Pebble has unveiled its new smartwatch – the Pebble Time. From an article The Verge published about the company and this new watch:
But this watch has a few tricks up its sleeve. For the first time, Pebble’s smartwatch has a color e-paper LCD screen, replacing the black-and-white panels used on the Pebble and Pebble Steel. It’s not the same kind of display you’ll find on an Android Wear watch or the Apple Watch; only 64 colors are available, and it has much less contrast, saturation, and resolution than other screens. It’s more like a Game Boy Color screen than a modern smartphone display. But it uses very little power and is visible in bright daylight, letting Pebble keep the display on all the time without using a lot of battery life. That helps preserve one of Pebble’s strengths over the competition: the company says the Pebble Time can last up to seven days between charges, far longer than other smartwatches.
Be sure to watch the video atop the article to get an idea of the awesome interface they have devised. The timeline concept, the distinctive animations – it’s got some real personality and character. If you want a utilitarian smartwatch and don’t care too much about looks, the Pebble seems to run circles around the charge-everyday, platform-locked competition.
Like me one! They understand smart watches need battery life. How is this small thing!
Only 64 colours? Doesn’t matter, it’s enough for nearly anything you’d want on a watch!
Lower contrast, saturation and display-resolution? Doesn’t matter, it’s still enough for nearly anything you’d actually use a watch for!
Display on 24/7 and battery still lasts for 7 days straight? Fuck yeah, now we talkin’!
Too bad about the looks, though; it looks like a kids’ toy more than anything. Still, it’s at least practical now and compared to all the other smartwatches it’s leaps and bounds more appealing.
I still think it looks way better than the original pebble.
I just need my watch to show me the hours and minutes. I don’t want to read e-mails, play games or watch porn on it. Also, having the battery last a few years is a must.
But 199 dollar?
Nope, still not interesting.
They really need to do something about that bezel. Either make the screen larger without increasing the size of the case (thus shrinking the bezel), or just remove the thick plastic bezel completely (leave that nice little bar of black around the screen as the only bezel). Right now, the screen-to-bezel ratio is way too low!
Maybe there will be a Pebble Steel-like upgrade in time for Christmas.
looks like a gimmick from the McD’ Happy Meal. sry, noway!
This is the first SmartWatch I like. I would totally rock this, though, maybe with a different watch strap, probably metal. It uses standard 22mm straps, though, which is cool.
Would I find the non-watch features useful, though? I’m not sure. I guess the only way to know for sure is to buy one and try it.
And the battery in my watch lasts for 2 years, it tells the time and the date, has a built-in calculator and cost £30. Why are people so hung up on these things? They’re only gimmicks at the end of the day!
Mostly. I can’t really imagine anything I’d need a smartwatch for myself, but well, e.g. some researcher could use a smartwatch to draw an hourly-updated graph of some statistics. With 64 available colours they could have multiple datapoints being updated on the graph and still keeping it reasonably readable. Or a sysadmin could have similar stats about the network or some specific servers.
Sure, it would be much more readable on a larger screen, but when all you need to do is lift your wrist and push a single button to bring the graph/stats up it’s more than enough to see if there are some abnormalities you should look into or something interesting going on.
I have said it before, but these things are especially good for stuff that you like to keep eye on on an irregular, yet accessible, basis, but that doesn’t require high datarates, interactivity or high resolution.
Yeah, I can see its uses in that field now you mention it. It just seems that a lot of people just go nuts for this stuff because it’s new and shiny. Each to their own I suppose, I just don’t see the value in them, but then again I am getting on a bit and a bit old fashioned.
Watches need to be beautiful.
This is butt ugly.
7.6 million in a few hours. Wow.
“Pebble clearly isn’t using Kickstarter to “fund” the new watch like it did with the original Pebble.”
Uh.. yeah they’re launching on kickstarter because they’re going to make 10-20 million without any work.
Yeah! Except building their third smartwatch as a small startup, with brand new technology, new display, new software, new user interface, new everything, they’re not doing any work!
…what a stupid comment. My god.
It’s a bit of a stretch to still call them a startup at this point in time. They’ve been around for a while.
They are also building this thing based on their previous experience and tech. To call this “all new” is a serious stretch.
If some company creates an android phone, would it be “all new”? No, it’s based on a proven concept.
This watch is based on their previous work. It only makes sense.
As the editor, you should probably refrain from “omg stoopid comment” – comments. Just saying.
As a tech reader you should refrain from saying “no work” as you MIGHT be able to understand the underlying work necessary to obtain the final product.
Dudes…
I guess by “no work” he meant making the new Kickstarter campaign, not the watch. And that part is kind of true.
People are not funding for the sake of the KS campaign, they are funding for a smartwatch that DO have requested some work.
I do not care if they made a copy/pasta of the previous campaign.
This is still iterative improvements (color display, stuffs) just like Apple do with their own products : copy/pasta, iterative improvements.
Something wrong ?
+1 to that
But I’ve come to see OSNews as Thom’s personal blog, not a trustworthy news site with strong editorialship.
Mostly here to look at the comment drama.
Edited 2015-02-25 14:35 UTC
Way to miss the point. The choice is not between building and not building the watch, but between funding it through kickstarter vs funding it internally.
The article implied that they aren’t going to kickstarter for funding purposes, but rather to engage with their customers. Total nonsense. Launching a kickstarter will give them over 10 million for the price of designing the kickstarter campaign which is likely only about $200,000. Easy money.
Doesn’t seem a stupid comment to me, to the point and moreover the moniker ‘stupid’ might be leveled more at those who stump up money to fund profit oriented business for next to no return.
200 bucks, and it doesn’t even have good sensors? It’s a waste of money.
You are not forced to buy. People bought the first iPhone without copy/paste, no multitasking and no MMS, more expansive yet not complained as much.