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Pebble seems to be the only watch company that I feel understands what a smartwatch should be. It feels like everyone else is trying to make a phone replacement

Pebble seems to be the only watch company that I feel understands what a smartwatch should be. It feels like everyone else is trying to make a phone replacement. Pebbles are more of an extension to your phone. Sure it can do some things without the phone, but it isn't trying to make calls, access mobile data with its own sim, use GPS. Those kinds of watches feel like they are designed for athletes who want to leave their phone at home. I'm not that guy. My phone comes with me everywhere, so why would I want phone-light on my wrist when my phone in my pocket can do it better? Pebble also gets battery life. Pebble's 2 weeks compared to 1 day on my pixel watch 3. Want to use that cool sleep tracking feature on your smartwatch? Guess what? Its on the charger.

Pfhortune 9mo ago
Exactly this. Pebbles feel like they were built from the ground up to be a watch, whereas the Apple Watch and Android Wear feel like they started from a phone and stripped things away until it became a watch. Separately, it baffles me that Garmin, despite them having also built a watch OS from the ground up, never understood watch/limited-button UX. Their Instinct and Forerunner watches have all sorts of wonky, hidden and arcane interactions with buttons (long press this to X, press this here to Y). Pebble proves that a simple, shallow, and linear menu system works great!
- sahila 9mo ago
  > Pebble proves that a simple, shallow, and linear menu system works great! Hard to say this is true when Garmin watches are far more successful than Pebble. That aside, the forerunner is a sports watch first where you want lots of physical buttons that don't get bothered by sweat. The better Garmin comparison is the Venu series which only have two buttons https://www.garmin.com/en-US/c/wearables-smartwatches/?series=BRAND18900 https://www.garmin.com/en-US/c/wearables-smartwatches/?serie....
  - apparent 9mo ago
    > Hard to say this is true when Garmin watches are far more successful than Pebble This may not be true for long, honestly. Pebble hasn't made watches in years, and I wouldn't be surprised if within 2-4 years they were selling more units than Garmin. The Pebble UI is a dream, especially compared to Garmin. I could never get my parents to get a Garmin, but a Pebble could totally work for them. Super intuitive, hardly needs charging, gives them notifications when they're in a different room than their phone, always-on/always-readable screen.
    - mirsadm 9mo ago
      Very unlikely. The reason Garmin watches are successful is because they've carved out an audience (athletes, health and exercise focused). Pebble might have a nice UI but most people would be better off with an Apple Watch or whatever the current flavour of the week is on Android
      - apparent 9mo ago
        I think a lot of people bought AWs because they seemed like the right thing to get, integrated easily, and were more or less easy to use. But most people I know who have AWs don't use most of the functionalities they provide. If you went up to 20 random AW wearers and ask them if they would give up a bunch of features they don't use (like the awful Siri assistant) in exchange for 15-30x the battery life, I think a lot of them would say yes. Add onto that the fact that Pebbles are cheaper than AWs, and I think we're going to see a non-trivial number of people "upgrading" from AWs to Pebbles when the batteries start to degrade.
        riversflow 9mo ago
        > like the awful Siri assistant Ironically, I just talked to all my mates about our Apple Watches, and universally Siri on your wrist for setting timers and replying to messages with voice, completely hands free, was the killer app that everyone agreed on. Setting a timer is as simple as bringing your wrist to your face and saying the amount of time.
  - Pfhortune 9mo ago
    I'm making a subjective comparison here, true. But spend fifteen minutes with each company's watches and you'll see what I mean. > Hard to say this is true when Garmin watches are far more successful than Pebble. A company's success != UX efficacy. That's like saying Apple's products had terrible UX in 1997 because they were flailing up against their Microsoft counterparts of the same era, despite the fact that Apple's UX guidelines of the nineties are regularly raised here as a rubric for UX evaluation, even against Apple's own modern products! > The better Garmin comparison is the Venu series which only have two buttons I'm not sure you've ever used a Pebble, but Pebble OS is entirely button-driven with four buttons, whereas the Forerunner and Instinct have five. I've never used a Venu, but isn't it primarily touchscreen-driven? (yes, the upcoming pebble watches do have touchscreens, but I believe that's just for use in apps and watchfaces, not navigating the system)
- glitchc 9mo ago
  Well, Garmin is a GPS company, not a watch company. The watch is simply the most popular form factor.
- utopcell 9mo ago
  Pebbles were originally built to be bicyclist accessories but they pivoted to smart watches when they realized that the market opportunity was larger.
