22 ms·

Introducing Pebble Time

658 points by kenny_r 12y ago

simplyluke 12y ago
The main value prop over the Apple Watch and current Android wear appears to be the battery life. They're advertising over 7 days on a charge, which is certainly better than whatever the Apple Watch will be in terms of battery life. I just worry about the market for apps after the introduction of apple's watch around the same time.
- yurisagalov 12y ago
  There's a second value prop: It actually works with Android.
- kalindas 12y ago
  The Pebble Timeline interface UX might also be better than the Apple Watch app model or the Android Wear card model.
- wmeredith 12y ago
  Actually, they're saying "up to" 7 days which is obnoxious because that could mean anything.
  - nsxwolf 12y ago
    But probably more than the almost-a-day the Apple Watch is likely going to get. Being able to sleep with your watch on most nights of the week is a bigger deal than a lot of people realize.
    - BinaryIdiot 12y ago
      > Being able to sleep with your watch on most nights of the week is a bigger deal than a lot of people realize. This is huge for me and why I wear my FitBit instead of my Moto 360 most of the time. If I can wear it while I sleep I can set multiple alarms to wake me up that do not wake up the spouse or kids and it's less annoying than trying to turn a very loud beeping off.
    - djim 12y ago
      personally, i don't like wearing my watch when i sleep.
      - nsxwolf 12y ago
        There's still the drag of having to remember to recharge it every night, even if you're taking it off. I experience this now that I've gone from the XBox 360 to the PS4. The XBox 360 battery lasted what seemed like forever. I would go a week or two without even thinking of plugging it in to charge. The PS4 controller battery life is so bad you have to plug it back in every time you're done playing. I've had many people say "what's the big deal, just plug it in, are you lazy or what", but it is noticeably irritating.
        Dylan16807 12y ago
        PS3 controller also lasts forever. It's weird how much they regressed on that front. But it glows!
  - freehunter 12y ago
    There is literally no way they could say "at least" with any number that would mean anything to anyone. Even if they did a range between worst case scenario (app refreshing as often as possible and running the CPU and Bluetooth radios 100%) to best case scenario (watch face that updates once per hour), would you really want to see a number that says "Between 5 minutes and 7 days of battery life!"? You can't really even have a "under normal use" battery life claim. My Pebble lasts between 4-5 days depending on app usage. Other have theirs lasting 2-3 days. My personal iPhone sometimes needs to be recharged in the middle of the day. My work iPhone gets charged once every three days. "Up to 7 days" is the most meaningful number they could put there, because it shows you what to expect while using it as a watch. Everything else is up to you.
- AndrewDucker 12y ago
  My current Pebble works for four days without any problems. Frequently longer. So if they can increase that to 7 days and I can charge once per week then I'll be even happier. But largely I like the idea of a colour one.
  - Rudism 12y ago
    They advertised "up to 7 days" of battery for the original pebble, too.
    - bryanlarsen 12y ago
      Which translates into about 4 days of heavy use, and over 12 days of no use. I once misplaced my Pebble, and found it 12 days later, and it was still running.
- georgeecollins 12y ago
  ePaper is very different than the displays that are in the Apple Watch and various Wear devices. You can see it in bright sunlight. It can be a big drawback, particularly for a fitness device, to need to shade your display to read it.
  - deleted 12y ago
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- jkestner 12y ago
  Which is probably why they're de-emphasizing apps (which I agree with from a UX standpoint) and emphasizing ease of developing from the web. If you hone your use cases, developing for Pebble doesn't have to be as complicated as apps. It amounts to rich push notifications, or perhaps Twitter Cards.
lumisota 12y ago
It's interesting that they've chosen to launch the product on Kickstarter. They don't appear to need the funding structure; they're simply using it as a shop.
- KJasper 12y ago
  Marketing. This will generate a lot more publicity.
  - victor22 12y ago
    Right. As a Marketing guy myself (6 years in Procter & Gamble), I'm always baffled when people in HN don't get obvious marketing moves, but in the other hand, I'm always learning so much about tech stuff that my colleagues would never get in a decade. This community is awesome.
    - toolz 12y ago
      I'm sure the guaranteed number of sales prior to investing time and money into the project doesn't hurt either.
    - rplnt 12y ago
      I'm pretty sure they "get it", but agreeing with this practice is different thing. Sure, KS is as happy as everyone else, but that's not what they used to present themselves as.
- Cthulhu_ 12y ago
  Marketing as mentioned is one thing, but the other thing is that by having the community fund it before they invest in developing it, they don't run much financial risks themselves - a lot of products are developed where a company, or its employees, invest their own money, often having to do stuff like forfeit income. Having this kind of money beforehand prevents this.
  - jkestner 12y ago
r0naa 12y ago
I am studying at Waterloo, I love Pebble and while this is exciting news, I wish they had made the screen's margins thiner. The watch looks like a toy and is certainly not on par (design-wise) with other watches on the market. I hope it will work well for them though!
arrrg 12y ago
It's a bland gadget. I'm really not sure about that approach. It's so cheap and uninspired. Whatever you think about the overall shape of the Apple Watch, at least it's not a bland gadget. It seems to pay meticulous attention to all the micro details that make jewelry jewlery and not a bland tech toy. (Seems to because obviously no one has looked at it in detail. But first indications are good.) This one does not. I'm really not sure why more smart watches don't try to be actual worthy jewlery. Pebble has this really cool and really functional tech, why not pack it into something worthy of being called a watch?
- M4v3R 12y ago
  They seem to care about the technology side more. Plus, once you get this right, you can work on your casings to sell it to people that do care about it more. Also, this is what they've done with the first Pebble - first the initial, plastic one, and only after - Pebble steel.
  - jkestner 12y ago
    Exactly, a tick/tock product cycle. Apple does the flip of this - using the same case for two models, with different internals. Though they start with the high-end model. Are there as many examples of working your way upmarket? I think it may also be due to costs. The color e-paper screen obviously costs more, and perhaps a full Steel model would teeter within range of the fashion smart watches (including Apple Watch Sport), where the comparison would be less flattering.
- rdrey 12y ago
  I don't think any smart watch == jewellery argument works, because jewellery doesn't require software updates. There is nothing timeless about modern electronics that need battery replacements.
  - taylorwc 12y ago
    I think that for any mass-market adoption (arguably not what the Pebble Time is aimed at), any smart watch will have to bridge that divide. Most people buy a watch as a fashion piece, not as a practical tool.
M4v3R 12y ago
Aaand they're already funded ($775k out of $500k at this moment). That was quick. Edit: To clarify, it was already at $775k at 16:27 CET.
- dangerlibrary 12y ago
  going up at ~ $1000/second, as I've watched.
  - joshstrange 12y ago
    That's about right, I watched almost 500K pour in no time at all. I'd bet this will set a record for fastest funding on KS.
    - abandonliberty 12y ago
      It's very interesting to see the higher tiers selling even with the early bird available, which is cheaper per watch than any other tier.
      - joshstrange 12y ago
        I was just thinking the same thing, I locked in at the early bird price but couldn't understand why people would volunteer to pay more for the same product...
  - deleted 12y ago
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  - q7 12y ago
    It's currently trending towards a cool 68 million dollars: http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/597507018/pebble-time-awesome-smartwatch-no-compromises/ http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/597507018/pebble-time-aweso...
    - BinaryIdiot 12y ago
pconner 12y ago
The refresh rate on the e-paper is impressive. I remember some first-generation ereaders that required a whole second to refresh a page.
- higherpurpose 12y ago
  Pebble has never used E-ink, despite all the confusion in the media (not that Pebble was in a hurry to rectify it, since it played to its advantage). The color one doesn't look like E-ink now either. They used some transflective PixelQi-like displays in the past, but not sure if they're using an upgraded version of that now (with color!) or something like Mirasol, and they are just naming it the same.
  - mintplant 12y ago
    Ahh, and I was most excited about the new E-Ink tech I thought they were showing off in those GIFs. Hopefully something like it can come to the Kindle eventually. Would be great for comic reading (and the animations are so smooth!).
  - pconner 12y ago
    Damn, that's really misleading. I've always thought E-ink would be good for smart watches, because it shows text well, has great daytime visibility, and is power-efficient.
higherpurpose 12y ago
What's that "e-paper" screen technology they are using?
- freehunter 12y ago
  It's an LCD without a backlight.
  - rtpg 12y ago
    pretty sure it's not that. color e-paper tech has been in the works for years now
    - frevd 12y ago
      Nope, the refresh rate is clearly too high. Compare with amazon's newest Kindle e-ink, quick animations are not possible with ink yet, and there is ghosting. Also, deducing from the battery life of 7 days ONLY, this doesn't look like eInk, which would last for weeks or longer, since it does not require power at all to keep contents on the screen. However, I have to admit that their display is the most interesting part of the watch.
      - rtpg 12y ago
        well the thing is this thing has to stay connected to bluetooth the entire time, so that's part of the battery. The animations are also 3 frames or so... so maybe it's fine. I think the ghosting comes from not explicitly setting bits. with the color e-ink screen you're probably resetting a lot of things, so even if ghosting is present, it's not very visible (especially after a lot of changes) Looking at this closely though this _does_ remind me of something like the GBC screen. This might just be LCD.
Swizec 12y ago
Innovation! A watch that tells time! I sure hope the previous model told time as well ... but they seem to really be pushing the angle this time 'round. What with literally calling it Time. The future is now.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  Oh come on Swizec ;). You have to give them credit, they're apparently the only smartwatch brand that doesn't suck. I like that there is at least one company that, as opposed to Apple, seems to care about providing a useful tool instead of a fashion piece.
devindotcom 12y ago
I hope they've managed to improve the color and sharpness on color e-paper displays. The ones I've seen over the years have been rather less than vivid.
- freehunter 12y ago
  If it's anything like the old Pebble display, it's not e-ink like we would see in a Kindle. They call it e-paper, but it's really a low-power LCD with no backlight. There's no problem making an LCD full color.
- some1else 12y ago
  Sharpness was never really an issue with e-Paper displays, as they have long been able to display at more than 150ppi. However, refresh speed and ghosting are the real issues. In order to speed up drawing and quickly wipe the screen, developers will prefer 1-bit access modes over slow/ghosty 8-bit drawing modes, so text will indeed look sharp.. And aliased.
joshstrange 12y ago
I'm extremely torn. On one hand (or rather, on one wrist) I have the pebble steel and I LOVE it, couldn't imagine going back. But on the other wrist I have an iPhone and the pebble works better with Android ATM so the Apple Watch looks attractive. Back to the first wrist, the pebble has much better battery life and is cheaper than the even the lowest priced Apple Watch... Edit: Ok, I pulled the trigger, I can always get a refund or just resell it if the Apple Watch blows it away or something like that.
- melling 12y ago
  The Apple Watch will be better with strong competition. It's great that there's a company that spends all day thinking about making a better watch. Anyway, you'll need to wear something while your Apple Watch is charging. :-)
  - joshstrange 12y ago
    Agreed and if the rumors on iPhone battery life are true [0] (which they probably are) then you're right, I'll need something for when my Apple Watch is charging lol. [0] http://9to5mac.com/2015/01/22/apple-targets-for-apple-watch-battery-life-revealed-a5-caliber-cpu-inside/ http://9to5mac.com/2015/01/22/apple-targets-for-apple-watch-...
  - alwillis 12y ago
