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Pebble Lays Off 25% of Its Staff, Smartwatch Bubble Set To Burst? (computerworld.com)
tripleevenfall writes: Pebble is laying off 25% of its employees -- that's 40 pink slips -- taking it down to just 80 people. It seems indicative of the smartwatch market's terrible state. Previously the darling of the crowdfunding fraternity -- it raised over $30 million on Kickstarter -- Pebble is finding it hard to keep the plates spinning in 2016.
The layoffs were confirmed by Pebble's CEO Eric Migicovsky, who implied that venture capitalists are now less keen on funding the smartwatch category.
The layoffs were confirmed by Pebble's CEO Eric Migicovsky, who implied that venture capitalists are now less keen on funding the smartwatch category.
I'm not sure how a product that hasn't received widespread adoption and hasn't been promoted that much could be considered a bubble...
Wouldn't that necessarily take it down to 120 people from 160?
80+40=120
40/120=33.33%
So they are laying off 33.33% of their staff, not 25%.
must be trolling slashdot with those maths
I would certainly expect Pebble to be less insulated from any downturn/loss of confidence than the internal teams doing 'smartwatch' at Apple, Google, or any of the Android OEMs, since they neither have a large host organism to quietly hide losses in, nor any claims to some sort of 'product synergy' nonsense; but my impression(if anyone has actual data, either for or against this, I'd be interested to know) was that Pebble had been atypically successful given the rather narrow appeal of the 'smartwatch' concept with their size and battery life friendly keep-it-simple-stupid design and relatively broad compatibility.
Is my impression wrong; and Pebble is actually starting to suffer as competing products with tighter 'ecosystem' tie-ins have gotten vaguely more competent and less in need of being nearly cellphone sized to get even a day's battery life? Is my impression correct; but either Pebble or their backers, or both, can't really think of too many additional incremental improvements to the KISS-based design that would be worth the cost of keeping the extra staff? Was the market simply so tiny that the few people who wanted one are already saturated and everybody is having issues moving product?
The bubble is not bursting, there was no bubble to begin with. This is the first generation and the technology isn't really there yet. The battery life isn't long enough and they're still too large to really be fashionable (especially for women). And that's what they are, fashion accessories, we don't really need them. This generation will be just like the first generation of PDAs (Palm, Newton, Windows CE). Early adopters and a small group that really benefits from them will jump all over them and then... nothing. Once we start seeing a small size with flexible displays, a useful battery life that measures in days, full phone functionality or some combination there of then the consumer market will start to appear.
It wasn't a very big bubble; but the hype-to-substance ratio was arguably large enough to qualify as a small one. It didn't survive contact with reality for long; but there was a brief period of delusional hope among the manufacturers and some of the talking heads that 'smartwatch' was going to be the must-have accessory and temporary reprieve from the pressure on profits caused by the fact that everyone who wants a smartphone and a tablet either already has one or is poor enough that their desire for one isn't too helpful.
Definitely not at the level of "zOMG 3D TV! It will surely cause everyone to re-buy their television!"; but same basic hopeful delusion that a new gimmick could save them from an increasingly saturated and commodified market.
Smartwatches are in between handheld and augmented reality glasses. There is going to be a very significant rise in that, and that niche isn't going to go away even after AR becomes mainstream because walking around with glasses on is not a desirable in the way that a fashion accessory is. A watch is something that you *want* to wear. My Smartwatch has lowered my stress level immensely because I can finally know at a glance if somethings needs my attention, and I can reply super quickly. I love my Pebble. I would enjoy an Apple Watch just as much. My wife has one, and she had only wanted it as a fashion accessory until she started using it, and now she talks about all the cool things she is still doing with it that are brand new, and it has been almost 4 months now, so definitely past the honeymoon stage.
# make clean sig
You'd be really surprised how good the first Pebble Watch and it's Steel version are. Specially, Pebble Steel looks good, you don't need to tatoo "I am a nerd" on your forehead, it has always-on screen that's readable in all conditions and goes for over a week without a change. At $130 a pop, the Steel actually looks better than conventional watches for the same price, syncs time over the network, and delivers notifications from your phone. Very good utility IMO.
The second generation Pebbles added color screen, but at the expense of battery. I do agree that Pebble will probably go the way of Palm Inc eventually, or at very best it will remain a sort of geek-oriented underground smartwatch brand.
No, that's the problem- it isn't. The number of people who want to wear a watch is incredibly small. You have a small number who have to due to job (nurses, for example)- but they don't need a smartwatch, they just need a hands free second hand. You have a small set who wear it as a fashion statement, but they want metals and gems and fancy that will last a long time, not an electronic screen that will last 2 years.
The number of people who actually want a smartwatch is ridiculously small- single digit percents of the population, possibly less. Everyone else is ok taking their phone out of their pocket.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
When it comes to battery life, NOTHING on the market can beat Pebble's first generation Pebble Watch and Pebble Watch Steel. Both of them are actually pretty light, and the Steel is sort of a watch you can wear to a dinner. Both can go a week on a full charge. Even Pebble's own second generation Time and Time Steel run time took a hit when they introduced the color screen.
While I love my Pebble Steel, I do fear Pebble will eventually go down the way of Palm Inc, Walkman, Blueberry and others.
...Is a pretty strong sign that there's zero interest in digital wearables.
It's been pretty definitively proven that you can't reliably use a smartphone (or smart-device) with a screen smaller than 480 x 360 and about 2.4" (the screen on the most popular Blackberry, the "Curve" in the 2007-2010 era).
Everyone who absolutely needed a smart watch bought one with the initial roll out of the Pebbl and iWatch. People buying it now are simply either just now able to afford one, or...?
Even Apple themselves have said that 4" is about the ideal size for a portable smart device screen. Given that 27-45mm is the ideal size for a watch face, that's way, WAY too small to do what people think it can do.
I can see smart bracelets monitoring heartbeat and miles walked, but it's been pretty conclusively proven that average citizens will never wear a screen of any significant usefulness on their arm.
moox. for a new generation.
The battery life isn't long enough and they're still too large to really be fashionable (especially for women).
I think fashion is more likely to change than smart watches are to get much smaller. They might get thinner, sure, but the display is already small enough to be nearly unusable. I'm assuming from your flexible display comment you're assuming that the display could be moved to include part of the band which might help to some degree.