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  - jolmg 9mo ago
    You might be talking about Garmin now-smartwatch devices. The first Forerunners look like something you'd strap on a bike's handlebars. They weren't referred to as smartwatches, but as "personal trainers" and didn't seem to display the time-of-day to classify as a watch. Pebbles and the predecessor InPulse seem to always have been smartwatches, though the need seems to have started by wanting to avoid taking out one's phone while on the bike. Garmin pivoted, but I don't think Pebble did.
    - utopcell 9mo ago
      How was the Pebble born? - Twitch https://share.google/jEulfpqJNh6S5yBuL https://share.google/jEulfpqJNh6S5yBuL
wolvoleo 9mo ago
I love the bells and whistles watches and I'm not an athlete. I love it in case I forget my phone, I still get all the notifications. I can pay with it. I can watch my home security. Something like the pebble wouldn't work for me anymore. Despite being a first day Kickstarter backer. The charging doesn't bother me because for me a watch is mainly for when I'm not home.
majesticmerc 9mo ago
I'm a runner, so obviously biased, but I implore everyone (to the point of annoyance) to check out some of the cheaper Garmin smart watches. They use MIP displays so the battery life runs about 2 weeks, you get phone notifications, the ability to find your phone, sleep scoring, step counting, heart rate monitoring. Then there's the obvious GPS run recording which you don't have to use. There's more stuff as well but I don't really use that like NFC card payments, music controls, but overall it hits a nice balance of features versus battery life. For the sake of fair comparison, my wife had an Apple watch, which looked better and had way more features, but the 1 day battery life became such a frustration it sat in a dresser drawer. My last Garmin lasted 5 years with daily use and sports, and only died because I took it into the sea on vacation after the waterproof seal failed on the screen. I replaced it the day I got back with the successor model and couldn't be happier. I'm not shilling for Garmin (or at least not being paid to), I love the Pebbles and I'm very much looking forward to the launch as I want a more fashionable smartwatch. Apple, Samsung et al have kinda tainted the smartphone market with feature vomit, when in fact there's a lot of good stuff out there, it's just not as hip.
- 1bpp 9mo ago
  Seconding the Garmin watches, been using a Forerunner for years and the battery still lasts over a week with an always-on display. Does about as much as a Pebble and even has a documented SDK with sideloading. The refresh rate is very low but totally fine for a watch, I think newer models have much better displays. The only thing I wish were better is exporting all the tracked health data in a format I can use myself. Using the official tool for that I couldn't even get heart rate data.
  - mkesper 9mo ago
    Maybe the (partial) support of Gadgetbridge is sufficient: https://gadgetbridge.org/gadgets/wearables/garmin-watches/ https://gadgetbridge.org/gadgets/wearables/garmin-watches/
- apparent 9mo ago
  I find the Garmin UI to be awful, and the Pebble UI to be a breeze. Also, Garmins are pretty bulky compared to Pebbles, and many of them don't have buttons that can be used to control music, for those of us who find touchscreen interfaces to be lacking.
cush 9mo ago
Garmin does this too, but for a completely different demographic
Al-Khwarizmi 9mo ago
I've never tried Pebbles but Huawei also has the same philosophy, mine has 2 weeks battery life and does all I need (which also doesn't include replacing the phone). I don't understand why people would buy watches with 1 or 2 days of battery life.
bfrog 9mo ago
Garmin has been doing this for years now. The watches are built incredibly well and are well worth the cost.
- exq 9mo ago
  I use a Fenix 7x pro solar and it's one of my favorite pieces of hardware right now. I dread having yet another item to charge and keep track of, but this thing lasts a full month if I'm not actively tracking workouts. My only complaint is it's not hackable like a pebble, but honestly I'm not sure what functionality I'd add to it, other than Doom for lols. I really just use it to tell the time, see phone notifications as they arrive, altitude/baro/compass when outdoorsing, and for heart rate tracking. Works great with Gadgetbridge, handles the abuse of my physical job, and doesn't get in my way like other smart watches I've tried, where I had to remember to charge it every other day or I couldn't track my sleep. This watch lives on my wrist and tells me days in advance when it needs a charge!
utopcell 9mo ago
Google has really stepped up their game with the Pixel Watch 4 in terms of battery life. I easily get at least 3 days, compared to < 1 day for my Pixel Watch 3.
eweise 9mo ago
If it doesn't tell me distance to the hole, then its just a pretty bracelet.
- vasco 9mo ago
  How far can you stretch your arm?
Forgeties79 9mo ago
Love my core 2 duo. I’m a light user so my battery pulls almost 3 weeks. It’s fun to use too tbh
apitman 9mo ago