    Apple isn’t competing with Pebble; it’s odd that people don’t get this. It’s like saying Porsche is competing with Kia. They both make cars but they’re targeting two very different markets with very little overlap. We shouldn’t confuse consumer choice with competition. I know several Pebble owners who wouldn’t buy an Apple Watch even if it cost the same as a Pebble because they don’t like what they believe Apple represents.
davidjgraph 12y ago
"We will ship Pebble Time worldwide, with the exception of Cuba, Myanmar/Burma, Iran, Sudan, Syria, and Russia." Russia?
- freehunter 12y ago
  Doesn't the US still have an embargo on Russia for the whole Ukraine thing? I find Cuba to be interesting. I thought we ended that embargo in December.
  - mkr-hn 12y ago
    They might have finalized the copy before that.
  - mikestew 12y ago
    The embargo might have ended, but perhaps all of the details are not yet in place to make it practical. Customs forms need to be reprinted (whether paper or electronic). Are UPS and other carriers ready to go? And so on. An entire generation of US businesses and people have never done business with Cuba, that isn't going to change overnight...or even in a few months. Or maybe the Pebble founders just don't like Fidel.
  - gerbal 12y ago
    The Cuba embargo has not been lifted, restrictions have just been loosened a bit.
- DiabloD3 12y ago
  A lot of scams come from Russia due to their lax enforcement of laws when the victim is out of the country.
- uniformlyrandom 12y ago
  Well, they are shipping to North Korea. A new gadget for Dear Leader, to crush the imperialists!
josephjrobison 12y ago
I got the Pebble for Christmas and wondered if I needed it, but it does a really good job on a few simple things. It tells you whether that buzz you just felt on your phone was a text or important email or just a Snapchat. A few other features, but that simple thing is by far the best part about it.
m4rsm4n 12y ago
Looks like this will finally get me to jump on the smartwatch bandwagon; the original Pebble didn't really do it for me. The new interface is looking great and the week worth of battery is nice, especially since most LCD smart watches need to be charged every night.
- christoph 12y ago
  Same. At roughly £100 for the earlybird with shipping to the UK it's just about cheap enough that I can buy it, play with it for a bit and give it away to someone else, if I'm not happy with it when it arrives. It looks good enough that it will probably find a place to stay in my life anyway...
- yoda_sl 12y ago
  I have to admit they did a good job with the new watch, adding color is great and still having the week of battery is huge. I was one of the early supporter for the first Pebble and have zero regret. It did convinced me of how useful a smart watch can be. I will be a little bit sad when replacing it with the Apple Watch when it comes out: I decided to change ship, but the Pebble will always have a special spot. It's great to see they have a strong supporter base, and that will force Apple and others to stay active and compete. I will for sure miss the long lasting battery of my Pebble!
  - madez 12y ago
    You talk good about the Pebble Watch but still you want to replace it with an Apple Watch. Are there any interesting reasons for this decision you might want to share?
- rplnt 12y ago
  This type of display is definitely a must. The size and build seem to be quite nice as well. Only (from a first glance) dealbreaker for me is the price. I'd guess half from what it is. Sure they have to pay a lot of R&D not relevant to producing a single unit, but with a run of 40k JUST for this KS campaign? It's just too much. edit: Now it seems that the stock will run out by the end of the day :)
georgeecollins 12y ago
What I think is good about this is that they are thinking of a new paradigm for UI on a wearable. For Android Wear devices it feels like Google just decided that voice was going to take care of UI, and no decisions about physical controls needed to be made. But there are two problems: voice isn't that reliable, and more importantly, there are a lot of situations where you want to use your watch but not talk to it.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  I agree. Voice control in the Apple/Android paradigm is... weird. Talking to the phone, requiring Internet connection, unusable on a busy street. Take out the phone, unlock it, move it in front of your face (now I can't see a thing and start bumping into people), "ok Google", say it again, wait for the S4 to react, say something, see it's interpreted wrong... I very much prefer to type, it's faster even on a touch screen. So here I am, waiting for a subvocal recognition system and the comeback of off-line speech processing.
  - mod 12y ago
    Android has offline speech recognition. I'm not sure if it'll use it anytime there's a data connection, though. I've also noticed it has a couple of flaws, like you can't use "newline" with it.
- VikingCoder 12y ago
  > voice isn't that reliable Maybe it's because I'm from Minnesota and sound like Don LaFontaine, but Google's voice recognition is easily 95% or better for me. Probably closer to 98%, even on spoken sentences for sending emails or texts. When I'm navigating, or trying to call someone, it's closer to 99%.
  - JTon 12y ago
    Voice recognition has improved tremendously for me as well. But what I can't seem to get over is that it's almost always slower than using my thumbs. Talking is slower than typing, plus the process time needed to interpret the voice commands. -- from a keyboard shortcut junkie
chrxss 12y ago
God why is this thing so fugly. I thought with the advent of the Moto 360, smartwatches would become at least what watches were before: jewelry, sadly the pebble time even lags behind the pebble steel
jscheel 12y ago
I'm still rocking my original Pebble. I really wanted to upgrade to the Steel, but I figured I would just wait for the 2nd (3rd?) gen. to come out. Now it looks like I'll be waiting even longer, until they come out with the TimeSteel, or whatever they will call it. Kudos on the awesome updates, but the watch body just looks terrible to me. BTW, they raised a cool $100k in the time it took me to watch the video. That's just crazysauce.
buster 12y ago
Now if it wouldn't be THAT ugly.. It even looks cheap on the movie :( I guess i'll stick to a real watch.
gergles 12y ago
Pretty sneaky to advertise $159 and not mention the $10 shipping which makes it $169, and KS doesn't even advertise that until you've already clicked through to the 'pledge' (aka purchase, what happened to "Kickstarter is not a store"?) page. And now that the 'early tier' is gone (great UX on that, they took me to the credit card page, I entered my info, then they reloaded it and went "oops, that tier's full now tee-hee!"), why would you save $10 to pay them for a product that might ship 2 months later if they get around to releasing it? So, no Kickstarter for me, it's actually plus because I'll get to see real reviews and not hype.
- izolate 12y ago
  Unless you can lock in the early bird, I don't believe there's any point in pledging. I just about scraped through and pledged $179 + $10, which puts me about $20 ahead of the final cost (assuming shipping will stay the same).
  - mikestew 12y ago
    (If I downvoted you, sorry. Stupid tiny arrows on mobile, and no undo or even a way to see which way I voted.) Meh, you get it a few months early, and they're not shipping retail until the Kickstarters are released. That, and as an original KS backer I get a special engraving I'll never, ever see. :-)
    - what_ever 12y ago
      (Off topic) Is there any reason we can't undo voting on HN (like we can do on Reddit)?
      - cheepin 12y ago
        Especially since post editing is allowed, though maybe post editing could just drop the votes or something.
- smackfu 12y ago
  Yes, that is pretty sneaky. Especially since people are used to Kickstarter products including shipping.
mladenkovacevic 12y ago
I'll get one if the $159 pledge becomes available again, but I'm really looking forward to the "Steel" version of this watch. This is one aspect of the watch that Apple is getting right from the very first iteration. It needs to look sexy and make you want to wear even when the battery is dead.
AndrewDucker 12y ago
$2million in an hour. Is that a record? (What else has sold anywhere near this fast?)
- rplnt 12y ago
  It gained over $500k in the last 15 minutes, so... yeah, I think we are looking to break several records here.
- mladenkovacevic 12y ago
  I think that answers the question "Is the market ready for smart watches?"
- nrmitchi 12y ago
  I don't think it's fair to consider this campaign as any sort of 'record'. Pebble is an already successful company with a history of success using Kickstarter as a store. If Apple decided to release the iPhone 7 on Kickstarter it would also break a ridiculous amount of records, but it's still not really 'fair'.
BinaryIdiot 12y ago
I'm glad they're continuing to iterate on their product. This is certainly a nice improvement. Though I don't really understand the insistence of putting buttons on a watch that are used to interact with the thing. Pressing buttons, on the side of a watch and on your wrist while doing anything but standing still is always really awkward. I was really hoping their v2 would have axed the buttons. I would be very tempted to pick one up if they did but oh well.
- dubbel 12y ago
  I actually love the buttons. I can change the current song or take a call while on the bike without taking the of the road, just because I know where the press. This would not be possible with a touch screen. If I want to do stuff where a touch screen would come in handy I take out my phone anyway.
  - angryasian 12y ago
    its absolutely possible with my moto 360. swipe once up and left and tap forward and backwards.
  - BinaryIdiot 12y ago
    Whenever I went for a walk or run and tried to use the buttons it always felt awkward and cumbersome. I'd rather have buttons on my headphones or something that's really easy and obvious to hit (such at tapping the screen or something). I mean the Android Wear watches can do this (so it's possible) but it's not always the most intuitive either.
smiddereens 12y ago
Anybody know which display technology they're using? It kind of looks like Qualcomm's Mirasol from the videos.
- smackfu 12y ago
  Here's my guess: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2842092/sharp-smartband-lcd-uses-1000-times-less-power.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/2842092/sharp-smartband-lcd-u... * Original Pebble used greyscale version of same tech from Sharp. * Available in 1 inch size. * In production spring 2015.
  - deleted 12y ago
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mikestew 12y ago
I was waiting to see what Apple had in store but...oh, what the hell, I'll pull the trigger. Fact is, I'm pretty satisfied with my original KS-backer edition Pebble. Apple is going to have to have a pretty convincing story for me to charge a watch every single day. I spend enough time away from 5VDC power sources that such short battery life could become occasionally annoying. The original Pebble does what I want it to do. In fact, it does more than it promised pre-shipping (counts steps, as one example). I'm hardly one to be brand-loyal to a watch, but ignoring late shipping to KS backers, Pebble has exceeded expectations, so I'll give them another whirl. Apple, OTOH, is going to have to do a hell of a job to convince me to spend almost twice as much on a new platform that needs daily charging. And I say this as one with a house full of Apple gear, much of it pre-ordered on the day of announcement.
- eitally 12y ago
  I really just want a "normal" watch that has some "smart" features. I already have a sports tracker (Garmin Forerunner), and I have given up wearing my Moto360 because it's almost never useful in compelling enough ways that I don't just pull my phone out after seeing a notification ... and I have to charge it nightly.
  - baldeagle 12y ago
    If you want a normal watch combined with a fitbit, check out: http://www.withings.com/us/withings-activite.html http://www.withings.com/us/withings-activite.html
    - smackfu 12y ago
      They have a lower-end version of that now too: http://www.withings.com/us/withings-activite-pop.html http://www.withings.com/us/withings-activite-pop.html
    - k3oni 12y ago
      That's a sexy watch, not sure how i didn't see it before. Thanks for the link.
t27 12y ago
The amount is increasing by around $2-3k every second!! This ones going to beat every kickstarter record out there!
dimlyaware 12y ago
I think that in terms of what I was expecting out of Pebbles second iteration, this was not it. I like how they did away with the mobile thinking of apps because that was simply trying to conform a watch to a mobile phones way of thinking. Even sticking to e-paper for long battery life was a good design decision but beyond that there really isn't much in innovation. The design doesn't really wow or anything same with the UI. I know some comments really liked the UI and I guess with developers updating their apps and looks to match the new watch that may improve things as well.
orenbarzilai 12y ago
Honestly I find it real hard to believe that they sold over 13K pebbles in less than an hour. imho it doesn't make sense. They have a great product, but not 13K / 60 min great
