It was back in October that I commented on the ideal smartwatch: “Imagine a watch that contains a multicolored led notification light, a vibrating alert, and less bulky/blocky shape to the Pebble. Bluetooth 4.0 LE by default.”
So, here we are a few months later, and I saw a great deal on a Pebble and decided to take advantage of it. This was shortly before Pebble announced the Pebble Steel. The innards of the steel and the software is the same, but the design is a bit more stylish and professional looking. There is an LED light, and it may or may not be software controllable. It is also over $100 more.
Bluetooth 4.0 LE is not supported. In fact, the Android app for Pebble uses the Accessibility system rather than the Notification listener added in 4.3. Using the Notification Listener requires a third-party app that supports it.
Pebble has an Android app update in beta that includes their new watch app and face store, which organizes apps and watchfaces in a single place. This was previously something that was offered by third-parties as opposed to Pebble itself. It is slow, but it is still in beta. I opted to upgrade, rather than waiting. As I do not have an iOS device, I can’t comment on that experience.
So, how does the Pebble stack up? Well, first the band that came with it was too small, but the Pebble uses a standard 22mm watchband, so I was able to replace it with a longer one. The actual device, the watchface, is bigger than some watches, but I’ve been able to get used to the size.
The main purpose of the Pebble for me is notifications. It vibrates and flashes notifications on the screen. One of the biggest problems I’ve always had, is when I put my phone away, I miss calls and other information. This is especially an issue in crowded places.
With the Pebble, the watch vibrates and I can see the message on the screen without having to take the phone out. I saw one argument from a user that while the connection to the Pebble costs in battery life, it could actually save battery net because the user would not be turning on the phone screen to read messages.
The device is at least as rugged as any other watch, and so far I’ve had no failure with it.
The Pebble is still disappointing on the app front. It is getting there though with the new Pebble App Store and Version 2.0 of the firmware/SDK. The new firmware supports retrieval of information from the Internet, something not natively supported prior. This allows for dynamic information such as weather conditions to be added to a watchface.
There is little interactivity I can think of that I’d want with the buttons of the Pebble, other than music control and other simple items. Pebble supports basic music control, which I supplement with Music Boss, which adds additional features.
There is more coming from Pebble on the software front, and from 3rd party developers offering additional features. I’ll be interested to see what’s next.