What you're missing are people using smart watches as fitness trackers. I think that's where smart watches are going to move, because it's a niche that requires a physical thing attached to the body, and if you're going to wear a band around your wrist which needs to be recharged - why not make it a smart watch? I think that's where Pebble is probably seeing the most real competition, from the likes of Fitbit and their smart watches.
The Apple Watch is a dead end and it wouldn't surprise me if Apple silently discontinues it. A price drop with no successor announced? Plus I constantly see deals on refurbished Apple Watches - it's clear people are buying them, finding out they're useless, and returning them.
The future - at least near term - is in fitness trackers that are also smart watches.
I will stick by my original statements when they released this crop of smart watches. Until the battery life is measured in months (preferably at least 6) then you can keep em. A watch isn't even needed by most people nowadays and those that actually benefit from a smartwatch are an even smaller audience.
First Gen?? This is about gen 10 of smartwatches. Each time they come out as the next big must have thing by whatever company at the time is pushing them and then they disappear again when they receive luke warm reception and sales don't match the hype.
The Time Steel is actually the one with the best battery life, something to the tune of 10 days. It has a larger capacity battery, though.
Well, I don't believe most people apply this type of standard. More than a week of run time is plenty for most people. We charge our smartphones and many other devices every day, but you can't connect a watch to a charger at the same time?
Anyways, the smartwatch does provide pretty decent utility. Yes, the phone does everything you need, but you need to reach out for it into your pocket. Instead of pulling the smartphone every time it beeps, you can glance first at the smartwatch to see what's up. Once you see the first few lines of the message, email, or other notice, you can then decide if you need to get the smartphone or not.
Was the market simply so tiny that the few people who wanted one are already saturated and everybody is having issues moving product?
I think maybe yes, because it's still so battery-unfriendly compared to regular watches. I'm wondering why nobody's done a simple small digital watch strip top or bottom just to say HH:MM with the rest as tap-to-activate/short alarms or notifications. Because I'm rather curious to know how long they'd last without the overhead of the screen...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Which is why I think the future of smart watches is going to be in fitness trackers. They're a thing that you have to wear anyway, and since they already require a battery and need some form of electronics to be useful - why not be a smart watch?
That makes all the smart watch features a value add on top of the core feature of tracking activity throughout the day.
We're already seeing this with existing fitness trackers as they start to add smart watch features.
Granted that's probably still a small portion of the population that wants fitness trackers, but I know far more people with Fitbits than I do with Apple Watches.
They're a thing that you have to wear anyway
Nearly nobody has to wear a fitness tracker, nearly everybody needs to know the time. Let's keep things in perspective.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
I can see them being useful.
They're not as must-have as the hype makes them out to be, but they're fairly useful for things many people would want once they know they're there. I would, however, ditch the color screen in favor of monochrome or an e-ink display. Cheaper and consumes less power.
It's a watch. It needs to work for a year, not a week.
"Hey! I made this great watch! It only works for 5 minutes! Want to buy?!"
the killer app for a watch is .. time that lasts
Both have the same issues: Make them too big and they are heavy and clunky and nobody would want them, keep them small enough to be tolerable and they are too small to be well-powered and very capable. This does not mean they are bad per se, just that the natural limits put a cap on how much function they can have and therefore put a cap on how much of a product they can ever be.
There will surely be future improvements to both, but there's not enough space in that market for a bunch of companies and lots of innovative new features producing generations of products in a valuable portfolio. To be truly useful, a display needs to be several inches, and the typical smartwatch is not that big. Adding resolution does not help either - even a 4K screen is useless if it's only about 1.5". Twelve year olds might mostly have the eyesight for a smart watch screen, but for most adults a screen that tiny is only useful for general notification icons unless they are carrying a supplemental magnifying lens (which then defeats part of the point of keeping it small).
Never had to wind a watch up once a day, did you?
Well it's 3 months to the day since my neighbour received an expensive fitness tracker from his well meaning daughter for Christmas.
He grumbled something about having troubles pairing it with his digital devices and hasn't worn it yet.
A niche for the health conscious but hardly a guaranteed motivator for the inactive. Maybe I'll offer him $20 for it...
>syncing with the phone when in range is fine but I don't want to lose my watch as a timepiece just because I'm out of Bluetooth range of my phone at the moment
Android wear supports syncing with your phone over wifi. In addition, android wear devices will still display the date and time even when out of range of the phone and not connected to anything. It would be nice if people would at least learn the basics of things before they started talking about them.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
I did. It was a 30-second process to set the new time and wind it enough to work for a day.
Charging a Pebble takes hours.
I spent weeks trying to buy my pebble a year ago. I would call around the shops and they might have just got ten watches in but by the time I got there they were gone. I wear mine when I need notifications from my phone directly on my wrist, usually when there is a lot stuff happening. But pebble may have been selling their products to a small group of people: geeky males who like to control their speakers from their watches, etc, and those people already have a pebble.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I'm sure that they could do better; but (from the rough numbers I've been able to dig up) it looks like a bluetooth low energy chip just sleeping and waiting for something to happen draws at least as much power as the timekeeping mechanism in your basic cheap-and-practically-immortal quartz oscillator watch. Actually transferring some data now and again will cost you extra.
What I don't know is how much extra a full bitmapped monochrome LCD costs you, in energy, vs. the fixed-function multisegment ones that they use in low end digital watches. Color definitely blows your power budget; but B/W transreflective can be very low power indeed, though certainly more pixels will mean more transistors and a more complex driver IC; I just don't know how much more energy that requires.
I speak as one with distinctly limited experience in low-power electronics design; but (aside from pure technophilia and spec lust) it wouldn't surprise me if the advantages of a screen that can actually display at least a few words/some numbers/a contact name are considered to be a significant win over a more basic optical or tactile "Something is happening" notification; and might not actually be as much more power intensive as one would expect.
I have no idea what the glowing backlit color screens and slightly underclocked smartphone processors brigade is up to; that will take ages to mature to reasonable battery life; but once you add an RF link and some kind of microcontroller/microprocessor you've already blown the power budget compared to a basic quartz RTC, so perhaps the thinking is that, since the battery life will unavoidably be substantially worse the best bet is to cram in enough functions to compensate.
We have to wear fitness trackers? That statement is so far beyond stupid that the single greatest thing you could do for humanity is to play in traffic.
You must be the hipster parents warn their children about.