What I want is a smart watch that lets me map hardware buttons and rotary knobs to arbitrary actions on my Android phone. For example I want to be able to use the knob to control the volume of whatever I'm listening to on my phone. I worked on a prototype of this idea back in school[0] Does Pebble support this? [0]: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lTOxHxHFjwJXeCLROAPf6OJDonKZ9pliw2NMhQ-8QLw/edit?usp=drivesdk https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lTOxHxHFjwJXeCLROAPf6OJD...
- Groxx 9mo ago
  No rotary dial, and... I think no, the closest you'd get is to run an app on the watch (so you can capture the three not-"back" buttons) plus a companion app on your phone to receive events from it and do [stuff]. But that'd mean you'd have to open the app on your watch to control what's on your phone. The media controls might be able to do the volume part automatically out of the box though? I forget exactly what their UI did when I had music playing, but I think it had volume and skip controls. That's nowhere near arbitrary control though.
TulliusCicero 9mo ago
I'm not much of an athlete, and I don't have a smartwatch, but the idea of leaving my phone at home sometimes without being totally disconnected from comms does appeal to me somewhat.
- sjw987 9mo ago
  Would that not just be replacing a phone with another smaller phone strapped to your wrist? Doesn't the fact that you are connected and communicable make whatever device you choose to use essentially a phone? I will say, if it is possible, going out without any form of internet/comms enabled device can be very liberating. We all used to do it, and I think many of us have gotten used to the idea that we need to be on call or have some sort of utility in case of emergencies that are very unlikely to happen.
agile-gift0262 9mo ago
exactly this. My Galaxy Wear sits in a drawer 10 months per year, as I only use it as a wrist-strapped mini-smartphone when I go to the beach. It's too bulky and cumbersome to wear every day. The Pebble Time 2 I plan to use every day, as it does exactly what I want in a smartwatch sans wireless payments
pjmlp 9mo ago
I would say Amazfit are great, I don't need an app store and a programmable watch to do cool stuff in whatever programming language on weekends. The set of pre-installed apps, integration with watch messages, call notifications and media controls are enough. However maybe I am old fashioned, the oldie Timex and Casio smartwatches were also good enough for me.
- apparent 9mo ago
  I like Amazfit well enough but I found the UI to be English-second and therefore a bit confusing. Also, I don't trust a company like Amazfit to have my GPS location at all times.
  - pjmlp 9mo ago
    It works alright for me. I would rather not trust non-European companies with my data, given current geopolitics, but here we are.
Someone 9mo ago
> Pebble seems to be the only watch company that I feel understands what a smartwatch should be. So, why do you think Pebble didn’t succeed? I think that’s because you’re a minority, and demand for a Pebble-like product is too low at the price point where it would be a viable business.
- Larrikin 9mo ago
  Google bought them and killed them. The same thing is happening to Fitbit
  - Someone 9mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_(watch)#Closing_of_Pebble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_(watch)#Closing_of_Pebb...: “On December 7, 2016, Pebble Technology filed for insolvency[82] with Fitbit acquiring much of the company's assets and some employees.”
  - apparent 9mo ago
    Google did not buy and kill them. They died (for financial reasons) before they were sold for parts to Fitbit, who were later bought by Google.
- apparent 9mo ago
  IIRC they got out over their skis financially. Eric did a podcast interview where he talked about what went wrong, I think it was this one. [1] He's self-funding this company and doing pre-orders, which means that risk should not exist this time around. But to GP's point, I agree that Pebble knows what smartwatches are, and they make the best ones. But it turns out that lots of people want (or have been convinced by marketing that they want) a wrist-worn computer, which has been a boon for Apple/Google. I think the new Pebbles will convert a lot of people because the battery life skips two orders of magnitude (in the time sense), going from ~1 day to ~1 month. That and the slick user interface should be attractive to folks who are considering upgrading their AWs as the battery degrades. Some will realize that they don't need all the computer-y functionality that the AW provides and just go with a Pebble. The fact that they're a bit cheaper, and available in a nice-looking round case is an added bonus. Like a lot of people, I assumed I would like AWs, and that they would continue to evolve to better and better battery life. But they haven't approached Pebble territory and I can see that the functionality they provide is not worth the tradeoff for me. I just don't care to tap at a computer on my wrist. Maybe other people do, but I'd bet that Eric's going to win over a lot of AW users who realized they are overkill. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc5I0rM2ORc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc5I0rM2ORc

