2013 is the year when “wearable tech” came into prominence with the advent of Google Glass and mainstream smartwatches. The Pebble is a smartwatch from a small startup company in the USA. The Pebble is now on sale at Best Buy and on Amazon. What does it do?
Watch Design
The Pebble is a simple, thin design with a flat front and back. It is sealed to protect against water immersion so it can be worn while in the shower or swimming. It comes with a basic rubber watchstrap, which can be changed easily as the connections are a standard size. It has a low-power always-on monochrome 1.26 inch display with 144×160 pixels. It is available in five colors including black and white.
It has a backlight which comes on when a button is pressed, or if the watch is shaken gently (it has a built-in accelerometer). Talking about buttons, it doesn’t have a touch sensitive display; there are three buttons on the right side and one on the left to navigate through watch functions and make selections.
The watch doesn’t play sounds, but uses vibrations to grab your attention. The watch needs recharging about every 5-7 days via a magnetically-attaching charger cable as the case is sealed.
Main Features
The Pebble is a programmable watch with Bluetooth 4.0 (low power) capabilities. It acts as a companion to an iPhone or Android phone. There is an official Pebble app for iOS and Android on their app stores that let you download new watchfaces and apps to the watch. There are many apps available to improve watch-phone communication and add extra features to the watch. Major app developers such as Runkeeper have started building in Pebble support to their phone apps.
The Pebble can be configured to receive notifications of events that occur on the phone. For example, each time a text message arrives, you can set your Pebble watch to vibrate and display the message. It can notify you of any event that your phone would notify you about.
As standard, the watch can be used to accept or decline incoming phone calls, or accept them. It can control your phone’s music app – display the currently playing track, pause/restart play and move forwards or backwards through the play list. Advanced third-party music management apps let you adjust the playback volume and have many other useful features.
In Use
The best feature for many Pebble watch owners is the notifications. Having them sent to your wrist means you can leave your phone on mute in your pocket until you get a Pebble message about something that does need you to respond to it. It is much easier to check your wrist than dig out your phone EVERY time your phone gets an SMS or email.
The phone costs $150, and that mostly goes to pay for the guts of the device. It isn’t as flash as the Galaxy Gear by any means, but it DOES look great, it works well, the software used on the phone and the watch have received many serious upgrades this year, and third-party developer support is outstanding. Oh, and a hardware support environment is growing, including a wide range of skins to change the watch’s color.