I don't think Slashdot is the right target audience for fitness trackers, and you can always argue if anything is really needed, but there is no doubt that they are selling in far greater numbers than smartwatches. And in good enough numbers that they are prominently marketed by consumer electronics chains. This corresponds with my personal experience as well, I know a number of people using fitness trackers, I'm the only one with a smartwatch (Pebble Steel).
http://www.zdnet.com/article/f...
I don't understand why nubile girls won't let me fuck them in the ass. It's really perplexing.
You'll find plenty of nubile boys ready and willing though
...because walking around with glasses on is not a desirable in the way that a fashion accessory is. A watch is something that you *want* to wear..
What an utter stupid remark. Tell that to all those people wearing designer frames instead of wearing contact lenses or going through laser surgery. Glasses are just as much a fashion accessory as are watches.
Pebble is this generation's Palm. A great product which did what it did well.
Destroyed by inferior products from bigger companies with color screens and more integration.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Yep. The whole smartwatch thing is a solution for a problem that not many people have. I had an early version of the Gear2 and it was ok. Once the novelty wore off (after about 2 weeks), I took it off and haven't worn it since. Maybe it's just me, but I'm not a huge watch wearer anyway. Couple that with the daily charging requirements and you need to have the phone in your pocket to use the calling/email features, it's a bit of a pain.
What a smart watch offers is only of interest to few people and device limitations put many potential customers off. Short battery life is the most annoying problem. My digital watch never needs to be connected to a charger, thanks to built in solar charging, and the battery lasts for several years. If I need a "smart" device, I take my smart phone out of my pocket.
I love tech toys but I would quickly be frustrated enough with one of today's smart watches to introduce it to a very large hammer...
This isn't a strong opinion (don't care either way about these watches) but it seems to me that a watch I'm regularly taking off is a watching I'm going to forget/not bother to put back on again.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Outselling both Android wear/Samsung/LG/HTC/Apple almost 2 to one COMBINED.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You'll find plenty of nubile boys ready and willing though
Yes. They hang out at GNU/Linux conferences.
Not true unless you wait until its completely dead (and even not as long as it takes to charge an Android watch)... I charge it while in the shower each day (10 minutes) and have never run out of battery... All they really need is either wireless charging and/or a watch band with a battery in it to make it even better.
But I hate wearing a wristwatch. Really and truly hate it. Plastic bands make me rash up, leather ones rot rapidly (I am sweaty) and metal ones pull out my hair. One of the best things about cellphones is going back to pocketwatches. I'm not looking to put shit on my wrist again.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You forgot the code to get 10% off..! ;) Only joking bud. I can tell a shill from an enthused customer.
I don't think Slashdot is the right target audience for fitness trackers
There, I'd have to disagree (unless you meant we already tend to have toys that can serve the same purpose, in which case I guess I'd agree with that).
The supreme irony of fitness trackers, think about who you see wearing them - Not buff athletes pushing themselves to the limit, but overweight middle class desk-jockeys trying desperately to shed a few pounds.
Of course, these trackers don't actually inspire people to exercise - Instead, trackers either make people feel better about how many steps they passive take every day, or, people quickly learn to game the tracker as though a logged "step" equals actual exercise.
"See, if I rock my hand just the right way while moving the Cheeto from the bag to my mouth, it counts it as two steps! Two family-size bags and four hours of TV gives me my 10,000 steps for the day! Size 0, here I come!"
I take my watch off to go through security at the airport and when I have sex. I'm married and I seldom travel.
In my opinion, battery life should be measured against quartz watches -- years. Or compared to my self-winding Tag or my Seiko solar quartz -- never, bounded by my lifetime.
Until then I don't see the utility. I've learned to ignore my smartphone -- I have all but the narrowest list of VIPs set to provide any notifications and keep it muted and on vibrate all the time, so I'm not interested in glancing at my watch to find out what the latest distraction is.
Plus, cost versus obsolescence? My Tag was an expensive gift, but it will also last my lifetime and never stop working because battery or vendor or software. Same with my Seiko. Any "smart watch" will be obsolete in a couple of years, which seems like a lot to spend for something you just know will be unsupported and unusable.
Maybe if you let it run down to 10%.
My pebble time steel loses about 10% per day. I throw it on the charger for 15-20 minutes when I shower (yes its water resistant but unless its specifically a sport watch I always take it off to shower) and get ready and it stays above 70% no problem. Some days I don't even bother and its trivial to keep powered up.
I only wear a watch when out doing sports, and even then only when i need to.
watches suck. for every other time I have my phone in my pocket anyways.
Fitness trackers at least serve a purpose. smart watches won't until they can do local holographic projections to increase the screen size to something usable.
So figure out how to put a projector in the smart watch to project onto your forearm, and then you might have something useful.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
The number of people who want to wear a watch is extremely high. And those people like to switch watches often. It's a fashion product. No, the problem for the smartwatch industry is not that people buy few watches. The problem is that most people buy many watches in the $20-$150 range.
A smartwatch maker will have to create a $149 smartwatch that is fashionable by current trends and works great with both Android and iOS, then make a profit before the year is up and then start over again with a new fashion design for the next year.
The market for expensive luxury watches is big in terms of money, but there you are correct. The people who pay $200+ for a watch tend to want an heirloom product that will last for many years and have a value on the used market. Apple might perhaps be able to break into that market.
Even Apple has found it difficult to market a smart watch given that Apple has a skill at marketing to the impulse buyer. Which is exactly the type of buyer who would buy a watch. Or Google glasses or 3D vision glasses. But the long term usefulness of these devices is pretty low, and in the end they become something of a technology novelty rather than a really useful product. Unfortunately the real problem with smart watches is their small form factor. You have limited abilities because of hardware limitations, the screen size is limiting. Plus its not really better at doing what your smartphone already does.
Pebble was the 1st gen to be successful, at least in the short term... I had a 2nd Generation Sony Smartwatch (watch looked nice but awful band)., and then a Motorola MotoActv watch (runs Android, but not Android Wear), before getting a Pebble and I am very happy (finally). Technically, it is good enough and price point is okay. The real limitation is you really need to wear it all the time, and watches are thought of more as jewelry. When they are truly attractive and can be changed out at will without effort merging information is when they MIGHT take off again. I suspect if they just put sensors in watchbands of regular watches and put some sort of LCD screen under the hands and got batteries "self winding" we would see a merging of the markets... (Is the regular watch market all that profitable accept for the high end?)