Pfhortune 9mo ago

Exactly this. Pebbles feel like they were built from the ground up to be a watch, whereas the Apple Watch and Android Wear feel like they started from a phone and stripped things away until it became a watch. Separately, it baffles me that Garmin, despite them having also built a watch OS from the ground up, never understood watch/limited-button UX. Their Instinct and Forerunner watches have all sorts of wonky, hidden and arcane interactions with buttons (long press this to X, press this here to Y). Pebble proves that a simple, shallow, and linear menu system works great!

sahila 9mo ago
> Pebble proves that a simple, shallow, and linear menu system works great! Hard to say this is true when Garmin watches are far more successful than Pebble. That aside, the forerunner is a sports watch first where you want lots of physical buttons that don't get bothered by sweat. The better Garmin comparison is the Venu series which only have two buttons https://www.garmin.com/en-US/c/wearables-smartwatches/?series=BRAND18900 https://www.garmin.com/en-US/c/wearables-smartwatches/?serie....
- apparent 9mo ago
  > Hard to say this is true when Garmin watches are far more successful than Pebble This may not be true for long, honestly. Pebble hasn't made watches in years, and I wouldn't be surprised if within 2-4 years they were selling more units than Garmin. The Pebble UI is a dream, especially compared to Garmin. I could never get my parents to get a Garmin, but a Pebble could totally work for them. Super intuitive, hardly needs charging, gives them notifications when they're in a different room than their phone, always-on/always-readable screen.
  - mirsadm 9mo ago
    Very unlikely. The reason Garmin watches are successful is because they've carved out an audience (athletes, health and exercise focused). Pebble might have a nice UI but most people would be better off with an Apple Watch or whatever the current flavour of the week is on Android
    - apparent 9mo ago
      I think a lot of people bought AWs because they seemed like the right thing to get, integrated easily, and were more or less easy to use. But most people I know who have AWs don't use most of the functionalities they provide. If you went up to 20 random AW wearers and ask them if they would give up a bunch of features they don't use (like the awful Siri assistant) in exchange for 15-30x the battery life, I think a lot of them would say yes. Add onto that the fact that Pebbles are cheaper than AWs, and I think we're going to see a non-trivial number of people "upgrading" from AWs to Pebbles when the batteries start to degrade.
      - riversflow 9mo ago
        > like the awful Siri assistant Ironically, I just talked to all my mates about our Apple Watches, and universally Siri on your wrist for setting timers and replying to messages with voice, completely hands free, was the killer app that everyone agreed on. Setting a timer is as simple as bringing your wrist to your face and saying the amount of time.
- Pfhortune 9mo ago
  I'm making a subjective comparison here, true. But spend fifteen minutes with each company's watches and you'll see what I mean. > Hard to say this is true when Garmin watches are far more successful than Pebble. A company's success != UX efficacy. That's like saying Apple's products had terrible UX in 1997 because they were flailing up against their Microsoft counterparts of the same era, despite the fact that Apple's UX guidelines of the nineties are regularly raised here as a rubric for UX evaluation, even against Apple's own modern products! > The better Garmin comparison is the Venu series which only have two buttons I'm not sure you've ever used a Pebble, but Pebble OS is entirely button-driven with four buttons, whereas the Forerunner and Instinct have five. I've never used a Venu, but isn't it primarily touchscreen-driven? (yes, the upcoming pebble watches do have touchscreens, but I believe that's just for use in apps and watchfaces, not navigating the system)
glitchc 9mo ago
Well, Garmin is a GPS company, not a watch company. The watch is simply the most popular form factor.
utopcell 9mo ago
Pebbles were originally built to be bicyclist accessories but they pivoted to smart watches when they realized that the market opportunity was larger.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- jolmg 9mo ago
  You might be talking about Garmin now-smartwatch devices. The first Forerunners look like something you'd strap on a bike's handlebars. They weren't referred to as smartwatches, but as "personal trainers" and didn't seem to display the time-of-day to classify as a watch. Pebbles and the predecessor InPulse seem to always have been smartwatches, though the need seems to have started by wanting to avoid taking out one's phone while on the bike. Garmin pivoted, but I don't think Pebble did.
  - utopcell 9mo ago
    How was the Pebble born? - Twitch https://share.google/jEulfpqJNh6S5yBuL https://share.google/jEulfpqJNh6S5yBuL