- untog 12y ago
  The evidence suggests otherwise.
  - orenbarzilai 12y ago
    1. We don't know of 13K different ppl bought it or if just 1K different ppl. 2. Don't you think that it's great marketing both for pebble and KS? I still find it hard to believe this numbers, but I might be wrong...
- adricnet 12y ago
  Well, I put in for two and I imagine some others did as well. hth, adric
Rudism 12y ago
I've owned an original pebble for a couple weeks now, but I'm still skeptical on their usefulness. I save maybe 5-10 minutes of time per week by being able to check the weather forecast or dismiss non-urgent emails and texts using my watch instead of having to pull my phone out of my pocket, but that's about the only benefit I'm seeing so far. Maybe a smartwatch would be more useful to me if I was more popular and had calendar events to keep track of or more friends who contacted me regularly, but as your typical socially-isolated introvert software engineer, this thing seems to have limited utility.
- joshstrange 12y ago
  I've had my Pebble Steel for just at a year now and I have the opposite experience. I consider it to be as important as having my phone on me at this point. Part of this is no doubt due to never wearing a watch (for more than a day or two) prior to owning the Pebble so I love having the time/weather on my wrist at all times. I love having texts, calls, emails on my wrist and I've started using Pushover (Push notification API with app) more and more since I don't have to dig my phone out of my pocket to read push notifications any more.
- RadioactiveMan 12y ago
  Consider looking at the Glance app. I enjoyed my Pebble to start with, but it became far more useful with Glance. I can now reply to text messages from a list of options I created on my phone. I filled the list with the messages I send the most: "ok", "yes", "no", "on my way". I really like deciding if messages are worth my time without having to dig out my phone and I really like being able to send quick messages without fiddling about with unlocking and on-screen keyboards.
- hammerandtongs 12y ago
  For me its not necessarily a raw measure of just time saved. I realized that the physical habit that we've all developed of pulling our phones, unlocking , checking time or messages etc is a really really annoying physical habit. It's disruptive and awkward to do, interrupts conversations or basic interactions with things in your environment. A two handed fumbling time check/message check becomes a no handed operation with a smart watch. I don't actually check my messages any more often, in fact less, since the notification is actually much more obvious then phones chirping in a pocket and my decision about whether to handle the information now or later is just much more quick and fluent.
samsnelling 12y ago
The killer feature here is something that no one is talking about! >We've included a soft silicone band with each Pebble Time, but all standard 22mm watch bands will fit. All new Pebble watch bands include a quick-release pin, letting you swap bands in under 10 seconds. Standard watch bands is something that most other wearables aren't embracing. This makes the Pebble significantly more enticing.
- pauly 12y ago
  think the original pebble used a standard watch band. steel did not (which I just bought a week ago, gah)
  - mbrubeck 12y ago
    Yes, the original Pebble works with any standard 22m band.
- deleted 12y ago
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- mikestew 12y ago
  My original KS Pebble uses a regular band that I got off Amazon for $12. I'm not much of one for swapping bands regularly, but putting on a band of my choosing is not a great feature, it's just what I expect out of a watch. It's like telling time is a "killer feature". I'm more disappointed when other wearables (including the Pebble Steel) don't have this.
- bergie 12y ago
  Some of the Android Wear devices support standard 22mm bands as well. I had a custom one on my LG G Watch, but am staying with the stock band with the Moto 360 (since the one it shipped with is actually quite nice)
- lnanek2 12y ago
  I bought a replacement metal band for my Galaxy Gear. No clue if it was standard, but certainly replaceable.
untog 12y ago
I'll admit to being disappointed. After the Pebble Steel I thought they were going to take appearances seriously, but the Pebble Time barely even looks better than the original Pebble. Maybe if they make a Pebble Time Steel it'll be the one for me (and the sales figures suggest plenty do not agree with me). That said, kudos to them for getting it out and being independent competition to Android Wear and the Apple Watch. We need that.
- mahyarm 12y ago
  Yeah it is too bad. I know many people who will not wear a smart watch if it doesn't look good. And these are people who have / wear many fashion watches of various sizes. The apple watch is the first watch that they actually like appearance wise. At least come out with a shiny gold, brass and rose gold colored versions. Not actual gold mind you, just gold colored. There are certain market segments that love those colors.
  - riyadparvez 12y ago
    I don't need fashionable watch. But this thing looks so childish.
    - mahyarm 12y ago
      You don't, but many other segments do.
    - notatoad 12y ago
      I don't need a fashionable watch, but I really don't need an ugly watch. My phone tells time, shows notification, and does everything this does perfectly fine. If it were fashionable, I'd be tempted. But it has to be at least one of useful and fashionable.
  - 0xCMP 12y ago
    They announced it would be actual gold. Just like for luxury gold watches.
chocks 12y ago
Awesome! The first thing I noticed was the battery life - 7 days (like the original). I'm buying it :). In the video, Eric makes a very good point - most smart-watches are trying to replace the phone, but instead should focus on what's critical to a watch - Time.
Nashie 12y ago
They are clearly trying to differenciate from Apple by using more sporty apperearance. I would have prefered more business-like layout but ended up ordering anyways. It looks very promising!
hauget 12y ago
new interface is probably the basis for touch screen interaction in 3rd gen
caio1982 12y ago
To see in realtime the figures increasing like that in the page is sort of scaring.
- dEnigma 12y ago
  Definitely. During the time it took me to watch the video, the counter went up 100,000$
lnanek2 12y ago
3 million dollars and they can't hire an industrial designer to make it look like something other than a preschool toy? They feel like a bunch of developers competing against Apple. No offense intended, I'm a developer myself. I think they'll have more and better features, since that is how developers think, but you need to look good to really capture all the consumers.
- snissn 12y ago
  They've sold over a million watches at a retail price of $100-$200
- freehunter 12y ago
  Have you ever seen a normal watch? Like a Wal-Mart, off-the-shelf Timex? They're hideous. Absolutely atrocious. If people want a nice looking watch, they buy a Rolex or a Tag. What people get from a Timex is a functional watch that is easy to read, relatively oops-resistant (can take some damage and go under water without breaking), and has some features they really need. A $500 Rolex probably doesn't have a stopwatch with a lap counter, but that $10 Timex sure does. There's precedent in the watch-world to not care what the watch looks like. Watches are not always fashion items, which is why the watch section exists in Wal Mart. I keep hearing people say "it doesn't look as nice as the Apple Watch or Android Wear" (personally, the Apple Watch looks awful), but if you're looking for features over fashion, this is the device for you.
  - eitally 12y ago
    What are you blabbering on about? There are plenty of good looking cheap watches, just not watches that are aiming at the same buyers as Richemont/Swatch/LVMH do. If you want to complain justifiable, point your disdain at Invicta and their ilk.
  - swang 12y ago
    Eh, for $10 you take what you can get. For ~$200 I don't need expensive materials but I would like it to not look like what it looks like. This double bezel thing is kinda ugly. I mean if you spend $20 more from the $10 Timex you can get a Timex Weekend, which looks pretty nice.
NDizzle 12y ago
Does anyone know how you are going to go about charing this device? MicroUSB?
- andars 12y ago
  I'd go with the four metal dots visible on the back (some connectir unique to the watch)
blackdogie 12y ago
Whatever about the product, their timing is spot on. Not that it will really make much of a dent in the Apple Watch sales, I'm sure there are a lot of people who'll get this now instead. Major differences, battery life & price do make this a tempting product.
- jkestner 12y ago
  The demographics feel very different. Is it meant to compete with Apple Watch, or with Android Wear?
evaness 12y ago
I agree that Kickstarter isn't a store. It's an informercial platform optimized for hype and maximally dumping risks onto your customers. I am a fan of Pebble, but I find this campaign on Kickstarter (after an already successful Kickstarter and three years of continued success), to be both excellent marketing and an utter disgrace to the goals that Kickstarter once stood for.
mobiplayer 12y ago
> Works with iPhone, Samsung and Android. So I guess I won't be buying this one either, doesn't work with my 1520!
dragontamer 12y ago
7-Day Battery life. Why does no other smartwatch offer this?
- callumjones 12y ago
  Possibly because the others aren't using e-paper.
joosters 12y ago
What happened to 'Kickstarter is not a store' - https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-is-not-a-store https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-is-not-a-store ? Offering multiple quantities of a reward is prohibited. Hardware and Product Design projects can only offer rewards in single quantities or a sensible set (some items only make sense as a pair or as a kit of several items, for instance). The development of new products can be especially complex for creators and offering multiple quantities feels premature, and can imply that products are shrink-wrapped and ready to ship.
- TillE 12y ago
  Honestly, that seems like a completely arbitrary policy which serves no real purpose. In general I'd stay the hell away from hardware projects on Kickstarter, but in this case Pebble has a proven track record of delivering a quality product in a reasonable time frame. I assume that gives them a little more leeway when Kickstarter is approving their campaign.
  - joosters 12y ago
    That Kickstarter policy update was in response to the rising levels of failed projects on the site. It was an attempt to fight off bad press. Of course, it turned out to be pretty toothless (Just take a look at the joke of a 'risks' section of almost any kickstarter project. That section was also introduced by this udpate). I'd agree with you that Pebble probably have a better chance than most at delivering on their promises, but as people have commented elsewhere, Pebble are only really back on KS as a promotional exercise. This is not really comparable to most other KS projects. Still, it's one rule for them, another for everyone else. KS are doing well out of this promo too. Perhaps someone should go and report Pebble for their other rule-breaking? Those watch pictures at the top of the page are clearly computer renderings. "If a simulation or photorealistic rendering is discovered after a project launches, that project will be canceled." :)
    - Dylan16807 12y ago
      The risks section is great because you can tell very quickly if they've put some thought into logistics or not. No need to enforce that it's properly filled out.
lettergram 12y ago
I've been using my Pebble I got from UIUC when they gave hundreds away: https://blog.getpebble.com/2013/12/16/pebbling-schools-in-the-name-of-awesome/ https://blog.getpebble.com/2013/12/16/pebbling-schools-in-th... It was some good marketing, because I just bought a new one because I loved it so much.
allanjenn 12y ago
How much money do you think they are going to raise? I think $25M.
q2 12y ago
Scrolling among items (up/down) as demonstrated needs to be changed.
inverba 12y ago
Does anyone have insight into how this fits into the market? I don't understand how this isn't a strictly worse phone (given that people carry phones with them all the time).
- mbrubeck 12y ago
  It's a phone accessory. It lets you see and respond to things like SMS messages, caller ID, calendar reminders, etc. without taking your phone out of your pocket. Kind of a small thing, but actually pretty handy when you're walking around or in a meeting or other places where glancing at your wrist is easier or less intrusive than using your phone. (Plus, it tells time.) This review goes into more detail: http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-smartwatch/ http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-smartwatch/
O____________O 12y ago
I think animated transitions are the skeuomorphism of 2015. Mind you, I'm technically impressed that an E-Ink display can now be animated, but I can't wait for the end of the animated UI boom.
- Navarr 12y ago
  Do you... Do you just desire UI to not be animated at all? that the next item in that list just appears at the top?
  - wvenable 12y ago
