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Ars Technica Goes Close Up With the Pebble Smartwatch

Posted by timothy on from the watch-out-for-these-things dept.

Ars Technica takes a close look at the crowd-funded Pebble smartwatch. The reviewer had to put up with repeated delays in production as a Kickstarter backer, but seems happy with the watch and optimistic about the future of third-party apps; an SDK is due later this month. "It currently ships with three default watch faces, as well as 12 others that you can load onto the watch with the companion app (free on iOS and Android). By far my favorite custom watch face is 'Fuzzy Time,' which rounds the current time to the nearest 5-minute interval and translates that number to what you might say if your friend asked you the time. While seemingly trivial, I love this rough approximation of time. Rarely do I need to know that it's 5:13:23pm, but seeing that it's 'quarter after five' is awesome."

10 of 140 comments (clear)

  1. fuzzy time eh? by rubycodez · · Score: 4, Insightful

    those of us who have "analog" clocks and watches are amused; also we'd probably have that smart watch just display analog clock face

    1. Re:fuzzy time eh? by Cow+Jones · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You know what?
      Fuck fuzzy time.

      This is one of my pet annoyances in most "web 2.0" products. All those forums giving the time of a message as "a year ago" are driving me mad. Some of them at least have the actual date and time in the title attribute, but that doesn't help much on a mobile device. Let the software be exact, and leave the fuzziness to me, please.

      CJ

      --

      Ah, arrogance and stupidity, all in the same package. How efficient of you. -- Londo Mollari
    2. Re:fuzzy time eh? by kermidge · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I've noticed the past decade or so that people who grow up with much more exposure to digital clocks seem to have a bit of difficulty with interval and passage of time.

      If it's 10:11 am and I've got to be somewhere at 10:45, a glance at my old-fashioned* watch and it's a no-brainer to grasp that I've got about a half hour to get there. It's almost funny to ask a digital kid how long we've got to the appointment and watch him stop to do the math.

      Analog approximation, one side of brain, done. Digital, one side of brain to the other and back.

      Years ago I came across a good article on testing done to help choose analog or digital output for certain kinds of data when designing gauges and displays in cockpits and nuke plants, e.g. The folks who did the study referenced, among others, much of the same material used at PARC when designing GUI. I sure would not mind if people designing our current 'digital experience' displayed more awareness of these kinds of studies.

      *Well, not so old-fashioned; it's got solar cells on the watch face keeping charged a battery which powers a quartz-oscillator and motor which drives the hands. I will say the pebble looks pretty neat, but I'll keep with what I've got.

  2. Do you rememeber when... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ..watches ran on a battery lasting several years without recharging. That was awesome.

    1. Re:Do you rememeber when... by ColdWetDog · · Score: 4, Funny

      And sex lasted ...

      Well, I've got nothing.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    2. Re:Do you rememeber when... by folderol · · Score: 4, Funny

      I've got a solar powered watch :) The only annoying thing is it doesn't do daylight saving, so I have to set it twice a year.

  3. Re:seeing that it's 'quarter after five' is awesom by retchdog · · Score: 4, Insightful

    anyone is clever enough to do that approximating in his head. some people find different versions of presentation to be aesthetically pleasing.

    --
    "They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
  4. I have one, and really like it. by gerardv · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I have one, and while it is a bit rough and clunky in some ways, there are three things about it that really work well for me: 1. Caller ID and SMS messages displayed. My phone is now always on silent and often left in my bag, because the watch alerts me better than a ring tone does. 2. Music play functions, so I can change tunes easily while driving (I have a borrowed car so not worth installing a kit). 3. The big watchface with big numbers because without my specs my eyesight sucks. So all in all I am a happy customer.

    1. Re:I have one, and really like it. by MagusSlurpy · · Score: 4, Informative

      I liked mine for the three days it worked. Seeing who was calling, seeing text messages and FB messages without having to pull my phone out was great.

      The fact that it would not charge, or that I've been waiting a week since I emailed tech support (from in-app, which I have to admit was nice) and got the robo-response below is something I like less.

      "Pebble | Apr 01, 2013 07:33AM UTC

      Hello,

      Thank you for supporting Pebble!

      We are currently experiencing a higher-than-average amount of emails as we start shipping more Pebbles to our Backers.

      Please do not send multiple messages about the same issue, as it will only delay responses further. We’ve prepared a list of answers to common questions, so please take a few minutes to check if your question has already been answered. . ."

      --
      My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
    2. Re:I have one, and really like it. by epine · · Score: 4, Informative

      I've had mine for about 5 days now. So far it's worked pretty much flawlessly. It was a bit thicker than I anticipated, fairly large in the frame, and maybe not suitable for a woman's wrist, although the screen itself is small enough if the frame were a bit more compact. I've got a second one on order, in one of the colours they are not yet making.

      I was surprised to get a notification this morning with my phone in one corner of the house, and my watch in the opposite corner (on the sill in the bathroom while taking a shower). I really didn't expect the BT to work at that range with a 90 degree bend from a large room into the hallway and then through a closed door at the far end. Perhaps it was a bit of fluke. Not enough data yet.

      The vibration is surprisingly audible on the wrist, and even more so when the watch is left lying on a flat surface. This partly makes up for not having a beep.

      Features are pretty limited as it stands, but the interface is dead easy to use with the four buttons provided. On the plus side, one can program a large number of distinct alarms. On the down side, there's no way to disable an alarm without deleting it completely.

      I have two LCD screens on my desk. One is polarized horizontally, and the other vertically. With my polarized shades one display goes so dark I wonder if it's turned on--until I tip my head to either side. This causes the watch display to look a little funky when there are not other lights on in the room: different regions go darkish as I tilt my hand. For two puzzled seconds earlier today I thought the e-paper display had leaked.

      It's super visible in bright light and a little hard to read in early dusk before you reach for the light switch. I turned my backlight off to better monitor battery life without accidental backlight activations. The wrist flick works, but it works too often if you have busy hands. No, I don't mean typing. No, I don't mean stereotypical activities, either.

      I would never have bought one without the promise of an SDK to allow me to make customizations. There are aspects of my life not tied to a 24 hour clock, and I want my watch to display these other relationships as well as standard time. I'm happy enough with it, but it's just a silly toy for me until Pebble releases their SDK.