their toys, it's just that Pebble seeed to be the only company that tried to make a tool.
5-7 day battery life and always-on, e-paper-like color screen. This enables you to use Pebble as an actual watch, or in general as an information radiator - you don't have to interact with it in any way to see the data you need; you just have to look at it. They had these features (sans color) before Apple Watch / Android Wear even existed!
What personally made me buy Pebble over Android Wear / Apple Watch was not point-by-point spec comparison though, but the apparent philosophy of the company since day one. They went with practical (always on e-paper screen instead of touch) and hackable (Pebble is programmed in C, no stacks of Java bloat, no licenses to buy). From the beginning, they were giving off the utilitarian vibe, as opposed to the later Apple's strategy of building an expensive toy. It's a difference of mindsets.
Or at least it was, given that Pebble seems slowly going towards the mainstream.
> 5-7 day battery life and always-on, e-paper-like color screen. This enables you to use Pebble as an actual watch
I'm not sure why the "always-on" aspect is an advantage. The Apple Watch display turns on when I raise my wrist to look at it. Always-on seems more like a vanity feature than actually useful. If you aren't looking at it, it serves no purpose to be on.
The battery life has never been a problem for me. I put the watch on it's charger when I get in bed, and take it off when I wake up. I don't think I've ever hit < 40% battery at the end of the day.
> Apple's strategy of building an expensive toy.
I don't believe that is the intention at all. I think Apple is trying to create a truly useful device, with a much broader scope than Pebble. Personally, the Apple Watch has been very useful for me. I would be very unhappy if I had to give it up. My Apple Watch watch feels significantly more utilitarian than my phone.
I also think you're underselling the fitness aspect. I've been much more active since I got my Apple Watch. The importance of physical activity is hard to understate.
Also, I visited my doctor recently and she was a bit worried that my pulse was high. I showed her the graph of my pulse over the last week, and she was no longer worried. In the future, when we can measure thinks like blood pressure and blood glucose, it will significantly improve people's health. That's clearly where Apple is headed.
I love Pebble as a company and I think they make a really great product. However, it's wrong to say the Apple Watch is nothing more than a toy. It's already had a decent impact on my life, and I think that impact will be exponentially larger in a few short years.
> The Apple Watch display turns on when I raise my wrist to look at it
This is one of those features that has to be 100% perfect for it to work in this form factor, and based on my colleagues Apple Watch (base model), that is not the case. In addition, I don't always turn my wrist to see my Pebble -- I don't need to. This is a small feature but saying its not actually useful is absolutely ridiculous in my opinion.
> This is one of those features that has to be 100% perfect for it to work in this form factor
As an Apple Watch owner, I can state that this is not the case for me, and thus it clearly doesn't have to be 100% perfect. Might it frustrate some people? Sure.
The tradeoff is that my watch can do many more useful things than the Pebble. The additional features are significantly more valuable to me than multiple day battery life and an always-on screen.
> This is a small feature but saying its not actually useful is absolutely ridiculous in my opinion.
I think we have different definitions of "absolutely ridiculous".
> The Apple Watch display turns on when I raise my wrist to look at it. Always-on seems more like a vanity feature than actually useful. If you aren't looking at it, it serves no purpose to be on.
Yeah... if you are wearing it. When I'm at my computer I don't like wearing a watch. So I take it off and place it next to my laptop (hate the band rubbing the desk/keyboard). In that scenario, always on is useful. Also when biking or motorcycling (especially far) I mount it to my bars because I like to be able to see it, again, not wearing it on my wrist. When biking (I bike a lot), the fitness function of an apple watch is <4 hrs. I take longer bike rides that that, so battery life is key.
> I put the watch on it's charger when I get in bed, and take it off when I wake up
yes... but if you don't have to do that for a week, it's much better. Just because you are willing to charge it daily doesn't mean it's acceptable.
All that said.... as an overall Apple fan and fitness fanatic, I would love an apple watch, if and only if, it allowed me to get 5+ hrs of fitness tracking WITHOUT bringing my phone along (so it needs GPS). So alas, I'll hang on to my Garmin which gets 24 hours of continuous GPS recording + my original Pebble until Apple Watch 2.
And to elaborate on the bike mount use, it's not just for "I want a clock on my handlebars." Paired with the GPS in your phone, you can use a Pebble as a bike computer, providing information like speed, distance, and elevation change.
The battery life and daylight visible / always on screen are requirements for this.
I think you're misinterpreting my original post. It's not a shot at the Pebble, or any other device. It's an argument that the Apple Watch is not a toy, and is actually quite useful day to day for many people. It was an argument against a generalization, not an argument for one.
> The battery life has never been a problem for me. I put the watch on it's charger when I get in bed, and take it off when I wake up. I don't think I've ever hit < 40% battery at the end of the day.
Compare that with my use case, where I wear my watch all the time and use it for sleep tracking, yet still I only need to charge it once every five days.
As for always-on, it makes the watch low profile. Depending on watch face it can actually fool people that it is a normal watch. I had a co-worker noticing after a month despite wearing it every day (when I received a message) that it is a smart watch.
>The battery life has never been a problem for me. I put the watch on it's charger when I get in bed, and take it off when I wake up. I don't think I've ever hit < 40% battery at the end of the day.
as a comparison, I can take my pebble to a very long weekend and not bring the cable and still be fine. The battery lasts 5 days in pretty normal circumstances
> The Apple Watch display turns on when I raise my wrist to look at it. Always-on seems more like a vanity feature than actually useful. If you aren't looking at it, it serves no purpose to be on.