    Fast animations are good. I have a jailbroken iPhone and the first thing I do is turn off a lot of the animations and the phone is super-snappy compared to stock. Whenever I use someone else's iPhone, it's just so painful to switch apps and navigate around. So I understand not wanting to watch some stupid animation over and over instead of just getting to the point. But some animations are helpful for seeing when things change.
    - Navarr 12y ago
      It's just interesting seeing someone promote the precise opposite of the now ever so popular Material Design thought of basically using animations everywhere to convey motion, meaning, and hierarchy.
      - wvenable 12y ago
        Everything can be overused. Microsoft pretty much invented the "flat" movement that has been happening but they're also guilty of making things so flat and undefined that you don't even know what to click on! The iPhone uses animation as filler to hide slow app loading in the first gen but it isn't necessary anymore. Even skeuomorphism is ok when it conveys meaning but most uses are garish effects that provide zero benefit. Animations that are merely cool looking might be fun for the first dozen times but then it gets old.
  - 12y ago
dbalan 12y ago
I hope they reduce the price of orginal pebble. ;-)
deleted 12y ago
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mikkom 12y ago
How did they get the e-ink display so fast? Or is the video only an explanation of how it works (and therefore not real)?
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  It's not e-ink, it's "e-paper". A power-efficient display, but not the stuff you get on Kindles. I wish they wouldn't mislead people again with this.
iblaine 12y ago
"At anytime up until your watch has shipped, you may request a full refund" Nice. I own a pebble and pebble steel. Hardly use them but the full refund policy won me over.
aareet 12y ago
I'm glad they went with ePaper, but I think I'll hold off until the battery life has developed to be quite a bit better (lasts a few months on a single charge?). The biggest value prop to having information on a watch to me is that I never have to think about charging my watch so I can always rely on it having the information I need. I don't recall ever replacing a watch battery and I'm looking forward to when smartwatches reach that kind of longevity. Considering my Kindle lasts over a month on a single charge, I'd be thrilled to have an e-ink watch that showed me a listing of notifications and the time that lasts just as long.
- kbd 12y ago
  > I think I'll hold off until the battery life ... (lasts a few months on a single charge?) You'll be waiting a very long time. > Considering my Kindle lasts over a month on a single charge Your Kindle isn't maintaining a bluetooth connection to your phone or updating the screen frequently, and has a much larger battery than a watch. > I never have to think about charging my watch so I can always rely on it having the information I need. With the Pebble you don't have to worry about it either. It notifies you when it's getting low (has a day or two of battery life remaining) and you charge it when you get the chance. And if you don't have time to give it a full charge, in my experience with just 10-15 minutes charging time you'll get a few more days of use. I agree with your sentiment about battery life though. It's why I don't understand why anyone would even consider any smartwatch besides Pebble. Fall asleep without charging your watch one night and you can't wear it the next day? That's crazy. It also means you can't really use your watch as an alarm if you need to charge it each night.
  - aareet 12y ago
    Oh I don't know if it will be all that long. http://www.withings.com/us/withings-activite.html http://www.withings.com/us/withings-activite.html seems to be able to track and synchronize physical activity with my phone, runs on CR-2025 for 8 months. Don't know how they pull it off, but an inventive UI/watch interface to show me notification information like this one might be the ticket.
nikolajhoborg 12y ago
Black ops 2
pimlottc 12y ago
Is it just me, or does it look like he's squeezing the buttons fairly hard in the timeline demo images? I suppose you have to make the buttons firm enough to prevent accidental presses but I would hope that you could use the buttons with one figure comfortably.
- feld 12y ago
  I can't recall ever wearing a watch with buttons on the side that I could press without "squeezing" the watch
  - pimlottc 12y ago
    You may be right, I never got into the habit of wearing a watch myself.
taylorwc 12y ago
It's 2PM CST on launch day and they already have preorders for nearly 30,000 units. It's really a cool thing to see considering that 5 years ago this situation wouldn't exist.
fit2rule 12y ago
This is my next smart watch: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/920064946/oscilloscope-watch https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/920064946/oscilloscope-... As soon as it ships, of course ..
DenisM 12y ago
As I look at the total pledge amount climbing higher and higher, at $5.5m presently, I can't help but think that VCs and bankers got completely cut out of the "deal". It used to be that you had to please a whole bunch of finance guys to get anything done, but this time they weren't even invited to the table. It's a big change. I also keep thinking about other ways in which the financial sector can get disintermediated. Bootstrapping is always an option, if a very long and arduous one. To speed things up there is Kickstarter in b2c, but what about b2b? Are there ways to get the future beneficiaries of a new b2b product to fund its development, and that don't involve spending 6 month to raise funding? It always bothered me that funding decisions are usually made by people who know a lot about finance and, as a rule, very little about the target market. Surely there is a lot of potential there for the insiders of the target industry?
- GolfyMcG 12y ago
  It depends on your perspective of a b2b product. If by b2b you mean business to fortune 500 business, then there is probably not a way around it. If you're talking about business to mom and pop shop, Kickstarter is perfectly suitable - look at the top tier prizes. They're usually geared towards buying them in bulk, probably with the intent of reselling them. The reason I would say that it is an impossibility to talk about selling business to fortune 500 type business is because invariably, they have venture arms which function like the finance industry and are usually staffed by former employees of Goldman, JP Morgan, etc. So, the insiders have found a way to do what they want - they're their own bank, unless we're talking about major mergers and acquisitions, which obviously require such fast sums of capital that it's unreasonable to expect such an accessible market.
- tomasien 12y ago
  I believe someone setting up a way to broker first customers to become stakeholders in new companies for pre-paying for services would be huge. I've been in a situation where that would have been totally warranted and valuable, but instead we had to spend months proving to that customer other ways that working with us was properly de-risked. They would have been happy to just take the risk if there was a plug and play model to reward them for it, and I think many other companies are in similar situations (depending on what part of their business you touch/would effect). Another model that I do not personally believe in but seems promising to others I respect is https://assembly.com https://assembly.com - they work to bring teams together to build things and have gamified equity comp. You can even go in there and squash an important bug on a project and get equity in the project forever (ostensibly) for doing it based on the "bounty" that is set.
msrini 12y ago
We are developing a smart sensor strap for Pebble time: check it out: http://www.gethbeats.com/ http://www.gethbeats.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWqbaX94_lA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWqbaX94_lA
- aeiro 12y ago
  Do you have a rough idea about the price? Am I expecting 2 figures? 3?
  - murali8051 12y ago
    2 figures :)
- delecti 12y ago
  Your site is fairly low on information, mind if I ask a few questions? So this would be a replacement 'watch band' for the Pebble Time, which provides biometric data to it? Your website seems to suggest it'll work with any device, will it still interface with the "smart accessory port" on the Time? Do you have advance information about the protocol/form-factor that the sensors, or are you going to finalize that part of the design once it's available? Also, I'm not sure I understand why it's called "contactless". Seems very interesting though. It seems most wearables lean either towards "interface for your phone" or "fitness device", so something that boosts the Pebble's biometric tracking could be pretty cool.
  - murali8051 12y ago
    Yep,replacement strap. We were devloping it to work with any device, but now with "accessory port" on Time, we will be able to leverage the battery and data connection to watch, which simplify the design. @Contactless: we are developing a new sensor technology for measuring HR which will not be in contact with the skin(like optical sensors/bio-impedance metal stubs). This means that the sensor is embedded inside the silicone strap as you can see in the demo video. Any suggestions ? pls mail me : ms@gethbeats.com
msrini 12y ago
New Smart Sensor Strap for Pebble Time: http://www.gethbeats.com/ http://www.gethbeats.com/ POC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWqbaX94_lA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWqbaX94_lA
bambax 12y ago
It seems everyone and their brother wants this, but > up to 7 days of battery is a deal breaker for me; when/how do you recharge a watch? Isn't the point of a watch to never go off your wrist? I'm old enough to wear a watch (and to not remember a time when I didn't) and having to thing about recharging it would kill the whole watch experience for me...
- walshemj 12y ago
  Is the idea that you have a second battery and swap them out or are they going to have a charging stand you put it on the charge at night time?
pfooti 12y ago
FWIW, I have a regular pebble, and was a KS backer from the first campaign. I'm considering a second backing, mainly because the delivery date is may 2015, which is probably late enough that I'd be in the market for a new one anyway, and the promise to have a special something for double backers is a nice touch. Personally, I use my pebble for just about whatever you'd think. It's nice to control my music (don't laugh- the nexus 6 is a pain to take out of my pocket just to change tracks), to have a quiet and personal alert of important emails, (the notification is a lot less noticeable by other people than the buzz of a vibrating phone) and to have ridiculous watchfaces. QR code of the current time in a watchface. My favorite! https://github.com/TrueJournals/pebble-qrwatch https://github.com/TrueJournals/pebble-qrwatch Finally, Android L has this nice new trusted-bluetooth-device notion, so when I'm wearing the pebble, I don't have to unlock the phone. I know it's a bit of a security risk, but it is one I'm willing to take.
halosghost 12y ago
Mmm, this looks awesome. Now, I'm just hoping for an update to Pebble Steel so that I can have a metal pebble with a color display and timeline. Would be awesome! All the best,
binoyxj 12y ago
What I like about Pebble- Display + Battery + Cross-platform support.
sparaker 12y ago
$6.2 M and 31 days to go. Wow. This is definitely a successful campaign.
deleted 12y ago
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willtheperson 12y ago
I don't understand how this many people are supporting a new version. Anyone I've talked to who bought one was extremely disappointed with the product. I had one to work on some prototypes about a year ago and it was nothing but frustration. Bad documentation, scattered, outdated already.. Getting code running on it was painful and most ideas were very limited by the watch abilities. To top it off, the ios application to sync notifications was a complete joke. Bluetooth is pretty typically bad about staying connected, but the Pebble should win an award for how frustratingly often it would drop. To get it back, you must open the app or repair. Beginning to end, a very poor experience. I get the design being pretty poor on the first version, but it seems like they didn't work very hard to fix that for v2. Maybe I just happen to meet the only people who had these problems too, and every other person who bought one was very happy, but I'm honestly baffled.
downandout 12y ago
I have to think that Pebble, and most other smart watches, are going to get crushed by the Apple Watch. iOS has an amazing ecosystem of developers that enhance the value proposition of owning iOS-based products to the point where literally no one can compete. People argue over the size of the smart watch market, but whatever it is, Apple will take a huge chunk of it. I see Pebble faltering before the end of the year, so I wouldn't want to buy one at this point.
aftbit 12y ago
Man, I wish they'd just release their firmware as open source. And get rid of the 8 app limit.
deleted 12y ago
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melicerte 12y ago
Kickstarter, the pre-order website for the rest of us...

