Imagine a watch that connects to your phone via Bluetooth. A watch that can control your music, track how many miles you have run or biked, tells you the weather; a watch where you can view your text messages and e-mails, where you can see when someone’s calling, and where you can receive alerts from your phone. Have I caught your attention yet?
What if I told you that I’m wearing that watch right now and it’s the coolest freakin’ thing ever. I never have to remove my phone from my pocket (thus saving battery life). The watch that I’m wearing right now is called Pebble. It is a “smart watch.” Pebble first started out as a Kickstarter project. If you don’t know what Kickstarter is, shame on you. It is a website that uses crowd sourced funding to get projects paid for and into market. It’s awesome. Anyway, back to the Pebble. Initially the Pebble team asked for $100,00 to get their project funded…after the 45 days were over to raise the money, they reached an astonishing amount of $10 million. They had over 85,000 backers that wanted this watch. I backed the project then and it was $110. It is now priced at MSRP of $150. My money was well spent. One, because I love watches and, two, it is so convenient to glance at your watch to see your texts or e-mails.
Because there were 85,000 watches to be made, the Pebble team’s projected timeline of getting watches to customers by September (started in April) was set back. They kept us updated throughout the entire process and I finally received my watch a year later. When I got the box, I couldn’t wait to tear into it.
The packaging was simple and beautiful. It was designed to protect the watch and it did its job well. I opened up the package and there it was, my watch that I waited for a year to get.
I followed the instructions to get my watch connected with my phone. It was a fairly easy process.
- Download the app from the Apple AppStore or Google Play Store.
- Open the app.
- Turn the Pebble watch on.
- Click Connect.
- Wait a few seconds for watch to communicate with the phone.
- Bam! Connected and ready to go. 🙂
I also downloaded another app called Pebble Notifier. This app gave me more control over the notifications I received that the official Pebble app. I have both of them running on my phone. I first downloaded some watch faces. My favorite one is Simplicity because it displays the time and date. As of now you can only download watch faces. The Pebble team are going to release a watch designing SDK soon and I can’t wait to design my own watch faces.
They are also going to release an SDK that will allow the users design their own watch apps. My guess is they want to focus on shipping out all the watches first before focusing on the software development. As of now I am pretty content with what is available but I’m antsy because I want that SDK kit. As far as how to operate the watch it is very simple:
There are 4 buttons and a charging port. The top left button is basically the “back” button. The right side has three buttons, you use up, down and then select. The charging port is really nifty because you can recharge the watch via the provided cable. A full charge takes approximately 3.5 hours and it will last for 7 1/2 days. Oh! I forgot a vital thing about this watch…it vibrates. When you receive any notification, the watch will vibrate. I should just launch into the watch features (because it’s loaded);
- 144 x 168 pixel display (black and white e-paper)
- Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR and 4.0
- Vibrating motor
- 4 buttons
- 3 axis accelerometer with gester detection
- Backlight
- 5M water resistant
So as you can see it’s pretty loaded for the future when people start designing apps. With the accelerometer, I can turn the backlight on with a shake of the wrist. Pretty nifty. Hardware wise I have absolutely no complaints about this watch. The only issues I have with this fantastic watch is software, which I’m not going to rag on because watches still need to be shipped out. I’m sure in the next few months these software issues will be solved. Basically I would like to go back to messages if I don’t see them right away because as soon as you get a new message, the other messages go away. So you can only view one message at a time. There is also no battery indicator, it only shows when the battery is low. Those are my two biggest gripes with the watch, other than that. I’m as happy as can be, not to mention the envious stares I get from people. So go to the Pebble website and check it out. Order one and be awesome. 🙂 The pictures below are just show more of the unboxing and connecting the watch.
Below is the video that was posted on Kickstarter to introduce the Pebble.
[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/40128933 w=400&h=300]
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