There are lots of cases when you want to glance at your watch without doing an explicit, lively motion with your hand. For instance, as I'm typing this comment, I can look at my Pebble without moving the wrist. When a notification comes, I can read it without doing anything but moving my eyes downward. Since I spend 8+ hours every day in front of one computer or another, it's extremely valuable. Similarly, it applies when you're e.g. carrying things, or doing chores.
> I also think you're underselling the fitness aspect. I've been much more active since I got my Apple Watch. The importance of physical activity is hard to understate.
Probably. I admit I might be a bit biased against sports and fitness, for various hard-to-untangle reasons :).
> Also, I visited my doctor recently and she was a bit worried that my pulse was high. I showed her the graph of my pulse over the last week, and she was no longer worried. In the future, when we can measure thinks like blood pressure and blood glucose, it will significantly improve people's health. That's clearly where Apple is headed.
That's a great use of such technology, I admit. You communicated with a specialist and used your data to your advantage. That's how it should work. But generally, it doesn't. I dislike the whole quantified self movement (and fitness-oriented smartwatches are a part of it) for generally being a cargo-cult field. What you usually get is a device that measures something and puts the data in a completely unneccessary (but required to monetize you) cloud app, which then happily displays you some shiny graphs. The prettier the graphs the better thing sells, even though they're often pretty much useless. You can't export your data, you can't study your data, you just have some graphs. You're supposed to look at them and say "oooh, cool!".
There's a broader point here that applies both to QS enthusiasts and dashboard designers and people working on IoT - graphs are means, not an end. They exist only to improve user's decision-making process. Different graphs help with different questions, so it's important to allow users to manipulate the data presentation, and even more important to teach them the right questions to ask.
We have a technology that could really enable people to live smarter, healthier and better, and instead of that we're being fed shiny trinkets that monetize your data and lock it in so you can't use it for your advantage.
> 5-7 day battery life and always-on, e-paper-like color screen
When Pebble was the "InPulse" watch for BlackBerry phones it had none of these things. This feature set is relatively new compared to how long they've been working on watches. The InPulse watch was a lot closer to the feature set of current Android/iOS watches (including the terrible battery life).
Less is more: the Pebble doesn't surpass all the functionality in the Apple Watch or Android Wear devices, it pulls back and focuses on being a great watch, a great tool. It's not a small phone stuck on your wrist. The long battery life with an always on, sunlight-proof display is what really makes a Pebble a Pebble.
2 days of battery life is going to rub some people the wrong way but I think for what they were going for here, it was a good compromise. This continues their core excellence of making a great watch that includes smart, connected features.
I am waiting for my Pebble Time Steel to be delivered. I'm not disappointed at all with this announcement and I'm proud to see Pebble expanding into new markets.
It doesn't really do anything the other two don't. The bid difference that I think people are trying to state is that no one really uses any of those other features. Not really.
Pebble gives you notifications, time ... new ones give you heart rate monitors (I think?). You don't get those other features no one else cares about, but you do get like five days of battery life.
I'm still on my Pebble Steel and I still really like it. I even saw one in a retail store in Ireland today. Was kinda weird.
> The bid difference that I think people are trying to state is that no one really uses any of those other features. Not really.
I'm curious which features you are referring to? I have no need for 5 day battery life on my watch. Would it be great? Hell yeah. However, I also have no problem tossing my watch on the charger when I get in bed, just as I do with my phone.
Features like: answering phone through the watch, drawing, playing tic tac toe or other games (pebble also has some games, but it is quite silly to play games on watch), sending heart beats to someone else, or emoji.
That's I think all Apple Watch offers that pebble doesn't. I did not mention measuring pulse, because it is useful if you use watch for fitness tracking.
I use my Samsung gear to take hands free phone calls (in the car or while holding kids), controlling my music while my phone is plugged in in the other room, as a remote for my tv and (rarely) as a way to take group photos with my phone set up across the room.
Receiving notifications is obviously the primary use (considering looking up my meetings and using it as a silent alarm to get up in the morning as "notifications"), but I use at least two of these other features every day.
I feel it's safer than 2-factor using my phone because I might let someone else handle my phone to make a call, etc., but never my watch. Plus, I can invoke it faster than I can on the phone.
Can't say I've seen it for Apple or Android watches, but for pebble there's a nice app to let you watch the status of your 3d printer if you use octoprint. It's ended up great as a gauge for how long a print has left, even gives a convenient way to stop a print without killed the power to the printer. Sure I can use a phone for the same thing but when I've got it on my wrist with a single button press? much more convenient.
The Time and Time Steel actually have lower waterproof-ness certification than the originals, IIRC. It's not a meaningful drop for everyday use, but they seem to be happy to lose that feature. And the Round is a festival of compromise.
I loved my OG Steel. But they won't compete against the Apple Watches and Moto 360s of the world by mirroring their shortcomings and price while providing none of the deep integration, apps, and features.
I think ultimately, the Pebble line will need to become the leader of the "Smart-ish" watches. They'll display notifications, and allow some very limited interactions, but will always be more watch than smart. This will work great for non-geeky people who would love to get notifications quickly and silently, while still retaining the advantages of a more conventional watch (don't worry about charging, water, durability or daylight).
Then, the wrist computers (e.g Apple Watch or Android Wear) will exist for somebody who wants the geekier, app-ier experience and will take some compromises for it.