For those who haven’t heard about it, Pebble is a smart watch with e-paper technology for iPhone and Android. The the basic idea is, we have a watch that can also display our incoming text messages and the caller ID of incoming calls. It connects to our iPhone or Android phone using bluetooth technology, and it’s capable to control music playback (play, pause, next, prev). The usage of e-paper technology makes this watch can lasts 7+ days with a single charge (according to the official statement from Pebble website). To make things more interesting, Pebble is fully customizable. There is an SDK available, people can create their own watchfaces or even a small app. Yep, you can play simple snake game on your watch now.
Pebble started as a Kickstarter project back in 2012. It got fully funded in May 2012 as one of the most successful Kickstarter project in history. However, as they receive a whole lot more responses than they ever imagined, their initial plan to make it a small production must change. Just to create enough units for Kickstarter backers, they have to make more than 60,000 watches. And so the mass-production process began.
I personally jumped on the hype of Pebble by the end of 2012. Kickstarter already ended and the only option available is pre-order. And so I did my pre-order, fully paid the product by January 2013, and waited for months for the product to arrive. Granted, Pebble team posted their updates regularly so we know what caused all the delay. This is probably my longest waiting period for an online order after I fully paid the product, and probably all the waiting time naturally got the expectation up unnecessarily high.
On 12 June 2013, I finally got an email that my Pebble is shipping. Was so excited to the point of I even remember the tracking number they provided. For my case (I live in Australia), they ship the product using Singpost. Not sure about shipment to other countries.
Yesterday evening, I got a delivery pick-up card from AusPost (so it took 9 days for delivery). Pick-up card is normal for delivery from overseas, sometimes we have to pick up our post at the nearest post office. By looking at the pick-up card, I immediately recognized that it’s my Pebble’s tracking number. It was 16:35, Friday and most post offices will close at 17:00. Strangely, the pick-up card stated that I need to collect my post not from my nearest post office (3 mins walk), so I have to walk to another post office (20 mins walk). And so I rushed to collect my Pebble, almost running. In my thought, if I couldn’t manage to get there before 5pm, the next day is weekend and I will have to wait until Monday.
Lucky, I got there by 16:55, got my Pebble, then just remembered that the post office will also open half-day on Saturdays (so actually I didn’t need to run). But anyway, I got my Pebble after 6 months waiting, and it’s all good.
The packaging of Pebble is simple but nice. No surprises here as I already read some other people talking about their Pebbles and I got to see some photos already. Opening the package, we can see the smart watch, along with charging cable. And that’s all we get in our Pebble shipment. The watch is well-built. If feels light. And the buttons are easy to press. There are four buttons in Pebble. One on the left side (back button). Three on the right side (up, select and down).
One little surprise, I got Kickstarter Edition unit ! (despite being “just” a pre-order customer)
As a person who once tried to wear iPod nano as a watch (the 6th gen), Pebble looks so much better thanks to its size and weight.
Since I already have Pebble app installed in my iPhone, all I need to do is to turn on the bluetooth, pair the watch, and followed some instructions from Pebble app. Within few minutes, my Pebble is up and running.
Comparison of Pebble and iPod nano (6th gen).
Now, first impression, the e-paper display looks nice. And I love how I can freely change how my watch will look like by changing watchfaces. Pebble comes with its default watchface, and we can install additional watchfaces from Pebble app in our iPhone. There’s not much choices from the “official” library of watchfaces, I should say. So I went to mypebblefaces.com and downloaded some community-created watchfaces. There are tons of it. Since the SDK is available, I guess people had already started creating their own watchfaces and/or apps since months ago.
Downloaded few watchfaces that I like. Then email those files to myself so I can open it in my iPhone (the fastest and easiest way I can think of). Installing custom watchfaces is easy, and does not require jailbroken iPhone.
Love my new watchfaces now. But I immediately realizes three main issues here. First, there is no display in the Pebble showing the percentage of remaining battery. This is very important if people would like to plan a long trip and not everyday he can charge his watch. Yes one charge will last 7+ days, but still we need to be able to plan our charging schedule. I saw some watchfaces/apps has the concept of this, but from what I can found so far, none of them works. And I think this information of remaining battery should come built-in from Pebble’s own OS, not from third party apps.
Next issue, somehow I find the display is too dim for my taste. Yes it’s still readable, but during my few hours of testing, I need more time and concentration to figure out the time displayed there compared to an ordinary watch. There is a backlight, which might be useful at night, but constantly have to push a button for backlight defeats the whole purpose of smart watch : to have all the important information viewable at a glance. I played around with setting and couldn’t find a way to make it brighter. Maybe because it’s an e-paper technology, not a LCD display. But LCD display will drain battery a lot faster. Choices have consequences, I guess.
Now, third issue, I can only install 8 custom watchfaces at a time. Yes I know it can’t be unlimited. But 8 is way too small number for me. I had to delete one watchface/app before installing a new one. I suppose this will greatly limit the possibility of this great concept of customizable watch. A watch you can do anything with, but only 8 functions and/or display at a time, doesn’t sound very good to me. Not sure whether this is hardware limitation or software choice. If it’s hardware, they should have planned it better. If it’s software issue, then I do really hope they will increase this limit soon.
My favorite Pebble watchfaces: Gatekeeper, Simplicity Plus, Glow, Futura Weather, Timely, Modern
Other than these three issues, Pebble is a great watch. Based from my own experience in actually wearing it, compared to various sources that I read, it’s still the best smart watch available in the market. At least up to now. Fairly speaking, Pebble delivers everything it promised (it’s just… there are no surprises here). Perhaps, as I mentioned earlier, my expectation got raised unrealistically high during the waiting time, and all the review readings removed all the surprises of this product.
Pebble will definitely become my main watch from now on. And I’m looking forward to see how developers will create exciting app to enhance its usefulness.
update 28 Jun 2013:
1. It has been five days, this morning my Pebble’s battery finally runs out of juice. During the 5 days, sometimes I switched off Bluetooth to save my iPhone battery. So I guess Pebble’s battery usage remains the same regardless whether our Pebble is connected to iPhone or not.
2. Bluetooth connection is stable. But I notice that setting Bluetooth on drains my iPhone battery quite significantly, mostly because it still uses Bluetooth 2.1. This should improve when the Bluetooth 4 chip is activated.
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