658 points by kenny_r 12y ago

The main value prop over the Apple Watch and current Android wear appears to be the battery life. They're advertising over 7 days on a charge, which is certainly better than whatever the Apple Watch will be in terms of battery life. I just worry about the market for apps after the introduction of apple's watch around the same time.

yurisagalov 12y ago
There's a second value prop: It actually works with Android.
kalindas 12y ago
The Pebble Timeline interface UX might also be better than the Apple Watch app model or the Android Wear card model.
wmeredith 12y ago
Actually, they're saying "up to" 7 days which is obnoxious because that could mean anything.
- nsxwolf 12y ago
  But probably more than the almost-a-day the Apple Watch is likely going to get. Being able to sleep with your watch on most nights of the week is a bigger deal than a lot of people realize.
  - BinaryIdiot 12y ago
    > Being able to sleep with your watch on most nights of the week is a bigger deal than a lot of people realize. This is huge for me and why I wear my FitBit instead of my Moto 360 most of the time. If I can wear it while I sleep I can set multiple alarms to wake me up that do not wake up the spouse or kids and it's less annoying than trying to turn a very loud beeping off.
  - djim 12y ago
    personally, i don't like wearing my watch when i sleep.
    - nsxwolf 12y ago
      There's still the drag of having to remember to recharge it every night, even if you're taking it off. I experience this now that I've gone from the XBox 360 to the PS4. The XBox 360 battery lasted what seemed like forever. I would go a week or two without even thinking of plugging it in to charge. The PS4 controller battery life is so bad you have to plug it back in every time you're done playing. I've had many people say "what's the big deal, just plug it in, are you lazy or what", but it is noticeably irritating.
      - Dylan16807 12y ago
        PS3 controller also lasts forever. It's weird how much they regressed on that front. But it glows!
- freehunter 12y ago
  There is literally no way they could say "at least" with any number that would mean anything to anyone. Even if they did a range between worst case scenario (app refreshing as often as possible and running the CPU and Bluetooth radios 100%) to best case scenario (watch face that updates once per hour), would you really want to see a number that says "Between 5 minutes and 7 days of battery life!"? You can't really even have a "under normal use" battery life claim. My Pebble lasts between 4-5 days depending on app usage. Other have theirs lasting 2-3 days. My personal iPhone sometimes needs to be recharged in the middle of the day. My work iPhone gets charged once every three days. "Up to 7 days" is the most meaningful number they could put there, because it shows you what to expect while using it as a watch. Everything else is up to you.
AndrewDucker 12y ago
My current Pebble works for four days without any problems. Frequently longer. So if they can increase that to 7 days and I can charge once per week then I'll be even happier. But largely I like the idea of a colour one.
- Rudism 12y ago
  They advertised "up to 7 days" of battery for the original pebble, too.
  - bryanlarsen 12y ago
    Which translates into about 4 days of heavy use, and over 12 days of no use. I once misplaced my Pebble, and found it 12 days later, and it was still running.
georgeecollins 12y ago
ePaper is very different than the displays that are in the Apple Watch and various Wear devices. You can see it in bright sunlight. It can be a big drawback, particularly for a fitness device, to need to shade your display to read it.
- deleted 12y ago
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jkestner 12y ago
Which is probably why they're de-emphasizing apps (which I agree with from a UX standpoint) and emphasizing ease of developing from the web. If you hone your use cases, developing for Pebble doesn't have to be as complicated as apps. It amounts to rich push notifications, or perhaps Twitter Cards.

lumisota 12y ago

It's interesting that they've chosen to launch the product on Kickstarter. They don't appear to need the funding structure; they're simply using it as a shop.

KJasper 12y ago
Marketing. This will generate a lot more publicity.
- victor22 12y ago
  Right. As a Marketing guy myself (6 years in Procter & Gamble), I'm always baffled when people in HN don't get obvious marketing moves, but in the other hand, I'm always learning so much about tech stuff that my colleagues would never get in a decade. This community is awesome.
  - toolz 12y ago
    I'm sure the guaranteed number of sales prior to investing time and money into the project doesn't hurt either.
  - rplnt 12y ago
    I'm pretty sure they "get it", but agreeing with this practice is different thing. Sure, KS is as happy as everyone else, but that's not what they used to present themselves as.
Cthulhu_ 12y ago
Marketing as mentioned is one thing, but the other thing is that by having the community fund it before they invest in developing it, they don't run much financial risks themselves - a lot of products are developed where a company, or its employees, invest their own money, often having to do stuff like forfeit income. Having this kind of money beforehand prevents this.
- jkestner 12y ago

r0naa 12y ago

I am studying at Waterloo, I love Pebble and while this is exciting news, I wish they had made the screen's margins thiner. The watch looks like a toy and is certainly not on par (design-wise) with other watches on the market. I hope it will work well for them though!

arrrg 12y ago

It's a bland gadget. I'm really not sure about that approach. It's so cheap and uninspired. Whatever you think about the overall shape of the Apple Watch, at least it's not a bland gadget. It seems to pay meticulous attention to all the micro details that make jewelry jewlery and not a bland tech toy. (Seems to because obviously no one has looked at it in detail. But first indications are good.) This one does not. I'm really not sure why more smart watches don't try to be actual worthy jewlery. Pebble has this really cool and really functional tech, why not pack it into something worthy of being called a watch?

M4v3R 12y ago
They seem to care about the technology side more. Plus, once you get this right, you can work on your casings to sell it to people that do care about it more. Also, this is what they've done with the first Pebble - first the initial, plastic one, and only after - Pebble steel.
- jkestner 12y ago
  Exactly, a tick/tock product cycle. Apple does the flip of this - using the same case for two models, with different internals. Though they start with the high-end model. Are there as many examples of working your way upmarket? I think it may also be due to costs. The color e-paper screen obviously costs more, and perhaps a full Steel model would teeter within range of the fashion smart watches (including Apple Watch Sport), where the comparison would be less flattering.
rdrey 12y ago
I don't think any smart watch == jewellery argument works, because jewellery doesn't require software updates. There is nothing timeless about modern electronics that need battery replacements.
- taylorwc 12y ago
  I think that for any mass-market adoption (arguably not what the Pebble Time is aimed at), any smart watch will have to bridge that divide. Most people buy a watch as a fashion piece, not as a practical tool.

M4v3R 12y ago

Aaand they're already funded ($775k out of $500k at this moment). That was quick. Edit: To clarify, it was already at $775k at 16:27 CET.

dangerlibrary 12y ago
going up at ~ $1000/second, as I've watched.
- joshstrange 12y ago
  That's about right, I watched almost 500K pour in no time at all. I'd bet this will set a record for fastest funding on KS.
  - abandonliberty 12y ago
    It's very interesting to see the higher tiers selling even with the early bird available, which is cheaper per watch than any other tier.
    - joshstrange 12y ago
      I was just thinking the same thing, I locked in at the early bird price but couldn't understand why people would volunteer to pay more for the same product...
- deleted 12y ago
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- q7 12y ago
  It's currently trending towards a cool 68 million dollars: http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/597507018/pebble-time-awesome-smartwatch-no-compromises/ http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/597507018/pebble-time-aweso...
  - BinaryIdiot 12y ago

pconner 12y ago

The refresh rate on the e-paper is impressive. I remember some first-generation ereaders that required a whole second to refresh a page.

higherpurpose 12y ago
Pebble has never used E-ink, despite all the confusion in the media (not that Pebble was in a hurry to rectify it, since it played to its advantage). The color one doesn't look like E-ink now either. They used some transflective PixelQi-like displays in the past, but not sure if they're using an upgraded version of that now (with color!) or something like Mirasol, and they are just naming it the same.
- mintplant 12y ago
  Ahh, and I was most excited about the new E-Ink tech I thought they were showing off in those GIFs. Hopefully something like it can come to the Kindle eventually. Would be great for comic reading (and the animations are so smooth!).
- pconner 12y ago
  Damn, that's really misleading. I've always thought E-ink would be good for smart watches, because it shows text well, has great daytime visibility, and is power-efficient.

higherpurpose 12y ago

What's that "e-paper" screen technology they are using?

freehunter 12y ago
It's an LCD without a backlight.
- rtpg 12y ago
  pretty sure it's not that. color e-paper tech has been in the works for years now
  - frevd 12y ago
    Nope, the refresh rate is clearly too high. Compare with amazon's newest Kindle e-ink, quick animations are not possible with ink yet, and there is ghosting. Also, deducing from the battery life of 7 days ONLY, this doesn't look like eInk, which would last for weeks or longer, since it does not require power at all to keep contents on the screen. However, I have to admit that their display is the most interesting part of the watch.
    - rtpg 12y ago
      well the thing is this thing has to stay connected to bluetooth the entire time, so that's part of the battery. The animations are also 3 frames or so... so maybe it's fine. I think the ghosting comes from not explicitly setting bits. with the color e-ink screen you're probably resetting a lot of things, so even if ghosting is present, it's not very visible (especially after a lot of changes) Looking at this closely though this _does_ remind me of something like the GBC screen. This might just be LCD.

Swizec 12y ago

Innovation! A watch that tells time! I sure hope the previous model told time as well ... but they seem to really be pushing the angle this time 'round. What with literally calling it Time. The future is now.

TeMPOraL 12y ago
Oh come on Swizec ;). You have to give them credit, they're apparently the only smartwatch brand that doesn't suck. I like that there is at least one company that, as opposed to Apple, seems to care about providing a useful tool instead of a fashion piece.

devindotcom 12y ago

I hope they've managed to improve the color and sharpness on color e-paper displays. The ones I've seen over the years have been rather less than vivid.

freehunter 12y ago
If it's anything like the old Pebble display, it's not e-ink like we would see in a Kindle. They call it e-paper, but it's really a low-power LCD with no backlight. There's no problem making an LCD full color.
some1else 12y ago
Sharpness was never really an issue with e-Paper displays, as they have long been able to display at more than 150ppi. However, refresh speed and ghosting are the real issues. In order to speed up drawing and quickly wipe the screen, developers will prefer 1-bit access modes over slow/ghosty 8-bit drawing modes, so text will indeed look sharp.. And aliased.

joshstrange 12y ago

I'm extremely torn. On one hand (or rather, on one wrist) I have the pebble steel and I LOVE it, couldn't imagine going back. But on the other wrist I have an iPhone and the pebble works better with Android ATM so the Apple Watch looks attractive. Back to the first wrist, the pebble has much better battery life and is cheaper than the even the lowest priced Apple Watch... Edit: Ok, I pulled the trigger, I can always get a refund or just resell it if the Apple Watch blows it away or something like that.

