The Pebble Smartwatch

December 26, 2013

Several weeks ago, I received a Pebble, a smartwatch that works with both Android and iOS. I won the smartwatch in a generous contest that Pebble is hosting this month. I’ve been using the Pebble for several weeks, and I’m really impressed with it.

Pebble smartwatch
Pebble smartwatch

History

Pebble was started through a Kickstarter campaign which became the highest funded campaign in Kickstarter history by raising over 10 million dollars. The watch is well designed and well thought-out. It is lightweight and comfortable to wear on the wrist. The backlit paper-like display looks great and the lack of color was a perfect compromise for the sake of battery life and cost efficiency. The watch is estimated to get 5-7 days of use on a single charge, and the Pebble team hopes to lengthen this in an upcoming software update. The watch has a vibrating motor, accelerometer, magnetometer, and bluetooth.

As far as the company, the very way that I received the watch is a great sign of their vision. Pebble understands that the success of their product partially depends on third-party developers, and they came up with a clever contest to stimulate the developer community around their product. Since day one, they’ve been developer friendly and have created an SDK for developers. Within an hour after getting the Pebble, I already had built and run my own custom app on the watch. Developers can build custom watchfaces or full-fledged native apps which can interface with iOS and Android companion apps. They’ve also recently announced an app store exclusively for Pebble

Usability

The Pebble functions well as a time-keeping piece and having never worn a watch, I have enjoyed it. The standard watch face looks amazing and is quick read to tell the time. With the contrasting medium and light sans-serif font, typophiles and designers will be well pleased. Setting alarms from the Pebble is quick and convenient.

My favorite feature of the Pebble is its ability to receive notifications from my iPhone. The added convenience of viewing calls, texts, and any notification from Notification Center has really been incredible. Whether I’m doing some kind of manual labor, walking to class, or at a social event, I can simply glance at my watch and see what’s going on. I love not having to take out my phone all the time and perhaps come off as rude. Behaviorally, it lets me stay more on track. Before having the Pebble, I would have to take my phone out of my pocket to view a notification, which made it more likely for me to respond immediately. Now, I’m more likely to continue my current task and respond later since their is no longer that urgency and curiosity to check my phone.

The Future

As far as suggestions for improvements, there are no gaping flaws with the Pebble. Emoji support would be great, but might be difficult with screen limitations. I’d love if there was a way to disable the vibration on my iPhone if my Pebbble was connected, but that would probably require an update to iOS. Pebble’s biggest limitation is its controls. On the left side of the watch there is a back button, and on the right side there are three buttons. With these controls, only three functions are allowed in a Pebble app. For example, in the Pebble music player remote the three buttons are play/pause, next track, and previous track. Now this makes sense when playing music but for podcasts it would be much better if these could be volume or 15 second skip controls. Alas,  with no additional buttons there’s no easy way to reprogram them. Perhaps a future software update could add a preference panel which allowed customization of these buttons.

With as great as the first generation Pebble is, it’s hard to imagine what features will be on the next version. A higher resolution screen without sacrificing battery life or cost would make sense. More controls would be nice, but I’m not sure how well a touchscreen would fair. The current bezel of the Pebble could be smaller, making the screen larger, but even with this change the screen might not be large enough for touchscreen controls.

Conclusion

All in all, the Pebble is a lifesaver if you frequently deal with notifications on your smartphone. Time never looked so good. I highly recommend it.