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Pebble Unveils Pebble 2, Pebble Time 2, and Pebble Core Smartwatches (kickstarter.com)
Pebble on Tuesday unveiled its latest line of wearable devices. The company announced the Pebble 2 -- a sleeker successor to the company's four-year-old Pebble watch -- and the Pebble Time 2, which comes with a large colour display and steel frame. Both the devices are up on Kickstarter, and scheduled to be shipped later this year. The company also announced the Pebble Core, a square-shaped timepiece which supports 3G, GPS, and Bluetooth connections and lets users stream music using Spotify and make emergency calls without the need of a smartphone. The Pebble 2 and the Pebble Time 2 come equipped with heart-rate sensors, a feature that was missing from the earlier Pebble smartwatches. The Pebble Core runs Android 5.0 Lollipop, and also has a 4GB storage which users can use when they don't have a flash drive in handy. The Pebble 2 is priced at $99, whereas the Pebble Time 2 will cost you $169. The Pebble Core is priced at $69. Pebble's new devices will be up on Kickstarter for 36 days, should you feel the urge to support the company. However, it is worth noting that in within hours, Pebble has received more money than it had asked for.
I was really excited when the Pebble was first announced. I was tired of taking my phone out of my pocket for every little message/alert and when I wanted to know the time. It was sleek, lightweight and seemed to have support for my iPhone. I never ended up buying one, mostly because I couldn't afford it or justify buying one, as it's kind of a luxury, I guess. This new model looks even sweeter, I might have to buy one. I don't think I have any use for the Pebble Core, but I think the Pebble guys got the smart watch right, unlike a certain fruit based company that made a mostly useless, but fashionable piece of hardware. It looks great in photos, but in real life, on your wrist, I think it's not very impressive, or useful. I hope these start shipping sooner than later so I can give it a whirl.
640k ought to be enough for anyone.
Why should I care about this?
You absolutely shouldn't, but that doesn't mean other people don't.
They're obviously far inferior to the Apple Watch.
I don't think that's the point as far as Pebble is concerned. Not everyone needs all of the functionality of an Apple Watch. I have a Pebble Steel, and it does exactly what I need it to...passive notifications delivered to me with a battery life spanning multiple days. I don't need a color display, speech control, or a touch screen.
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
The others are just new generations of Pebbles. The Core however is something altogether different.
It looks like a device to take the whole "talking to the network" functionality off of your "phone" and put it into is own displayless device. The implication of this is that there's now no need to "upgrade" this component constantly. The only time you'd need a new one is when there's a newer faster cell network tech you want to connect to. But even when that happens, its only a $69 upgrade.
If you want to do stuff like run apps, or surf the web, you can do that with a separate device, which you can "upgrade" whenever you want a new display technology. That device could have the form-factor of a phone, or a full-blown tablet, or something in-between. Whatever you want. But it now has nothing to do with a cell carrier whatsoever. The Cell carrier only interacts with your $69 Core unit.
This completely changes the way we (well, I at least) think about cellurlar tech. Its going to take some time to fully wrap my head around it.