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A lot of people on this thread have praise for Pebble watches. I never owned one or any of its current competitors. Always got a a gimmicky feeling from those t

A lot of people on this thread have praise for Pebble watches. I never owned one or any of its current competitors. Always got a a gimmicky feeling from those types of devices (i.e. no real added value over a regular watch and smartphone). Genuinely curious: What value was added by a Pebble watch?

s73v3r_ 9y ago
"What value was added by a Pebble watch?" Unlike the vast majority of other smartwatches, I could look at the screen in bright daylight, and actually see it.
- wvenable 9y ago
  Unfortunately it was pretty hard to see other, more common, situations like indoors with indirect lighting.
vvanders 9y ago
No need to drag your phone out of your pocket every time it vibrates. Get directions directly to your wrist while walking/etc.
- dhruvkar 9y ago
  Nice, I can see the value in directions while walking around.
wvenable 9y ago
Never have your ringer on, ever. My phone hasn't made a sound in 4 years.
- dhruvkar 9y ago
  Did it buzz and/or light up? Isn't that just as distracting? Would a phone on silent/vibrate only mode offer the same convenience?
  - wvenable 9y ago
    I'm not distracting anyone else; only I know I'm getting a call/notification. It works even when the phone isn't physically attached to me. And I quickly check/answer the call/notification without having to fish out my phone. It's definitely more convenient to have a smartwatch.
InclinedPlane 9y ago
My phone is always on silent now. It's much better to see notifications on my watch than have to dig out my phone to check. Like most people, most of my notifications aren't immediately actionable. A lot of them are just emails about things I'm already aware of but will be useful later. It's very useful to cut down the degree of interruption (and noise) from notifications day to day. In certain situations it also greatly helps when there's a high rate of notifications due to some activity (sometimes I work events, for example), and there it can be helpful if you are part of a group of folks who are using messaging to coordinate in real-time to be able to not have to dig out your phone constantly to stay caught up. Typically you'll read many more messages than you'll write, so optimizing for reading without breaking your workflow (such as if you're working with your hands, walking, or doing something else) is practically a game changer. Also, for me, I spent many years without a watch because it seemed superfluous during the cell phone era. And for a while when I owned a smartwatch I had only used it during events when I really needed it to keep up with a near continuous communication stream. But I spent a while experimenting with just wearing it everyday, partly to help with maintaining a more consistent schedule, especially with sleep. I have alarms (which just vibrate) on my watch to remind me when it's time to go home from work and when it's near bed time. That may seem like overkill but they are very unobtrusive and they've made it much much easier to avoid staying very late at work or staying up too late for no good reason. Also, I switched to using a cloth (NATO) watch band which makes wearing a watch much more comfortable than with a plastic or even leather band, in my experience. Overall I've been wearing a smartwatch essentially every day for about two years now and I wouldn't go back easily. It's nice to just have a watch when you need it, it's nice to get notifications less intrusively, it's nice being able to leave your phone on silent forever, it's nice having a step counter without having to worry about it, it's nice having a way to control fitness apps like STRAVA so that I can go on a bike ride and see how many miles I've ridden, my average pace, etc. (although they dropped support for pebble unfortunately). The thing I like particularly about pebble, and the reason I haven't upgraded since then even though I could easily afford it (I've even resorted to running an old version of STRAVA on my phone that still works with pebble) is that it's always on (it has a transflective LCD display), has weeklong battery life, and in general it doesn't try to be a 2nd smartphone just a complement to my existing smartphone. Unfortunately, so many other smartwatches seem to fall into the trap of being blingy high-status toys that are expensive and flashy but have super short battery life and displays that are only on sometimes. I wear my pebble when I go hiking or camping, starting from a full charge it works just fine as a regular watch even with my smartphone off.

s73v3r_ 9y ago

"What value was added by a Pebble watch?" Unlike the vast majority of other smartwatches, I could look at the screen in bright daylight, and actually see it.

wvenable 9y ago
Unfortunately it was pretty hard to see other, more common, situations like indoors with indirect lighting.

vvanders 9y ago

No need to drag your phone out of your pocket every time it vibrates. Get directions directly to your wrist while walking/etc.

dhruvkar 9y ago
Nice, I can see the value in directions while walking around.

wvenable 9y ago

Never have your ringer on, ever. My phone hasn't made a sound in 4 years.

dhruvkar 9y ago
Did it buzz and/or light up? Isn't that just as distracting? Would a phone on silent/vibrate only mode offer the same convenience?
- wvenable 9y ago
  I'm not distracting anyone else; only I know I'm getting a call/notification. It works even when the phone isn't physically attached to me. And I quickly check/answer the call/notification without having to fish out my phone. It's definitely more convenient to have a smartwatch.

InclinedPlane 9y ago

My phone is always on silent now. It's much better to see notifications on my watch than have to dig out my phone to check. Like most people, most of my notifications aren't immediately actionable. A lot of them are just emails about things I'm already aware of but will be useful later. It's very useful to cut down the degree of interruption (and noise) from notifications day to day. In certain situations it also greatly helps when there's a high rate of notifications due to some activity (sometimes I work events, for example), and there it can be helpful if you are part of a group of folks who are using messaging to coordinate in real-time to be able to not have to dig out your phone constantly to stay caught up. Typically you'll read many more messages than you'll write, so optimizing for reading without breaking your workflow (such as if you're working with your hands, walking, or doing something else) is practically a game changer. Also, for me, I spent many years without a watch because it seemed superfluous during the cell phone era. And for a while when I owned a smartwatch I had only used it during events when I really needed it to keep up with a near continuous communication stream. But I spent a while experimenting with just wearing it everyday, partly to help with maintaining a more consistent schedule, especially with sleep. I have alarms (which just vibrate) on my watch to remind me when it's time to go home from work and when it's near bed time. That may seem like overkill but they are very unobtrusive and they've made it much much easier to avoid staying very late at work or staying up too late for no good reason. Also, I switched to using a cloth (NATO) watch band which makes wearing a watch much more comfortable than with a plastic or even leather band, in my experience. Overall I've been wearing a smartwatch essentially every day for about two years now and I wouldn't go back easily. It's nice to just have a watch when you need it, it's nice to get notifications less intrusively, it's nice being able to leave your phone on silent forever, it's nice having a step counter without having to worry about it, it's nice having a way to control fitness apps like STRAVA so that I can go on a bike ride and see how many miles I've ridden, my average pace, etc. (although they dropped support for pebble unfortunately). The thing I like particularly about pebble, and the reason I haven't upgraded since then even though I could easily afford it (I've even resorted to running an old version of STRAVA on my phone that still works with pebble) is that it's always on (it has a transflective LCD display), has weeklong battery life, and in general it doesn't try to be a 2nd smartphone just a complement to my existing smartphone. Unfortunately, so many other smartwatches seem to fall into the trap of being blingy high-status toys that are expensive and flashy but have super short battery life and displays that are only on sometimes. I wear my pebble when I go hiking or camping, starting from a full charge it works just fine as a regular watch even with my smartphone off.