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Pebble Time Smartwatch Receives Overwhelming Support On Kickstarter
DJAdapt writes: Pebble Time, the successor to the Pebble & Pebble Steel smartwatches, has gone up on crowdfunding site Kickstarter, hitting its $500,000 goal in 17 minutes and hitting the $2M mark in less than an hour. The new wearable is touting a color e-paper display and microphone for responding to notifications. It also has features Pebble users are already familiar with, such as seven days of battery life, water resistance, and an extensive library of watch faces and apps. Will any of you be jumping on this? Holding out for the Apple Watch? Waiting for wearables to get more capable?
"I freed myself from wearing a watch about 10 years ago. No longer having the familiar restraint around my wrist has made me feel free. I much prefer a phone in the pocket to a phone on my wrist."
And I felt the same way -- until I started wearing a pebble. I like keeping my phone in my pocket rather than taking it out 50+ times per day to see if an email or text is trivial or not.
I can't help but notice how over-exposed most of the live videos of the actual display are (brightly washed out hand/wrist in the background), which makes me wonder how readable the screen really is without using the backlight...
(The first generation pebble has a pretty low contrast ratio too, using a Memory LCD screen -- not true e-ink, although it was advertised as such)
That said, the new model does look interesting.
>Waiting for a 2+ year battery life which is what I expect of my watches.
I assume you are joking? A "dumb" watch battery life can't be compared to a smart watch. And if you are seriously waiting for a year year battery life, you will be waiting decades (or longer). Of course, if all you want is time/date and maybe an alarm or stopwatch, then you should be fine with a traditional watch.
Meanwhile, I have been VERY happy with my Moto 360 and its 2-day battery life. As long as I can reliably get 24 hours, which is extremely easy on the 360, I (and most people) are set.
The e-ink (and now color e-ink) in the Pebble is what makes it neat and interesting, not the [claimed 1 week] battery life. But I will still choose the 360 over it every time (speed, style, functionality, compatibility, etc).