My wife likes her round a lot as well. I think Pebble is actually a good product but it is suffering from the Apple watch effect.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I suspect that this would have to be balanced against the energy costs of higher bluetooth data rates; but you might actually be able to get fairly impressive lifespan/longevity out of a 'smartwatch' by making it dumber.
Consider the humble serial terminal: your odds of finding genuine RS-232 voltages have fallen dramatically; but with the appropriate level converter all sorts of even new gear can talk to basically anything that postdates the old 60ma and 20ma loop interfaces. You want to dial in to the serial debug port on some modern widget with a ~35 year old Smartmodem 300? Not a problem. Similarly, 'pretend to be a VT-100' will probably still be a widely available lowest-common-denominator pseudostandard when I'm succumbing to senility in a retirement facility.
If the 'smartwatch' tries to get clever, and have onboard apps and vendor-specific SDKs and APIs and so on, yeah, it'll be finicky legacy gear or wholly unsupported relatively quickly. If the 'smartwatch' offers(either exclusively, or in addition to the fancy-and-ephemeral stuff) some way for the master device to just treat it as a dumb terminal over the bluetooth link, that could easily be viable decades from now. There will probably be better options; but supporting legacy BTLE will likely be vanishingly cheap and unless the command set for scribbling on the smartwatch's screen is horrifically baroque or deliberately broken, it will take only a fairly thin translation layer to format whatever you want on whatever device of the future you are using and paint it on the screen.
Man, Now I have to dig out my Visor Edge and see if the battery is still any good... Palm's sync software was absolutely atrocious(the 'conduits' concept was elegant; but the software itself was utter garbage); but it's amazing how good the experience was on practically no computing power at all.
fitness trackers are for those crazy OCD people and data fiends who want to collect the data. i like to work out and run and use strava on my phone. i have the step counter activated on my iphone but don't pay much attention to it nor go crazy like some idiots on the internet who wear these things during sex and then look at a year's of data
Funny, I thought the whole smartwatch concept was always a ridiculously overpriced gadget in which the practicalities of legibility, usability, and value were entirely overshadowed by the opportunity to flaunt another piece of ridiculous technological e-peen. Or would that be iPeen?
-Styopa
I have no need for a fitness tracker. I track my level of effort through an old analog system...it's called sweat. That being said, I wear my Pebble every day. A disadvantage of smart phones is the lack of physical buttons for eyes-free operation. When driving and I want to skip a song, I just push a button on my watch, no need to unlock the screen and try to guess where the skip button is.
You're right, though - it's all about perspective and Moto, LG, Apple, and even Pebble screwed that up into trying to make it a device that it isn't. It's just a passive alert system that allows you to see if you need to take a call or text without making the person in front of you feel like you're not paying attention to them.
They're a thing that you have to wear anyway
Nearly nobody has to wear a fitness tracker, nearly everybody needs to know the time. Let's keep things in perspective.
You most definitely need to wear it if you're planning on tracking fitness which is what I meant.
Palm's sync software was absolutely atrocious(the 'conduits' concept was elegant; but the software itself was utter garbage); but it's amazing how good the experience was on practically no computing power at all.
What's amazing is how long we were willing to wait for things to happen back then. Even a screen refresh took a measurable amount of time on a Palm device.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
First Gen?? This is about gen 10 of smartwatches.
We are now drawing a distinction between connected devices ("smartwatches") and the things which came before, some of which may have been called smartwatches, but none of which included networking beyond IR.
On the other hand, ISTR actual cellphone watches, albeit a bit bulky, before any of these things actually hit the market...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Sort of like 3D printers. Oh wait, I just have to 3D print a Pebble!
40 is not 25% of 120.
I'd say the exception is watches designed with fitness and health related features in mind. That actually makes sense to me, and those devices seem to be doing reasonably well. For everyone else, if it's a fashion accessory that can also be used for a few practical things, then that's a bonus, but I'd agree it's certainly a much smaller percentage of people that really want that.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
"The number of people who want to wear a watch is extremely high"
LMAO. Really. Thanks for the laugh. I work for a university and get to interact with many people on a daily basis, and I use public transportation for most of my commute. I can count on one hand (and have fingers left over) the number of people wearing a watch.
Sounds like a local cultural thing where you live.
The wristwatch is currently a multi-billion dollar industry and (perhaps surprisingly) shows no sign of declining.
>why not be a smart watch?
Battery life.
You're more likely to see fancy watch bands for real fancy watches incorporate fitbits than see people pay more for a fitbit that;s also a shitty looking eWatch.
People who do real exercises don't like to carry bulky shit like phones. Your trips from your bed to the fridge aren't really exercise.
That's an interestig rewrite of history. Palm imploded due to a mix of complacency and arrogance:
We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone, he said. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.
That's almost as brilliant a statement as RIM's "Amateur hour is over" marketing for the Playbook.
Yes, that must be it. Or you're simply looking through rose-colored nostalgia glasses. Palm was dying long before the iPhone and Android came out. Those were simply the final nails in the coffin.
I have a chinese smart watch that runs on CR3032 battery for couple months which is quite ok. Only feature it is missing is a heart rate monitor.
- Raynet --> .
It's a valuation bubble, mostly in the private sector. FItbit, Pebble and others are all getting high prices but people are finding that the usage of their products are going down, that consumers just aren't that into smartwatches. Fitbit in particular is in trouble; they're currently valued at $3B on the public market but have been trending down with no clear plans on how they're going to turn it around.
For me, it was endurance. The watch I have will continue to run, synchronize to one of the Atomic time bases around the world for the rest of my life without a battery change or needing to be recharged.
These things trended to last a week at most per charge and didn't really bring anything to the table over a Breitling, Movado, or Citizen, to be honest- and as you said...quite a bit more fragile in comparison.
The Pebble Time wasn't as well received as the original Pebble or the Pebble Steel. Its design is fairly unremarkable and it has a huge bezel. It doesn't help that they muddied the waters by making the Pebble Time Steel almost identical to the regular Pebble Time, and then releasing the Pebble Time Round shortly after, which was plagued by a lack of apps/watchfaces and poor battery life.