wolvoleo 9mo ago

I love the bells and whistles watches and I'm not an athlete. I love it in case I forget my phone, I still get all the notifications. I can pay with it. I can watch my home security. Something like the pebble wouldn't work for me anymore. Despite being a first day Kickstarter backer. The charging doesn't bother me because for me a watch is mainly for when I'm not home.

majesticmerc 9mo ago

I'm a runner, so obviously biased, but I implore everyone (to the point of annoyance) to check out some of the cheaper Garmin smart watches. They use MIP displays so the battery life runs about 2 weeks, you get phone notifications, the ability to find your phone, sleep scoring, step counting, heart rate monitoring. Then there's the obvious GPS run recording which you don't have to use. There's more stuff as well but I don't really use that like NFC card payments, music controls, but overall it hits a nice balance of features versus battery life. For the sake of fair comparison, my wife had an Apple watch, which looked better and had way more features, but the 1 day battery life became such a frustration it sat in a dresser drawer. My last Garmin lasted 5 years with daily use and sports, and only died because I took it into the sea on vacation after the waterproof seal failed on the screen. I replaced it the day I got back with the successor model and couldn't be happier. I'm not shilling for Garmin (or at least not being paid to), I love the Pebbles and I'm very much looking forward to the launch as I want a more fashionable smartwatch. Apple, Samsung et al have kinda tainted the smartphone market with feature vomit, when in fact there's a lot of good stuff out there, it's just not as hip.

1bpp 9mo ago
Seconding the Garmin watches, been using a Forerunner for years and the battery still lasts over a week with an always-on display. Does about as much as a Pebble and even has a documented SDK with sideloading. The refresh rate is very low but totally fine for a watch, I think newer models have much better displays. The only thing I wish were better is exporting all the tracked health data in a format I can use myself. Using the official tool for that I couldn't even get heart rate data.
- mkesper 9mo ago
  Maybe the (partial) support of Gadgetbridge is sufficient: https://gadgetbridge.org/gadgets/wearables/garmin-watches/ https://gadgetbridge.org/gadgets/wearables/garmin-watches/
apparent 9mo ago
I find the Garmin UI to be awful, and the Pebble UI to be a breeze. Also, Garmins are pretty bulky compared to Pebbles, and many of them don't have buttons that can be used to control music, for those of us who find touchscreen interfaces to be lacking.

cush 9mo ago

Garmin does this too, but for a completely different demographic

Al-Khwarizmi 9mo ago

I've never tried Pebbles but Huawei also has the same philosophy, mine has 2 weeks battery life and does all I need (which also doesn't include replacing the phone). I don't understand why people would buy watches with 1 or 2 days of battery life.

bfrog 9mo ago

Garmin has been doing this for years now. The watches are built incredibly well and are well worth the cost.

exq 9mo ago
I use a Fenix 7x pro solar and it's one of my favorite pieces of hardware right now. I dread having yet another item to charge and keep track of, but this thing lasts a full month if I'm not actively tracking workouts. My only complaint is it's not hackable like a pebble, but honestly I'm not sure what functionality I'd add to it, other than Doom for lols. I really just use it to tell the time, see phone notifications as they arrive, altitude/baro/compass when outdoorsing, and for heart rate tracking. Works great with Gadgetbridge, handles the abuse of my physical job, and doesn't get in my way like other smart watches I've tried, where I had to remember to charge it every other day or I couldn't track my sleep. This watch lives on my wrist and tells me days in advance when it needs a charge!

utopcell 9mo ago

Google has really stepped up their game with the Pixel Watch 4 in terms of battery life. I easily get at least 3 days, compared to < 1 day for my Pixel Watch 3.

eweise 9mo ago

If it doesn't tell me distance to the hole, then its just a pretty bracelet.

vasco 9mo ago
How far can you stretch your arm?