melling 12y ago
The Apple Watch will be better with strong competition. It's great that there's a company that spends all day thinking about making a better watch. Anyway, you'll need to wear something while your Apple Watch is charging. :-)
- joshstrange 12y ago
  Agreed and if the rumors on iPhone battery life are true [0] (which they probably are) then you're right, I'll need something for when my Apple Watch is charging lol. [0] http://9to5mac.com/2015/01/22/apple-targets-for-apple-watch-battery-life-revealed-a5-caliber-cpu-inside/ http://9to5mac.com/2015/01/22/apple-targets-for-apple-watch-...
- alwillis 12y ago
  Apple isn’t competing with Pebble; it’s odd that people don’t get this. It’s like saying Porsche is competing with Kia. They both make cars but they’re targeting two very different markets with very little overlap. We shouldn’t confuse consumer choice with competition. I know several Pebble owners who wouldn’t buy an Apple Watch even if it cost the same as a Pebble because they don’t like what they believe Apple represents.

davidjgraph 12y ago

"We will ship Pebble Time worldwide, with the exception of Cuba, Myanmar/Burma, Iran, Sudan, Syria, and Russia." Russia?

freehunter 12y ago
Doesn't the US still have an embargo on Russia for the whole Ukraine thing? I find Cuba to be interesting. I thought we ended that embargo in December.
- mkr-hn 12y ago
  They might have finalized the copy before that.
- mikestew 12y ago
  The embargo might have ended, but perhaps all of the details are not yet in place to make it practical. Customs forms need to be reprinted (whether paper or electronic). Are UPS and other carriers ready to go? And so on. An entire generation of US businesses and people have never done business with Cuba, that isn't going to change overnight...or even in a few months. Or maybe the Pebble founders just don't like Fidel.
- gerbal 12y ago
  The Cuba embargo has not been lifted, restrictions have just been loosened a bit.
DiabloD3 12y ago
A lot of scams come from Russia due to their lax enforcement of laws when the victim is out of the country.
uniformlyrandom 12y ago
Well, they are shipping to North Korea. A new gadget for Dear Leader, to crush the imperialists!

josephjrobison 12y ago

I got the Pebble for Christmas and wondered if I needed it, but it does a really good job on a few simple things. It tells you whether that buzz you just felt on your phone was a text or important email or just a Snapchat. A few other features, but that simple thing is by far the best part about it.

m4rsm4n 12y ago

Looks like this will finally get me to jump on the smartwatch bandwagon; the original Pebble didn't really do it for me. The new interface is looking great and the week worth of battery is nice, especially since most LCD smart watches need to be charged every night.

christoph 12y ago
Same. At roughly £100 for the earlybird with shipping to the UK it's just about cheap enough that I can buy it, play with it for a bit and give it away to someone else, if I'm not happy with it when it arrives. It looks good enough that it will probably find a place to stay in my life anyway...
yoda_sl 12y ago
I have to admit they did a good job with the new watch, adding color is great and still having the week of battery is huge. I was one of the early supporter for the first Pebble and have zero regret. It did convinced me of how useful a smart watch can be. I will be a little bit sad when replacing it with the Apple Watch when it comes out: I decided to change ship, but the Pebble will always have a special spot. It's great to see they have a strong supporter base, and that will force Apple and others to stay active and compete. I will for sure miss the long lasting battery of my Pebble!
- madez 12y ago
  You talk good about the Pebble Watch but still you want to replace it with an Apple Watch. Are there any interesting reasons for this decision you might want to share?
rplnt 12y ago
This type of display is definitely a must. The size and build seem to be quite nice as well. Only (from a first glance) dealbreaker for me is the price. I'd guess half from what it is. Sure they have to pay a lot of R&D not relevant to producing a single unit, but with a run of 40k JUST for this KS campaign? It's just too much. edit: Now it seems that the stock will run out by the end of the day :)

georgeecollins 12y ago

What I think is good about this is that they are thinking of a new paradigm for UI on a wearable. For Android Wear devices it feels like Google just decided that voice was going to take care of UI, and no decisions about physical controls needed to be made. But there are two problems: voice isn't that reliable, and more importantly, there are a lot of situations where you want to use your watch but not talk to it.

TeMPOraL 12y ago
I agree. Voice control in the Apple/Android paradigm is... weird. Talking to the phone, requiring Internet connection, unusable on a busy street. Take out the phone, unlock it, move it in front of your face (now I can't see a thing and start bumping into people), "ok Google", say it again, wait for the S4 to react, say something, see it's interpreted wrong... I very much prefer to type, it's faster even on a touch screen. So here I am, waiting for a subvocal recognition system and the comeback of off-line speech processing.
- mod 12y ago
  Android has offline speech recognition. I'm not sure if it'll use it anytime there's a data connection, though. I've also noticed it has a couple of flaws, like you can't use "newline" with it.
VikingCoder 12y ago
> voice isn't that reliable Maybe it's because I'm from Minnesota and sound like Don LaFontaine, but Google's voice recognition is easily 95% or better for me. Probably closer to 98%, even on spoken sentences for sending emails or texts. When I'm navigating, or trying to call someone, it's closer to 99%.
- JTon 12y ago
  Voice recognition has improved tremendously for me as well. But what I can't seem to get over is that it's almost always slower than using my thumbs. Talking is slower than typing, plus the process time needed to interpret the voice commands. -- from a keyboard shortcut junkie

chrxss 12y ago

God why is this thing so fugly. I thought with the advent of the Moto 360, smartwatches would become at least what watches were before: jewelry, sadly the pebble time even lags behind the pebble steel

jscheel 12y ago

I'm still rocking my original Pebble. I really wanted to upgrade to the Steel, but I figured I would just wait for the 2nd (3rd?) gen. to come out. Now it looks like I'll be waiting even longer, until they come out with the TimeSteel, or whatever they will call it. Kudos on the awesome updates, but the watch body just looks terrible to me. BTW, they raised a cool $100k in the time it took me to watch the video. That's just crazysauce.

buster 12y ago

Now if it wouldn't be THAT ugly.. It even looks cheap on the movie :( I guess i'll stick to a real watch.

gergles 12y ago

Pretty sneaky to advertise $159 and not mention the $10 shipping which makes it $169, and KS doesn't even advertise that until you've already clicked through to the 'pledge' (aka purchase, what happened to "Kickstarter is not a store"?) page. And now that the 'early tier' is gone (great UX on that, they took me to the credit card page, I entered my info, then they reloaded it and went "oops, that tier's full now tee-hee!"), why would you save $10 to pay them for a product that might ship 2 months later if they get around to releasing it? So, no Kickstarter for me, it's actually plus because I'll get to see real reviews and not hype.

izolate 12y ago
Unless you can lock in the early bird, I don't believe there's any point in pledging. I just about scraped through and pledged $179 + $10, which puts me about $20 ahead of the final cost (assuming shipping will stay the same).
- mikestew 12y ago
  (If I downvoted you, sorry. Stupid tiny arrows on mobile, and no undo or even a way to see which way I voted.) Meh, you get it a few months early, and they're not shipping retail until the Kickstarters are released. That, and as an original KS backer I get a special engraving I'll never, ever see. :-)
  - what_ever 12y ago
    (Off topic) Is there any reason we can't undo voting on HN (like we can do on Reddit)?
    - cheepin 12y ago
      Especially since post editing is allowed, though maybe post editing could just drop the votes or something.
smackfu 12y ago
Yes, that is pretty sneaky. Especially since people are used to Kickstarter products including shipping.

mladenkovacevic 12y ago

I'll get one if the $159 pledge becomes available again, but I'm really looking forward to the "Steel" version of this watch. This is one aspect of the watch that Apple is getting right from the very first iteration. It needs to look sexy and make you want to wear even when the battery is dead.

AndrewDucker 12y ago

$2million in an hour. Is that a record? (What else has sold anywhere near this fast?)

rplnt 12y ago
It gained over $500k in the last 15 minutes, so... yeah, I think we are looking to break several records here.
mladenkovacevic 12y ago
I think that answers the question "Is the market ready for smart watches?"
nrmitchi 12y ago
I don't think it's fair to consider this campaign as any sort of 'record'. Pebble is an already successful company with a history of success using Kickstarter as a store. If Apple decided to release the iPhone 7 on Kickstarter it would also break a ridiculous amount of records, but it's still not really 'fair'.

BinaryIdiot 12y ago

I'm glad they're continuing to iterate on their product. This is certainly a nice improvement. Though I don't really understand the insistence of putting buttons on a watch that are used to interact with the thing. Pressing buttons, on the side of a watch and on your wrist while doing anything but standing still is always really awkward. I was really hoping their v2 would have axed the buttons. I would be very tempted to pick one up if they did but oh well.

dubbel 12y ago
I actually love the buttons. I can change the current song or take a call while on the bike without taking the of the road, just because I know where the press. This would not be possible with a touch screen. If I want to do stuff where a touch screen would come in handy I take out my phone anyway.
- angryasian 12y ago
  its absolutely possible with my moto 360. swipe once up and left and tap forward and backwards.
- BinaryIdiot 12y ago
  Whenever I went for a walk or run and tried to use the buttons it always felt awkward and cumbersome. I'd rather have buttons on my headphones or something that's really easy and obvious to hit (such at tapping the screen or something). I mean the Android Wear watches can do this (so it's possible) but it's not always the most intuitive either.

smiddereens 12y ago

Anybody know which display technology they're using? It kind of looks like Qualcomm's Mirasol from the videos.

smackfu 12y ago
Here's my guess: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2842092/sharp-smartband-lcd-uses-1000-times-less-power.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/2842092/sharp-smartband-lcd-u... * Original Pebble used greyscale version of same tech from Sharp. * Available in 1 inch size. * In production spring 2015.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

mikestew 12y ago

I was waiting to see what Apple had in store but...oh, what the hell, I'll pull the trigger. Fact is, I'm pretty satisfied with my original KS-backer edition Pebble. Apple is going to have to have a pretty convincing story for me to charge a watch every single day. I spend enough time away from 5VDC power sources that such short battery life could become occasionally annoying. The original Pebble does what I want it to do. In fact, it does more than it promised pre-shipping (counts steps, as one example). I'm hardly one to be brand-loyal to a watch, but ignoring late shipping to KS backers, Pebble has exceeded expectations, so I'll give them another whirl. Apple, OTOH, is going to have to do a hell of a job to convince me to spend almost twice as much on a new platform that needs daily charging. And I say this as one with a house full of Apple gear, much of it pre-ordered on the day of announcement.

eitally 12y ago
I really just want a "normal" watch that has some "smart" features. I already have a sports tracker (Garmin Forerunner), and I have given up wearing my Moto360 because it's almost never useful in compelling enough ways that I don't just pull my phone out after seeing a notification ... and I have to charge it nightly.
- baldeagle 12y ago
  If you want a normal watch combined with a fitbit, check out: http://www.withings.com/us/withings-activite.html http://www.withings.com/us/withings-activite.html
  - smackfu 12y ago
    They have a lower-end version of that now too: http://www.withings.com/us/withings-activite-pop.html http://www.withings.com/us/withings-activite-pop.html
  - k3oni 12y ago
    That's a sexy watch, not sure how i didn't see it before. Thanks for the link.

t27 12y ago

The amount is increasing by around $2-3k every second!! This ones going to beat every kickstarter record out there!