Then you have a few other issues like irregularly spotty Bluetooth, features disappearing (the original Pebble app was multilingual, but the Pebble Time app is still English only), lack of really high quality apps and watchfaces, somewhat immature technology (their color screen is nice and super readable in the sun, but the colors are still quite faded and reading indoors is difficult, their backlight casts a very annoying blue tint on the whole screen, etc.), poor voice support (they went for their own stuff instead of integrating into Android's and iOS's solutions for it), etc. I still really like my Pebble Time, but I can definitely see the numerous flaws they'd have to correct in order to become truly popular. As it is, unless you're already fairly tech oriented, there's nothing for you there.
So figure out how to put a projector in the smart watch to project onto your forearm, and then you might have something useful.
Pretty slick! http://www.gizmag.com/cicret-b...
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
"The number of people who want to wear a watch is extremely high"
LMAO. Really. Thanks for the laugh. I work for a university and get to interact with many people on a daily basis, and I use public transportation for most of my commute. I can count on one hand (and have fingers left over) the number of people wearing a watch.
Sounds like a local cultural thing where you live.
The wristwatch is currently a multi-billion dollar industry and (perhaps surprisingly) shows no sign of declining.
Sure, but the legal marijuana industry is also several billion annually and I don't think that means the number of people who smoke pot is very high (pun partially intended).
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Let me get this right:
1. Company A makes gadget that is an answer to a question nobody asked.
2. Company A gets press for selling said gadget to early adopters who buy it just to have it, but it still doesn't solve a problem that anyone has.
3. Massive consumer electronics companies (Samsung, Apple, LG, Motorola) get in on the action, creating massive competition for a small market, growing it marginally and creating new features that make the product marginally more useful.
4. Company A now has a product that is less featured, and is not as quick to replace with a more full featured product due to resource constraints, and sales plummet.
5. Company A is forced to lay people off due to the inevitable economics of their situation.
6. "The smartwatch bubble set to burst" doom and gloom story.
Slashdot editors are fucking amazing.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Most of us wear a watch anyway, so the concept of a smartwatch is a good idea. The problem with smartwatches and startups like Pebble is that the technology is too new and the benefit is too small. Everyone has a smartphone and a watch. Smartphones took off quickly because it was like moving from a horse and buggy to an automobile. A smartwatch is like moving from a desktop computer to a portable. The 'Compaq' was the first reasonable portable, and it was essentially a desktop monster with a keyboard for a lid to protect the screen and keep dirt out. People did not flock to this because it weighed almost 30 pounds and was less capable than their desktop. Today's laptops weigh something like 6 pounds and are about as powerful as their desktops and everyone has one.
People would replace their broken watch with a smartwatch and leave their phone in their pocket if the technology was mature. Even Apple has this problem. The Apple Watch is a good idea, but everyone wants Apple Watch 2, or maybe even Apple Watch 3 before they buy one. Wait until the device matures. Apple can wait for that. Pebble can't.
I assume I will own a smartwatch ... someday. But probably not for a couple of generations from now. ...and Pebble will probably not be around by then.
I bought a Fitbit One at a local thrift store for $20 about a year ago. It was new, still sealed in the original packaging. I suspect it was a gift to somebody who did not want it and gave it to the Goodwill. I have used it a little.
"The number of people who want to wear a watch is extremely high"
LMAO. Really. Thanks for the laugh. I work for a university and get to interact with many people on a daily basis, and I use public transportation for most of my commute. I can count on one hand (and have fingers left over) the number of people wearing a watch.
Sounds like a local cultural thing where you live.
The wristwatch is currently a multi-billion dollar industry and (perhaps surprisingly) shows no sign of declining.
Sure, but the legal marijuana industry is also several billion annually and I don't think that means the number of people who smoke pot is very high (pun partially intended).
Yeah, but a pot habit will cost you a lot more than a wrist watch "habit", unless you're into really expensive watches or grow the pot yourself or something...
The wrist watch industry is so big that nobody knows how many they ship each year, but it is in the 1B-2B range. Most of those are dirt-cheap watches sold in the third world, but many are more expensive and sold in the first world.
Why would you by a pebble when you can by a Android watch or Apple watch that integrates perfectly with your phone? I got a Asus Zenwatch 2 and it works perfectly with my Nexus 6P phone, and it was only $150.
We have to wear fitness trackers? That statement is so far beyond stupid that the single greatest thing you could do for humanity is to play in traffic.
You must be the hipster parents warn their children about.
Parents don't warn kids about hipsters, we encourage our kids to beat some sense into them.
Maybe the ones they laid off were the ones as bad at math as triplevenfall. 80 employees remaining and 40 pink slips means they had 120 employees to start with. 25% of that is 30 and 40 out of 120 is 33%.
Am I missing something? Above it says Pebble is laying off 40 people which will bring headcount down to 80. Then it says this is 25% of the total. Isn't it 33 1/3%? Or maybe this is why they are having issues?
... how the hell is 40 25 percent of 120?
with maths like that...
I think that in the long run the killer app for the smart phone is health and maybe biometrics.
it's a fledgling thing now but in the next 5 years health monitoring capabilities are going to explode. A lot of that will be clinical and it will take some time to figure out how to use the data. But the watch is an unprecedented thing. Specifically when you go to the ICU they hook you up to the cardiac and blood pressure and blood oxygen monitors. These things take measurements all day long on you the sick person. The doctor comes in 2 times a day, glaces at the heart beat monitor, and writes down 6 numbers. All the data on that is collected goes in the bit bucket. But in 5 years that won't be the case. it will all be monitroed by google or whomever to mine it for subtle health signatures. More will be learned about how an injured persons cicadian rythms affect recover, treatments will be given over time and monitored with feedback. e.g. the level of antibiotic in your blood might possibly be observable. The number of white cells at an infection might be monitored. Lots of spectrocopic posibilities. But what you won't have is data on healthy people at this level. Sure test subjects but not population data. Not data that shows everyone in a classroom is getting sick. etc.. And that's what watches will do. not too sophisticated at first of course.
The other thing that may happen is your watch may become your interface or passcode for all the IOT things in your house. As these proliferate you need a device that can authenticate you and control devices that you don't have to fetch from your pocket every time you want to dim the lights or change the channel or open the garage door.
Both of those are 5 years out. But both will come.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I had a Pebble Kickstarter edition. It sucked. Software / functionality was buggy and not as promised (I am an iPhone user). I sold it on eBay. Apple came out with a far superior product that works as advertised that I am very happy with. This is what happens when a company cannot keep up. It has nothing to do with the size of the market, everything to do with the product they offered.