Forgeties79 9mo ago

Love my core 2 duo. I’m a light user so my battery pulls almost 3 weeks. It’s fun to use too tbh

apitman 9mo ago

What I want is a smart watch that lets me map hardware buttons and rotary knobs to arbitrary actions on my Android phone. For example I want to be able to use the knob to control the volume of whatever I'm listening to on my phone. I worked on a prototype of this idea back in school[0] Does Pebble support this? [0]: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lTOxHxHFjwJXeCLROAPf6OJDonKZ9pliw2NMhQ-8QLw/edit?usp=drivesdk https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lTOxHxHFjwJXeCLROAPf6OJD...

Groxx 9mo ago
No rotary dial, and... I think no, the closest you'd get is to run an app on the watch (so you can capture the three not-"back" buttons) plus a companion app on your phone to receive events from it and do [stuff]. But that'd mean you'd have to open the app on your watch to control what's on your phone. The media controls might be able to do the volume part automatically out of the box though? I forget exactly what their UI did when I had music playing, but I think it had volume and skip controls. That's nowhere near arbitrary control though.

TulliusCicero 9mo ago

I'm not much of an athlete, and I don't have a smartwatch, but the idea of leaving my phone at home sometimes without being totally disconnected from comms does appeal to me somewhat.

sjw987 9mo ago
Would that not just be replacing a phone with another smaller phone strapped to your wrist? Doesn't the fact that you are connected and communicable make whatever device you choose to use essentially a phone? I will say, if it is possible, going out without any form of internet/comms enabled device can be very liberating. We all used to do it, and I think many of us have gotten used to the idea that we need to be on call or have some sort of utility in case of emergencies that are very unlikely to happen.

agile-gift0262 9mo ago

exactly this. My Galaxy Wear sits in a drawer 10 months per year, as I only use it as a wrist-strapped mini-smartphone when I go to the beach. It's too bulky and cumbersome to wear every day. The Pebble Time 2 I plan to use every day, as it does exactly what I want in a smartwatch sans wireless payments

pjmlp 9mo ago

I would say Amazfit are great, I don't need an app store and a programmable watch to do cool stuff in whatever programming language on weekends. The set of pre-installed apps, integration with watch messages, call notifications and media controls are enough. However maybe I am old fashioned, the oldie Timex and Casio smartwatches were also good enough for me.

apparent 9mo ago
I like Amazfit well enough but I found the UI to be English-second and therefore a bit confusing. Also, I don't trust a company like Amazfit to have my GPS location at all times.
- pjmlp 9mo ago
  It works alright for me. I would rather not trust non-European companies with my data, given current geopolitics, but here we are.

Someone 9mo ago

> Pebble seems to be the only watch company that I feel understands what a smartwatch should be. So, why do you think Pebble didn’t succeed? I think that’s because you’re a minority, and demand for a Pebble-like product is too low at the price point where it would be a viable business.

Larrikin 9mo ago
Google bought them and killed them. The same thing is happening to Fitbit
- Someone 9mo ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_(watch)#Closing_of_Pebble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_(watch)#Closing_of_Pebb...: “On December 7, 2016, Pebble Technology filed for insolvency[82] with Fitbit acquiring much of the company's assets and some employees.”
- apparent 9mo ago
  Google did not buy and kill them. They died (for financial reasons) before they were sold for parts to Fitbit, who were later bought by Google.
apparent 9mo ago
IIRC they got out over their skis financially. Eric did a podcast interview where he talked about what went wrong, I think it was this one. [1] He's self-funding this company and doing pre-orders, which means that risk should not exist this time around. But to GP's point, I agree that Pebble knows what smartwatches are, and they make the best ones. But it turns out that lots of people want (or have been convinced by marketing that they want) a wrist-worn computer, which has been a boon for Apple/Google. I think the new Pebbles will convert a lot of people because the battery life skips two orders of magnitude (in the time sense), going from ~1 day to ~1 month. That and the slick user interface should be attractive to folks who are considering upgrading their AWs as the battery degrades. Some will realize that they don't need all the computer-y functionality that the AW provides and just go with a Pebble. The fact that they're a bit cheaper, and available in a nice-looking round case is an added bonus. Like a lot of people, I assumed I would like AWs, and that they would continue to evolve to better and better battery life. But they haven't approached Pebble territory and I can see that the functionality they provide is not worth the tradeoff for me. I just don't care to tap at a computer on my wrist. Maybe other people do, but I'd bet that Eric's going to win over a lot of AW users who realized they are overkill. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc5I0rM2ORc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc5I0rM2ORc