dimlyaware 12y ago

I think that in terms of what I was expecting out of Pebbles second iteration, this was not it. I like how they did away with the mobile thinking of apps because that was simply trying to conform a watch to a mobile phones way of thinking. Even sticking to e-paper for long battery life was a good design decision but beyond that there really isn't much in innovation. The design doesn't really wow or anything same with the UI. I know some comments really liked the UI and I guess with developers updating their apps and looks to match the new watch that may improve things as well.

orenbarzilai 12y ago

Honestly I find it real hard to believe that they sold over 13K pebbles in less than an hour. imho it doesn't make sense. They have a great product, but not 13K / 60 min great

untog 12y ago
The evidence suggests otherwise.
- orenbarzilai 12y ago
  1. We don't know of 13K different ppl bought it or if just 1K different ppl. 2. Don't you think that it's great marketing both for pebble and KS? I still find it hard to believe this numbers, but I might be wrong...
adricnet 12y ago
Well, I put in for two and I imagine some others did as well. hth, adric

Rudism 12y ago

I've owned an original pebble for a couple weeks now, but I'm still skeptical on their usefulness. I save maybe 5-10 minutes of time per week by being able to check the weather forecast or dismiss non-urgent emails and texts using my watch instead of having to pull my phone out of my pocket, but that's about the only benefit I'm seeing so far. Maybe a smartwatch would be more useful to me if I was more popular and had calendar events to keep track of or more friends who contacted me regularly, but as your typical socially-isolated introvert software engineer, this thing seems to have limited utility.

joshstrange 12y ago
I've had my Pebble Steel for just at a year now and I have the opposite experience. I consider it to be as important as having my phone on me at this point. Part of this is no doubt due to never wearing a watch (for more than a day or two) prior to owning the Pebble so I love having the time/weather on my wrist at all times. I love having texts, calls, emails on my wrist and I've started using Pushover (Push notification API with app) more and more since I don't have to dig my phone out of my pocket to read push notifications any more.
RadioactiveMan 12y ago
Consider looking at the Glance app. I enjoyed my Pebble to start with, but it became far more useful with Glance. I can now reply to text messages from a list of options I created on my phone. I filled the list with the messages I send the most: "ok", "yes", "no", "on my way". I really like deciding if messages are worth my time without having to dig out my phone and I really like being able to send quick messages without fiddling about with unlocking and on-screen keyboards.
hammerandtongs 12y ago
For me its not necessarily a raw measure of just time saved. I realized that the physical habit that we've all developed of pulling our phones, unlocking , checking time or messages etc is a really really annoying physical habit. It's disruptive and awkward to do, interrupts conversations or basic interactions with things in your environment. A two handed fumbling time check/message check becomes a no handed operation with a smart watch. I don't actually check my messages any more often, in fact less, since the notification is actually much more obvious then phones chirping in a pocket and my decision about whether to handle the information now or later is just much more quick and fluent.

samsnelling 12y ago

The killer feature here is something that no one is talking about! >We've included a soft silicone band with each Pebble Time, but all standard 22mm watch bands will fit. All new Pebble watch bands include a quick-release pin, letting you swap bands in under 10 seconds. Standard watch bands is something that most other wearables aren't embracing. This makes the Pebble significantly more enticing.

pauly 12y ago
think the original pebble used a standard watch band. steel did not (which I just bought a week ago, gah)
- mbrubeck 12y ago
  Yes, the original Pebble works with any standard 22m band.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
mikestew 12y ago
My original KS Pebble uses a regular band that I got off Amazon for $12. I'm not much of one for swapping bands regularly, but putting on a band of my choosing is not a great feature, it's just what I expect out of a watch. It's like telling time is a "killer feature". I'm more disappointed when other wearables (including the Pebble Steel) don't have this.
bergie 12y ago
Some of the Android Wear devices support standard 22mm bands as well. I had a custom one on my LG G Watch, but am staying with the stock band with the Moto 360 (since the one it shipped with is actually quite nice)
lnanek2 12y ago
I bought a replacement metal band for my Galaxy Gear. No clue if it was standard, but certainly replaceable.

untog 12y ago

I'll admit to being disappointed. After the Pebble Steel I thought they were going to take appearances seriously, but the Pebble Time barely even looks better than the original Pebble. Maybe if they make a Pebble Time Steel it'll be the one for me (and the sales figures suggest plenty do not agree with me). That said, kudos to them for getting it out and being independent competition to Android Wear and the Apple Watch. We need that.

mahyarm 12y ago
Yeah it is too bad. I know many people who will not wear a smart watch if it doesn't look good. And these are people who have / wear many fashion watches of various sizes. The apple watch is the first watch that they actually like appearance wise. At least come out with a shiny gold, brass and rose gold colored versions. Not actual gold mind you, just gold colored. There are certain market segments that love those colors.
- riyadparvez 12y ago
  I don't need fashionable watch. But this thing looks so childish.
  - mahyarm 12y ago
    You don't, but many other segments do.
  - notatoad 12y ago
    I don't need a fashionable watch, but I really don't need an ugly watch. My phone tells time, shows notification, and does everything this does perfectly fine. If it were fashionable, I'd be tempted. But it has to be at least one of useful and fashionable.
- 0xCMP 12y ago
  They announced it would be actual gold. Just like for luxury gold watches.

chocks 12y ago

Awesome! The first thing I noticed was the battery life - 7 days (like the original). I'm buying it :). In the video, Eric makes a very good point - most smart-watches are trying to replace the phone, but instead should focus on what's critical to a watch - Time.

Nashie 12y ago

They are clearly trying to differenciate from Apple by using more sporty apperearance. I would have prefered more business-like layout but ended up ordering anyways. It looks very promising!

hauget 12y ago

new interface is probably the basis for touch screen interaction in 3rd gen

caio1982 12y ago

To see in realtime the figures increasing like that in the page is sort of scaring.

dEnigma 12y ago
Definitely. During the time it took me to watch the video, the counter went up 100,000$

lnanek2 12y ago

3 million dollars and they can't hire an industrial designer to make it look like something other than a preschool toy? They feel like a bunch of developers competing against Apple. No offense intended, I'm a developer myself. I think they'll have more and better features, since that is how developers think, but you need to look good to really capture all the consumers.

snissn 12y ago
They've sold over a million watches at a retail price of $100-$200
freehunter 12y ago
Have you ever seen a normal watch? Like a Wal-Mart, off-the-shelf Timex? They're hideous. Absolutely atrocious. If people want a nice looking watch, they buy a Rolex or a Tag. What people get from a Timex is a functional watch that is easy to read, relatively oops-resistant (can take some damage and go under water without breaking), and has some features they really need. A $500 Rolex probably doesn't have a stopwatch with a lap counter, but that $10 Timex sure does. There's precedent in the watch-world to not care what the watch looks like. Watches are not always fashion items, which is why the watch section exists in Wal Mart. I keep hearing people say "it doesn't look as nice as the Apple Watch or Android Wear" (personally, the Apple Watch looks awful), but if you're looking for features over fashion, this is the device for you.
- eitally 12y ago
  What are you blabbering on about? There are plenty of good looking cheap watches, just not watches that are aiming at the same buyers as Richemont/Swatch/LVMH do. If you want to complain justifiable, point your disdain at Invicta and their ilk.
- swang 12y ago
  Eh, for $10 you take what you can get. For ~$200 I don't need expensive materials but I would like it to not look like what it looks like. This double bezel thing is kinda ugly. I mean if you spend $20 more from the $10 Timex you can get a Timex Weekend, which looks pretty nice.

NDizzle 12y ago

Does anyone know how you are going to go about charing this device? MicroUSB?

andars 12y ago
I'd go with the four metal dots visible on the back (some connectir unique to the watch)

blackdogie 12y ago

Whatever about the product, their timing is spot on. Not that it will really make much of a dent in the Apple Watch sales, I'm sure there are a lot of people who'll get this now instead. Major differences, battery life & price do make this a tempting product.

jkestner 12y ago
The demographics feel very different. Is it meant to compete with Apple Watch, or with Android Wear?

evaness 12y ago

I agree that Kickstarter isn't a store. It's an informercial platform optimized for hype and maximally dumping risks onto your customers. I am a fan of Pebble, but I find this campaign on Kickstarter (after an already successful Kickstarter and three years of continued success), to be both excellent marketing and an utter disgrace to the goals that Kickstarter once stood for.

mobiplayer 12y ago

> Works with iPhone, Samsung and Android. So I guess I won't be buying this one either, doesn't work with my 1520!

dragontamer 12y ago

7-Day Battery life. Why does no other smartwatch offer this?

callumjones 12y ago
Possibly because the others aren't using e-paper.

joosters 12y ago

What happened to 'Kickstarter is not a store' - https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-is-not-a-store https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-is-not-a-store ? Offering multiple quantities of a reward is prohibited. Hardware and Product Design projects can only offer rewards in single quantities or a sensible set (some items only make sense as a pair or as a kit of several items, for instance). The development of new products can be especially complex for creators and offering multiple quantities feels premature, and can imply that products are shrink-wrapped and ready to ship.

TillE 12y ago
Honestly, that seems like a completely arbitrary policy which serves no real purpose. In general I'd stay the hell away from hardware projects on Kickstarter, but in this case Pebble has a proven track record of delivering a quality product in a reasonable time frame. I assume that gives them a little more leeway when Kickstarter is approving their campaign.
- joosters 12y ago
  That Kickstarter policy update was in response to the rising levels of failed projects on the site. It was an attempt to fight off bad press. Of course, it turned out to be pretty toothless (Just take a look at the joke of a 'risks' section of almost any kickstarter project. That section was also introduced by this udpate). I'd agree with you that Pebble probably have a better chance than most at delivering on their promises, but as people have commented elsewhere, Pebble are only really back on KS as a promotional exercise. This is not really comparable to most other KS projects. Still, it's one rule for them, another for everyone else. KS are doing well out of this promo too. Perhaps someone should go and report Pebble for their other rule-breaking? Those watch pictures at the top of the page are clearly computer renderings. "If a simulation or photorealistic rendering is discovered after a project launches, that project will be canceled." :)
  - Dylan16807 12y ago
    The risks section is great because you can tell very quickly if they've put some thought into logistics or not. No need to enforce that it's properly filled out.

lettergram 12y ago

I've been using my Pebble I got from UIUC when they gave hundreds away: https://blog.getpebble.com/2013/12/16/pebbling-schools-in-the-name-of-awesome/ https://blog.getpebble.com/2013/12/16/pebbling-schools-in-th... It was some good marketing, because I just bought a new one because I loved it so much.

allanjenn 12y ago

How much money do you think they are going to raise? I think $25M.

q2 12y ago

Scrolling among items (up/down) as demonstrated needs to be changed.

inverba 12y ago

Does anyone have insight into how this fits into the market? I don't understand how this isn't a strictly worse phone (given that people carry phones with them all the time).

mbrubeck 12y ago
It's a phone accessory. It lets you see and respond to things like SMS messages, caller ID, calendar reminders, etc. without taking your phone out of your pocket. Kind of a small thing, but actually pretty handy when you're walking around or in a meeting or other places where glancing at your wrist is easier or less intrusive than using your phone. (Plus, it tells time.) This review goes into more detail: http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-smartwatch/ http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-smartwatch/

O____________O 12y ago

I think animated transitions are the skeuomorphism of 2015. Mind you, I'm technically impressed that an E-Ink display can now be animated, but I can't wait for the end of the animated UI boom.