Had a first gen one, just replaced it with a Steel last year.
When I am out biking, I use Runkeeper to display time/speed/distance on my wrist. No need to fumble with a phone. When I am out golfing, I use Freecaddie to show me distance to the green - phone stays in my pocket. When I am driving, I can see incoming texts without risking a hefty ticket looking at a "handheld device". I can see who is calling anytime and decide if it worth taking the phone out of my pocket or not. I can likewise control the music player and leave the phone in my jacket. My regular watchface gives me the time and current weather. The battery goes almost a week on a charge, and it is waterproof.
I don't know that "smartwatch" is really the right name though, basically it is just a remote display, with a few buttons for feedback to the phone, but in that context I find it very handy.
My Apple Watch goes 2-3 days between charges. If it went longer I would probably forget to charge it.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
My Pebble Round takes about 15 minutes to get a day's worth of charge. And it runs for a couple of days on a charge. I plug it in every other night, along with the nightly process of charging the cell phone. Simple, easy, done. And I have notifications right on my wrist at all times - which I like.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
When driving and I want to skip a song, I just push a button on my watch, no need to unlock the screen and try to guess where the skip button is.
That's pretty lame, having to remove your hands from the wheel to skip a song.
When I'm driving and want to skip a song, I just press the "next track" button on my steering wheel. No need to mess around with phones or watches or remove my hands from the wheel at all.
13% (marijuana), which is significant, and high in the raw numbers (15-25 million is a pretty big market, if we assume watches have the same penetration).
As for cheaper fashion watches that are smart, one of the issues is that much of the "style" part of a smartwatch is simple a download, yeah, there's a little bit to customize, but essentially, a ring or a square of metal, and a band, not too much there.
I don't know how you're going to sell them annually once tey get good enough.
Note: I get the smartwatch thing, just like I did tablets. I WANT one. and like tablets, I have a set of criteria.
Tablets I wanted retina(ish) display, fast enough, and under $200, as son as a nexus 7 v2 refurb was available for $150, I got one.
for smartwatch, I was 36 hours battery (for an honest 24), about half the thickness of the current ones (maybe 3/4), a very good black, and the size of the smaller ones now.
Basically a thinner current gen of the smaller moto 360 with 25-50% more battery for
$250, if companies keep trying, it'll be there soon.
effective fitness tracking would be nice too (the non fitness oriented ones don't really do a good job in reviews).
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
People are bad at self monitoring. They really do believe as that they eat less than they actually do and exercise more. Which is a big part of why diet an exercise doesn't work for most people.
Which doesn't mean they don't work well enough for some people, particularly if all they want to do is maintain the status quo. But if you want to make improvements in your health and you want to control the process, there is no substitute for objective data, consistently collected and ruthlessly analyzed.
From personal experience I'd say that if you concentrate your willpower on measurement and mindfulness, improving your health and fitness becomes almost effortless -- above the very significant effort it takes to log every last calorie you ingest or burn. Eating with a timer so you don't go too fast and never multitasking that with anything else like reading or watching TV helps too.
It's not for everyone, but if you're the kind of person who can honestly and reliably measure everything then I'll work for you.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Except Google etc. drop products all the time. Pebble has only one trick.
I'd say this is yet another case of tech that was not quite good enough to have legs outside the early adopter segment. That's a pretty huge gulf. I once supported a team that went on a two and a half year research project in the Tanzanian bush. That happened to be just around the iPhone came out, so I'd equipped them with Compaq iPaqs. When they returned they were agog at how crude their gear seemed next to what ordinary folks were using.
There's good and bad things about the pebble. Mostly good, but not quite good enough. Most of all it's not very elegant, so it's not something an average person sees and immediately wants. On the other hand many early adopters like me won't buy another one because their devices developed irreparable LCD problems while just out of warranty.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
When it comes to battery life, NOTHING on the market can beat Pebble's first generation Pebble Watch and Pebble Watch Steel. Even Pebble's own second generation Time and Time Steel run time took a hit when they introduced the color screen.
No, it really didn't. The second generation beats it pretty handily. My Pebble Time Steel lasts 10 days on a charge.
You're probably using a watchface that updates seconds. Those faces killed battery life on the first generation too. Pick something that doesn't display every second, and just displays the minutes, and you get the improved battery life they claim in their marketing.
Er... what?
I can't speak for others, but 90% of the functionality of my smart watch still works with my phone off or out of range. Timepiece, timer, stopwatch, alarm, security token... All that still works.
When the phone goes away, it stops being a smartwatch and becomes a regular watch. Which is exactly what I would expect it to do.
Clocks are everywhere - the lower left corner of my computer, every single room at the office, the radio in my cars, my ever present smart phone, in my GPS when I'm trecking back woods - why on earth would I wear a watch?
The allure of a wrist worn multi-function pseudo-smart device is somewhat appealing, till the reality of virtually useless battery life and 50 year old eyes stomp out practicality.
second it is vital to have a wake-up call to shake up the smart watch industry, because clearly they don't know what they're doing, what people want, how things should be priced.
I truly hope that Pebble goes under. it seems to be running by ne'er-do-wells from Canada who have the same bad attitude as the Ashley Madison scoundrels.
It can only be a "bubble" if there is/was a lot of activity surrounding the device...where there was not.
The whole smartwatch idea was a waste of time...an expensive gadget with very limited functionality, most of which was simply duplicating functionality already present in another device you already owned (and in fact, had to own). It was like buying a motor-scooter to drive 100ft to the car you already have.
For all intents and purposes they're little more than a severely crippled phone that costs almost as much as the phone you already have in your pocket. Smartwatches brought very little to the table and were a niche-gadget at best. The use-case just wasn't there for 99% of the population, other than the "brag" factor, and frankly there wasn't even a lot of that.
"Hey dude, look at my new smartwatch."
"Cool, What does it do?"
"It links to my errr phone and umm stuff."
"And what does it do?"
"About one-tenth of the stuff my phone does, but not as well."
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Apparently, people don't replace their watches every 12-24 months like they do with phones.
Who would have thought?
In my opinion, battery life should be measured against quartz watches -- years. Or compared to my self-winding Tag or my Seiko solar quartz -- never, bounded by my lifetime.
The problem with this comparison is that you can do exactly one thing with your quartz watch - check the time (or maybe two, if it has the date).
