Michal Ždanský Three years ago, a relatively small, unknown team led by engineer Eric Migicovsky launched an ambitious Kickstarter campaign to help create smartwatches for iPhones and Android phones. The promising project, which determined the minimum funds necessary for successful financing at fifty thousand dollars, turned out to be one of the biggest Kickstarter phenomena and at the same time the most successful project of this service at the time.
The team managed to raise over ten million dollars and their product, the Pebble watch, became the most successful smart watch on the market to date. Less than three years later, today the 130-member team celebrated the sale of the millionth piece and managed to come up with a more luxurious variant of the original plastic construction called Pebble Steel. A group of tech enthusiasts not only managed to bring a successful smartwatch to market, but also managed to create a healthy software ecosystem that counts thousands of apps and watch faces.
But Pebble now faces new competition. While three years ago there were only a handful of smart watches, with the largest company among the participants being the Japanese Sony, today Apple with its Apple Watch is a month from its debut, and interesting devices on the Android Wear platform are also flooding the market. Pebble enters the fray with a new product – Pebble Time.
In terms of hardware, the Time is a noticeable evolution from both the first Pebble version and its metal variant. The watch has a square shape with rounded corners and almost resembles a pebble, from which its name is derived. Their profile is slightly curved, so they better copy the shape of the hand. Likewise, the watch is lighter and thinner. The creators stayed with the same control concept, instead of a touch screen, there are four buttons on the left and right sides as a single interaction system.
The dominant feature of the watch is its display, which this time is colored, even using the same transreflective LCD technology. The relatively fine display can display up to 64 colors, i.e. the same as GameBoy Color, and it can also display more complex animations, which the creators did not skimp on.
Among other things, some former software engineers from Palm who participated in the development of WebOS joined the Pebble team last year. But playful animations are not the only distinctive element of the new firmware. The creators practically ditched the entire control concept and called the new interface of the software Timeline.
In Timeline, Pebble divides notifications, events and other information into three segments – past, present and future, each of the three side buttons corresponds to exactly one of these sections. The past will show, for example, missed notifications or missed steps (the pedometer is part of the Pebble) or the results of yesterday's football match. The present will display music playback, weather, stock information and of course the current time. In the future, you will find, for example, events from the calendar. This system is partly reminiscent of Google Now, you can simply scroll through information, although you cannot expect intelligent sorting like Google's service.
Each of the apps, whether pre-installed or third-party, can insert their own information into this timeline. Not only that, the application does not even have to be installed in the watch, simple web tools will be available through which it will be possible to get information to the watch only via the Internet. The rest will be taken care of by the Pebble application on the Internet and Bluetooth 4.0, through which the phone communicates with the watch and transfers data.
After all, the creators have already entered into partnerships with Jawbone, ESPN, Pandora and The Weather Channel to insert information into the watch in this way. The goal of the Pebble team is to create a large-scale ecosystem into which not only services can enter, but also other hardware, such as fitness bracelets, medical devices and the "internet of things" in general.
This is one of the ways that Eric Migicovsky and his team want to face the big companies entering the smart watch market. Another attraction for users will be the week's endurance on a single charge, excellent legibility in the sun and water resistance. The icing on the imaginary cake is the integrated microphone, which, for example, allows you to reply to received messages by voice or create voice notes.
The Pebble Time is due to arrive in May, a month after the release of the Apple Watch, and will reach first customers in the same way as when it debuted. Through a Kickstarter campaign.
According to Migicovsky, the company does not use Kickstarter so much to finance production as a marketing tool, thanks to which they can easily inform interested parties with new updates. Even so, Pebble Time has the potential to become the most successful server project ever. They reached their minimum funding limit of half a million dollars in an incredible 17 minutes, and after one and a half days, the amount reached is already over ten million.
Those interested can get a Pebble Time in any color for $179 (the $159 variant is already sold out), then the Pebble will appear on free sale for $XNUMX more. That is, for less than half of what the Apple Watch will cost.
Shit, it's ugly again. However, the boys from Montblanc took an interesting route: http://goo.gl/akgv7J
e-strap? Erm, I'm not saying that these Pebbles are nice, but the ones from Montblanc? Oo
TimeWalker is a high-end watch, I understand, not everyone may like it, after all, this solution probably won't be for everyone, I estimate the price around 100K. But it's a WATCH.
Know that I would definitely not wear a "strap" on such a watch - the watch is not ugly, but the bracelet is
The "bracelet" as you say, is in the place where there is normally a clasp/fastening. It doesn't look so bad in appearance, it's on the underside so usually only the person wearing it notices it. Rather, I would see the problem in the fact that it is on the bottom side, when I sit down at the PC, I will be tapping the screen on the table, which does not seem like the best thing to me....
But it's nothing. People really give money for anything.
As a cheap option, however, ok.