Navarr 12y ago
Do you... Do you just desire UI to not be animated at all? that the next item in that list just appears at the top?
- wvenable 12y ago
  Fast animations are good. I have a jailbroken iPhone and the first thing I do is turn off a lot of the animations and the phone is super-snappy compared to stock. Whenever I use someone else's iPhone, it's just so painful to switch apps and navigate around. So I understand not wanting to watch some stupid animation over and over instead of just getting to the point. But some animations are helpful for seeing when things change.
  - Navarr 12y ago
    It's just interesting seeing someone promote the precise opposite of the now ever so popular Material Design thought of basically using animations everywhere to convey motion, meaning, and hierarchy.
    - wvenable 12y ago
      Everything can be overused. Microsoft pretty much invented the "flat" movement that has been happening but they're also guilty of making things so flat and undefined that you don't even know what to click on! The iPhone uses animation as filler to hide slow app loading in the first gen but it isn't necessary anymore. Even skeuomorphism is ok when it conveys meaning but most uses are garish effects that provide zero benefit. Animations that are merely cool looking might be fun for the first dozen times but then it gets old.
- 12y ago

dbalan 12y ago

I hope they reduce the price of orginal pebble. ;-)

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

mikkom 12y ago

How did they get the e-ink display so fast? Or is the video only an explanation of how it works (and therefore not real)?

TeMPOraL 12y ago
It's not e-ink, it's "e-paper". A power-efficient display, but not the stuff you get on Kindles. I wish they wouldn't mislead people again with this.

iblaine 12y ago

"At anytime up until your watch has shipped, you may request a full refund" Nice. I own a pebble and pebble steel. Hardly use them but the full refund policy won me over.

aareet 12y ago

I'm glad they went with ePaper, but I think I'll hold off until the battery life has developed to be quite a bit better (lasts a few months on a single charge?). The biggest value prop to having information on a watch to me is that I never have to think about charging my watch so I can always rely on it having the information I need. I don't recall ever replacing a watch battery and I'm looking forward to when smartwatches reach that kind of longevity. Considering my Kindle lasts over a month on a single charge, I'd be thrilled to have an e-ink watch that showed me a listing of notifications and the time that lasts just as long.

kbd 12y ago
> I think I'll hold off until the battery life ... (lasts a few months on a single charge?) You'll be waiting a very long time. > Considering my Kindle lasts over a month on a single charge Your Kindle isn't maintaining a bluetooth connection to your phone or updating the screen frequently, and has a much larger battery than a watch. > I never have to think about charging my watch so I can always rely on it having the information I need. With the Pebble you don't have to worry about it either. It notifies you when it's getting low (has a day or two of battery life remaining) and you charge it when you get the chance. And if you don't have time to give it a full charge, in my experience with just 10-15 minutes charging time you'll get a few more days of use. I agree with your sentiment about battery life though. It's why I don't understand why anyone would even consider any smartwatch besides Pebble. Fall asleep without charging your watch one night and you can't wear it the next day? That's crazy. It also means you can't really use your watch as an alarm if you need to charge it each night.
- aareet 12y ago
  Oh I don't know if it will be all that long. http://www.withings.com/us/withings-activite.html http://www.withings.com/us/withings-activite.html seems to be able to track and synchronize physical activity with my phone, runs on CR-2025 for 8 months. Don't know how they pull it off, but an inventive UI/watch interface to show me notification information like this one might be the ticket.

nikolajhoborg 12y ago

Black ops 2

pimlottc 12y ago

Is it just me, or does it look like he's squeezing the buttons fairly hard in the timeline demo images? I suppose you have to make the buttons firm enough to prevent accidental presses but I would hope that you could use the buttons with one figure comfortably.

feld 12y ago
I can't recall ever wearing a watch with buttons on the side that I could press without "squeezing" the watch
- pimlottc 12y ago
  You may be right, I never got into the habit of wearing a watch myself.

taylorwc 12y ago

It's 2PM CST on launch day and they already have preorders for nearly 30,000 units. It's really a cool thing to see considering that 5 years ago this situation wouldn't exist.

fit2rule 12y ago

This is my next smart watch: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/920064946/oscilloscope-watch https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/920064946/oscilloscope-... As soon as it ships, of course ..

DenisM 12y ago

As I look at the total pledge amount climbing higher and higher, at $5.5m presently, I can't help but think that VCs and bankers got completely cut out of the "deal". It used to be that you had to please a whole bunch of finance guys to get anything done, but this time they weren't even invited to the table. It's a big change. I also keep thinking about other ways in which the financial sector can get disintermediated. Bootstrapping is always an option, if a very long and arduous one. To speed things up there is Kickstarter in b2c, but what about b2b? Are there ways to get the future beneficiaries of a new b2b product to fund its development, and that don't involve spending 6 month to raise funding? It always bothered me that funding decisions are usually made by people who know a lot about finance and, as a rule, very little about the target market. Surely there is a lot of potential there for the insiders of the target industry?

GolfyMcG 12y ago
It depends on your perspective of a b2b product. If by b2b you mean business to fortune 500 business, then there is probably not a way around it. If you're talking about business to mom and pop shop, Kickstarter is perfectly suitable - look at the top tier prizes. They're usually geared towards buying them in bulk, probably with the intent of reselling them. The reason I would say that it is an impossibility to talk about selling business to fortune 500 type business is because invariably, they have venture arms which function like the finance industry and are usually staffed by former employees of Goldman, JP Morgan, etc. So, the insiders have found a way to do what they want - they're their own bank, unless we're talking about major mergers and acquisitions, which obviously require such fast sums of capital that it's unreasonable to expect such an accessible market.
tomasien 12y ago
I believe someone setting up a way to broker first customers to become stakeholders in new companies for pre-paying for services would be huge. I've been in a situation where that would have been totally warranted and valuable, but instead we had to spend months proving to that customer other ways that working with us was properly de-risked. They would have been happy to just take the risk if there was a plug and play model to reward them for it, and I think many other companies are in similar situations (depending on what part of their business you touch/would effect). Another model that I do not personally believe in but seems promising to others I respect is https://assembly.com https://assembly.com - they work to bring teams together to build things and have gamified equity comp. You can even go in there and squash an important bug on a project and get equity in the project forever (ostensibly) for doing it based on the "bounty" that is set.

msrini 12y ago

We are developing a smart sensor strap for Pebble time: check it out: http://www.gethbeats.com/ http://www.gethbeats.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWqbaX94_lA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWqbaX94_lA

aeiro 12y ago
Do you have a rough idea about the price? Am I expecting 2 figures? 3?
- murali8051 12y ago
  2 figures :)
delecti 12y ago
Your site is fairly low on information, mind if I ask a few questions? So this would be a replacement 'watch band' for the Pebble Time, which provides biometric data to it? Your website seems to suggest it'll work with any device, will it still interface with the "smart accessory port" on the Time? Do you have advance information about the protocol/form-factor that the sensors, or are you going to finalize that part of the design once it's available? Also, I'm not sure I understand why it's called "contactless". Seems very interesting though. It seems most wearables lean either towards "interface for your phone" or "fitness device", so something that boosts the Pebble's biometric tracking could be pretty cool.
- murali8051 12y ago
  Yep,replacement strap. We were devloping it to work with any device, but now with "accessory port" on Time, we will be able to leverage the battery and data connection to watch, which simplify the design. @Contactless: we are developing a new sensor technology for measuring HR which will not be in contact with the skin(like optical sensors/bio-impedance metal stubs). This means that the sensor is embedded inside the silicone strap as you can see in the demo video. Any suggestions ? pls mail me : ms@gethbeats.com

msrini 12y ago

New Smart Sensor Strap for Pebble Time: http://www.gethbeats.com/ http://www.gethbeats.com/ POC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWqbaX94_lA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWqbaX94_lA

bambax 12y ago

It seems everyone and their brother wants this, but > up to 7 days of battery is a deal breaker for me; when/how do you recharge a watch? Isn't the point of a watch to never go off your wrist? I'm old enough to wear a watch (and to not remember a time when I didn't) and having to thing about recharging it would kill the whole watch experience for me...

walshemj 12y ago
Is the idea that you have a second battery and swap them out or are they going to have a charging stand you put it on the charge at night time?

pfooti 12y ago

FWIW, I have a regular pebble, and was a KS backer from the first campaign. I'm considering a second backing, mainly because the delivery date is may 2015, which is probably late enough that I'd be in the market for a new one anyway, and the promise to have a special something for double backers is a nice touch. Personally, I use my pebble for just about whatever you'd think. It's nice to control my music (don't laugh- the nexus 6 is a pain to take out of my pocket just to change tracks), to have a quiet and personal alert of important emails, (the notification is a lot less noticeable by other people than the buzz of a vibrating phone) and to have ridiculous watchfaces. QR code of the current time in a watchface. My favorite! https://github.com/TrueJournals/pebble-qrwatch https://github.com/TrueJournals/pebble-qrwatch Finally, Android L has this nice new trusted-bluetooth-device notion, so when I'm wearing the pebble, I don't have to unlock the phone. I know it's a bit of a security risk, but it is one I'm willing to take.

halosghost 12y ago

Mmm, this looks awesome. Now, I'm just hoping for an update to Pebble Steel so that I can have a metal pebble with a color display and timeline. Would be awesome! All the best,

binoyxj 12y ago

What I like about Pebble- Display + Battery + Cross-platform support.

sparaker 12y ago

$6.2 M and 31 days to go. Wow. This is definitely a successful campaign.

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willtheperson 12y ago

I don't understand how this many people are supporting a new version. Anyone I've talked to who bought one was extremely disappointed with the product. I had one to work on some prototypes about a year ago and it was nothing but frustration. Bad documentation, scattered, outdated already.. Getting code running on it was painful and most ideas were very limited by the watch abilities. To top it off, the ios application to sync notifications was a complete joke. Bluetooth is pretty typically bad about staying connected, but the Pebble should win an award for how frustratingly often it would drop. To get it back, you must open the app or repair. Beginning to end, a very poor experience. I get the design being pretty poor on the first version, but it seems like they didn't work very hard to fix that for v2. Maybe I just happen to meet the only people who had these problems too, and every other person who bought one was very happy, but I'm honestly baffled.

downandout 12y ago

I have to think that Pebble, and most other smart watches, are going to get crushed by the Apple Watch. iOS has an amazing ecosystem of developers that enhance the value proposition of owning iOS-based products to the point where literally no one can compete. People argue over the size of the smart watch market, but whatever it is, Apple will take a huge chunk of it. I see Pebble faltering before the end of the year, so I wouldn't want to buy one at this point.

aftbit 12y ago

Man, I wish they'd just release their firmware as open source. And get rid of the 8 app limit.

deleted 12y ago

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melicerte 12y ago

Kickstarter, the pre-order website for the rest of us...