The utility of a smartwatch is significantly more - thus you will use it more. Comparing it to a phone, people use their phone way more now than they did when all it did was just make calls.
So (while I certainly want month long battery times in my watch) I do think it's a little unfair to compare them against plain ole regular watches which have a much smaller number of functions.
(note: I have no smart watch and occasionally wear a nice Seiko)
They could have been told to train their replacements.
Mostly random stuff.
Pebble isn't Palm like. I have a Pebble and it's annoying. I bought it to use one of those sleep apps that wake you at the best point in your sleep cycle. That works ok, but everything else doesn't.
1) The screen corrupts itself. More than half of the time if I look at the watch face the screen is garbage. You have to press a couple buttons to change the screen a few times then most of it clears away and you can actually read the time. This occurs even if I'm only used the watch part for days, so I assume it isn't a third party app running in the background. There no way to determine if something is running in the background, assuming that's possible (I'm not sure if it is).
2) It doesn't beep, it only vibrates. I wish I knew that before I bought it.
3) It requires a smart phone or tablet. I don't use a smart phone, so I had to borrow someone else's to get the watch up and running. WTF, why can't it connect to a PC/laptop? The interface is bluetooth, there's no reason they couldn't have PC software that lets you control the watch. For this reason alone I will never buy another Pebble device. I use it as a smart watch, not as an extension to a cell phone. As a stand alone smart watch, it's a horrible device because it's not stand alone. I can no longer update the watch (shouldn't need to in the first place), remove any apps, nor install new ones as I don't have a phone to connect it to.
4) The time drifts (maybe this is due to the screen corruption?) I reset the time during the last EST time change and right now the watch is off by 6 minutes.
5) Battery life has gone down and using the vibrate alarms quickly eats up battery power. I recharge every 3 days now,
tl; dr: Fuck off and learn to read more than 2 sentences at a time. Your watch will be near useless if you don't have a smart phone.
I love how the CEO blames the VCs, rather than face the reality that customers might not be interested in the product.
I have a pebble and like it, but damn, it's disappointing. So many hardware features that are not utilized by the software. There is no way to hack it, no way to change anything. Even the menus are insanely underwhelming. I like their general approach to keep it a watch (and am quite happy it doesn't have a touch screen so I can turn the joke around to the people tapping on it), their technology is pretty good (nothing can match that screen and the resulting battery life) and they have managed to build a nice culture around the company. However as a customer I'm just getting increasingly annoyed by the constant spam-mails trying to get me to buy the same watch again or reminding me of the changes they make against my will. As I said the software is not extensible in any way and, oh right, it likes to crash when I need it the most (to tell the damn time!), making me connect it to my phone and do some intransparent updating magic that works half of the time when I'm already running late. There are just many features that would have been trivial to implement and I was sold to expect, but now there's no way to get them. The microphone for example is essentially useless. Granted, the speech to text feature works quite well, but it's still essentially a failiure. I CAN'T use it to reply to text messages with a voice memo (instead relying on the dictation feature, which is slow and almost always gets it wrong) or for dictation, which was my expectation and would have been super simple. Plus there was some confusion about the specs of the device, which Pebble had no interest clearing up, as it seems. I think their (recent?) renaming to"Pebble Technology Corporation" sums it up pretty well. They're pretentious. The watch is a great little device. It's tough, the battery lasts forever, it's water proof, the screen is great. But they still managed to screw up.
What sleep app do you use? I haven't found a good one partly because their store sucks so much.
I use my phone paired with a set of bluetooth headphones and the 5x5 app when I work out. Hardly just walking to and from the fridge.
https://play.google.com/store/...
I do the 5x5 workout then 15 minutes on the cardio setting on a treadmill. It seems to be working as I am sore all the time for now, I expect it will pass soon though.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
So, because you don't see luxury watches at a university or public transit, it is totally not a thing? Did it occur to you that perhaps you are sampling a population that doesn't have the disposable income to be in the group talked about? I don't know too many university students out buying expensive watches to wear to the coffee shop.
I don't buy numerous watches, but I have a nice citizen I bought for $300 that I wear all the time. It is waterproof and charges from solar, so it is one less thing I have to worry about. It also allows me to check the time when I need to, since I can't have my phone inside work.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
The number of people who want to wear a watch is incredibly small.
This is nonsense. The watch market dwarfs the smartphone market by any measure. This is true even after mobile phones became practically ubiquitous more than a decade ago.
The problem is not watches, it is smartwatches. Smartwatches miss on every level that appeals to watch buyers and underwhelms on most smartphone integrations. They are a stupid attempt to lump together two popular accessories based on a misunderstanding of how people want to use either.
As far as watches, there are plenty of times where I don't want to fish around or activate a phone to see what time it is. Unless you are already looking at your smartphone, a wristwatch is always going to be a faster way to check the time or date while being less likely to distract or seem rude.
For some, they are also a fashion statement, a status symbol, a family heirloom, etc. Smartphones fulfill none of these niches.
Destroyed by inferior products from bigger companies with color screens and more integration.
The competition is inferior, but also more featureful and better supported? You have an interesting idea of "superior".
I have an Apple Watch. It's not world-changing, but I really like it. I enjoy using it. I'll buy an improved model if/when it comes out. Before I bought it, I looked at all the options, including Pebble (which a trusted friend recommended very highly). I made my decision because it seemed very likely that Apple Watch would have orders of magnitude more apps written for it, and that it'd be treated like a first-class member of a good ecosystem. It turns out I was right on all counts and I'm glad I chose as I did.
I want there to be lots of smart watch competition, if for no other reason than so that the leaders don't stagnate and rest on their laurels. Pebble has a nice product and I wish them well. I'd have a very hard time calling it superior, though, because it wasn't better at anything I cared about. The battery life is excellent, yes, but my Apple Watch still has 60% battery left when I take it off at night and drop it onto its charging stand (which makes it double as a nightstand clock)./p
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
"Bubble" would imply there were a large number of units sold, then sales across the industry suddenly declined.
Instead we see more and more smart watches being sold quarter after quarter - but Pebble is still seeing a decline in sales. That's not a bubble, that's Pebble losing market share.
I have the newer Pebble color model, and an Apple Watch. I tried using both for a week at a time but the AppleWatch is just way more usable and useful, even needing to charge most nights. It's no mystery that anyone thinking about getting a smart watch is probably just going to get an AppleWatch at this point.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Who the fuck is Pebble?
I was about to say the same thing, words mean things - and a fad isn't a bubble. Even a small one.
That's one reason I hate the culture of hype/clickbait journalism, it's dumbing us down and reducing our vocabulary. That's doubleplusungood.
Well, at one point there were up to 90 wearers of smart watches world wide, I would call that a bubble...
My phone has a fitness tracker. I turned it on for a bit then stopped. Then without the app running it would still bug me that I had only walked 100 steps that day, which was because the phone was immobile on my desk being charged (always being charged) while I was outside walking in the fresh air.
Yeah, I have the second-gen Moto 360.
The biggest drawback is that Android wear is far from fully functional. The connection between the watch and the phone drops out randomly after many hours of use, but there's no hint that it has happened other than the lack of notifications on the watch. The only way to fix the problem seems to be to reboot the phone. There are some huge software feature omissions. Off the top of my head Google Maps does not have transit directions on wear for some reason. I mean, transit directions is one of the primary use cases for a smartwatch... The built-in fitness apps from Google and Motorola measure your heart rate automatically every now end then, but they do not even attempt to break down heart rate measurements into active vs rest. It should be pretty easy to associate each heart rate measurement with a step rate value from the step counter. I'm sure some of the third part fitness apps do this, but it should have been included out of the box.
OK Google barely works. Seems to be a hardware or firmware problem with all second-gen Moto 360's. I don't know if you'd ever want to talk to your wrist anyway.
Battery life is not a big deal since you'll want to charge it every night anyway. Mine is usually at 50-70% by bedtime.
A higher res screen with better contrast would be nice in order to make the watch faces look better. The screen is visibly pixelated. The "flat tyre" screen makes it look bad with any watch face that does not have a black background, so you'll be using black and white watch faces most of the time.
It is a big, fat watch. The large diameter version that I have would look just right if it were about 20% thinner.
If it were $149 it would be a great buy for someone who uses Android and has thick wrists, but at $399 I can't really recommend it. The software really has to get better before you'd want to spend hundreds of dollars on one of these.
Why do you need to track it? Are you turning it in to someone later?
My glasses are Ray-Bans. That being said, I don't wear them to make a fashion statement. I wear them so I can see.
Please don't project your OCD or your desire to make a fashion statement on me. Thanks.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
He must live in Sweden, too--almost nobody here wears wristwatches.
I--like a lot of people, I suspect--quit wearing one 10+ years when I started carrying around a mobile phone.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Pebble too ...
How I compensate for my highly imperfect vision is *my* decision, and is based on *many* factors that I'm not going to bother enumerating for a complete idiot such as yourself.
But I will tell you that "Making a fashion statement" is *not* among them.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
That tells us more about you and which part of society you live in. In my part of Sweden, everyone wears a watch.
Oh, so now your decision is everyone's decision. Got it! You are sad.
And they're easy to spot--they're the ones carrying around Macs.
You are basically saying, that because you don't wear fashionable eyewear, nobody else does either. Which is completely false. Nobody claimed that everyone wears eyewear for fashion, but many do. Just as for watches. Get off your damn high horse.
My Casio watch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... runs for two years on a battery charge.
"A watch is something that you *want* to wear. "
Of all my friends i know only of one that actuly want to wear
a watch. And he want handmade mecanical engenering not some crap that will need daily charging.
How I compensate for my highly imperfect sense of the flow of time is *my* decision, and is based on *many* factors that I'm not going to bother enumerating for a complete idiot such as yourself.
But I will tell you that "Making a fashion statement" is *not* among them.
You are quick to see the faults of the smartwatch, and yet you keep ignoring the real advantages it brings to the table.
Battery life of one week should be adequate for most people, because most people who wear a watch tend to take it off in the shower or in their sleep (or doing dishes, whatever). Connecting the watch to the charging cable is not as much of trouble as you make it.
On the other hand, one killer feature of the smartwatch is that the time is network synced, so you don't ever need to readjust or check its time accuracy. And second, you get the notifications, so you don't need to pull the smartphone every time it vibrates.
That would reflect on his own cluelessness... The evidence is in: Canadians run companies very badly.
No, that's the problem- it isn't. The number of people who want to wear a watch is incredibly small. You have a small number who have to due to job (nurses, for example)- but they don't need a smartwatch, they just need a hands free second hand. You have a small set who wear it as a fashion statement, but they want metals and gems and fancy that will last a long time, not an electronic screen that will last 2 years.
The number of people who actually want a smartwatch is ridiculously small- single digit percents of the population, possibly less. Everyone else is ok taking their phone out of their pocket.
Most people in a business environment wear a watch. The watch saves having to pull out your smart phone to see the time. It is also a tool to let you glance at your wrist to let you know when to move on (end a meeting, etc.) And more than that, it is a quick glance to confirm today's date.
My simple thin Seiko watch comes with a 7 year lifespan battery. My watch weighs a few grams (under an ounce). It has hands, and day of week-date dial. It is rugged, rain resistant, and for my needs, most functional.
My cellphone screen is hardly visible in bright sunlight. Yes, I will keep wearing a watch.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
even with that definition we are NOT gen 1. Microsoft SPOT, fossil, Samsung s9110, the early 2000's Linux watch, truesmart, sony, razor etc.
WTF, shit loads of "smartwatches" have come before the current ones that were "connected devices", using everything from the cellphone network as you pointed out to Bluetooth via your phone.
Thus needing it to do more than tell time and look good is a dead-end argument. A watch needs to do those things extremely well and nothing else.
Actually, if it can do more without compromising those primary functions then that is acceptable. However the only 2 additional functions that ever made any sense to me was a wire to garrotte enemy agents and a high strength magnet to deflect bullets.
Garmin sells every watch it can make and some of them like the Fenix 3 are quite highly desired
Oh, you dont think sports watches are smart watches? You havent tried the latest ones. They SHIT on anything Pebble / Samsung / Apple or Google can come out with. And the Fenix is actually quite a nice fashion item too.
Yeah, I want that much battery in the smaller (and I'd want thinner) model.
I'm willing to do $250 rather than $150, but $399 is too much, especially when adding the nicer bezel and band gets it up to $450ish.
It looks like the early gen ones were crappy enough that that won't necissarily be happening though :/
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg