
Pebble Smartwatch Review: A Useful Dumbwatch - acangiano
http://programmingzen.com/2014/01/10/pebble-smartwatch-review-a-useful-dumbwatch/
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bryanlarsen
I find the battery life on my Pebble to be much longer than the author is
finding: it was still going 8 days after I misplaced it in my car. When
actively being used, I find it lasts 3-4 days. It's still short enough that
it's easiest to get in the habit of charging it overnight, but it easily
survives one or two forgotten charges.

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driverdan
You have to disable the motion backlight, it turns on far to easily. With it
on I got about 2 days of battery life. With it off I get 5-7 days.

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sp332
Thanks for this, I'd been wondering why mine was turning on all the time and
I'd forgotten about that setting. Settings->Display->Motion

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51Cards
I had a Pebble bought for me as a gift and I have to admit, while I'm a
technophile I did think it was gimmicky.

Count me as reformed; I fell in love with the Pebble quickly. Now I won't try
to tell anyone that it is a do-all device but it has done two things for me.

A. Having notifications pop up on your wrist... priceless. I get email and
texts constantly and when I am working on-site I don't have to keep pulling
out my phone. I can assess quickly if it's something I need to take time to
deal with. I now wonder how I did without this.

B. It has convinced me that this is going to be a very big thing in the
future. I find I constantly want the Pebble to do more... like the Galaxy Gear
does. I'm not advocating the Gear specifically, but I am saying that having a
Pebble has convinced me that this is a mobile device interface (wrist mounted)
I want to see mature and that I will be making a standard device type for me.

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sn0v
Not trying to be snarky at all here, genuinely wondering what the advantages
are as opposed to simply having your phone on your desk while you're working?

I mean if notifications are the primary feature (being connected 24x7 etc),
isn't that the purpose of a smartphone after all? Why bring _yet_ another
device into the fray when it admittedly is a one-trick pony at this point of
time?

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mikestew
Not the parent, but for me I don't have to keep the phone on my desk at all.
It can stay in my bag. That's actually less distracting since the
notifications to my wrist can be filtered (only email and messages, only phone
calls, or whatever). Parent mentioned working on-site, where the phone might
be more likely to walk off if you forget to pick it up.

Is it revolutionary? Will it change your life? No, I don't share the same rosy
view as the parent commenter. But I do find it handy, my phone stays in the
bag most of the time, and I don't have to dig for it to find out that I need
to pick up milk on the way home.

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jlees
I keep my phone in my bag too, I don't always have pockets and girl pockets
are small anyway. Watches definitely help in that case.

Also, I had an app which forwarded all phone notifications to the Pebble and
it certainly helps you realise just how spammy the phone is. But it was useful
for capturing things like bank app alerts, TripIt, Google Now, etc.

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peteforde
For me, moving notifications from my phone to my wrist is worth using the
Pebble. I'm not loyal to it, and would consider switching if I was given a
compelling reason to. However, I don't know what that reason would be, given
that it already does exactly what I need it to. Anything else would have to be
something radical and awesome that hasn't been thought of, yet.

I wrote about the sheer number of smart watches coming out, here:
[http://hackertourism.com/watches](http://hackertourism.com/watches)

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Kiro
> I found myself essentially having to recharge it overnight as I could only
> get about 1.5 days worth of battery life from it and hated seeing it die in
> the middle of the day.

You should return it. Mine is never less than 5 days.

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splendidfailure
That's unusual. You should email support@getpebble.com to get an RMA
replacement if you're consistently only getting 1.5 days

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wkdav
A good summary, I agree all around except with respect to battery life, I've
had none of the problems anyone is talking about...but if I had to guess, I
bet it corresponds to the amount of notifications you get and how much you're
playing with the thing.

I've been able to get some of the apps to worth, but there is clearly still
some slight hacking needed, which makes the whole thing more of a project than
a product to me.

That being said, I commend their efforts in getting the technology out there
after years of talking about smart watches, especially on an open platform for
developers.

I'll continue to support it, use it, and hack on it, but is it the ipod of mp3
players for watches? Probably not, but I'm tired of waiting around for the big
boys. Stop suing each other over patents and innovate for gods sake.

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splendidfailure
You may be pleasantly surprised by 2.0 =)

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evanmoran
I use my Pebble to play music on my phone. It actually makes me listen to
music more -- the play button is so easy to hit. It's really quite fun.
Clearly other bluetooth connected devices can do this too, but I don't have
those=).

As a whole, I think smart watches will eventually be quite common. There are
clear advantages for: notifications, calendar viewing, remote controls, music,
health/fitness monitoring, timers, siri integration. That said, Pebble has a
ton of work left to before they have decent support for these things. It is
impressive how well it works considering, but they need to step up their game
fast or someone (Apple) is going to crush them.

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InclinedPlane
Maybe this is Pebble's marketing, I don't know, the fact is most people don't
need a Pebble, but it still serves a highly usefil niche for some. If you work
with your hands a lot (as a chef, wood worker, contractor, whatever) it can be
highly useful. If you work closely coordinated with a small team where you
might consider using radios to keep in touch then used correctly a smartwatch
might be able to fill that role.

If you don't have a practical use for a smartwatch as with the above examples
then it might not be useful for you. Not everyone needs a multi-meter or a
torque wrench either, they are tools for jobs and not necessarily universally
needed.

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lando2319
I've been wearing a pebble everyday for about 2 months now.

Working from home (software dev) I will often leave my phone on my desk,
before I got my pebble I would often glance at my phone after coming back into
the room, just to see if I missed anything.

Since I have gotten my Pebble I have noticed myself doing this less and less,
because I know what notifications I have received because they are right there
on my wrist.

I admit there is more I would like from my pebble as far as functionality,
initial outgoing emails/hangouts via voice dictation would be nice. That being
said the Pebble in its current iteration has proven itself useful for me.

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thirdsight
I still can't justify anything better than my $10 Casio Bin Laden watch.

There is literally nothing that has an advantage over it for me. Status and
cost mean nothing.

I think the smart watch is purely an example of conspicuous consumption,
nothing more.

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haswell
I personally find value in using my Pebble. Having the ability to glance down
at my wrist without needing to pull my phone out of my pocket (or computer
bag) is great. Having the ability to trigger URLS through a companion app is
pretty cool. Glancing at my watch while walking through the airport to see I
have a gate change notification is great. In the near future, there will be
many other potential integration points and companion apps as the next major
version of the SDK is released.

Are these features for everyone? Probably not. But it seems closed minded to
reduce the purchase of what is in actuality a pretty cool device to "purely
conspicuous consumption".

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thirdsight
Is having to pull your phone out of your pocket that bad? Do you even need to
look at it unless it makes a loud noise at which point you can close to defer
until later? Constant distraction is poisonous. On your arm, it's going to be
worse.

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bryanlarsen
On your arm, it's much less distracting. If my phone vibrates and not my arm,
I know I can ignore it. If they both vibrate, it takes half a second to glance
down and decide whether it's important or not. And if it's one of those many
"medium priority" type notifications that seem to form the bulk of your
notifications, you're much more inclined to just ignore it rather than just
answer because you've got your phone in your hand anyways...

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nathanvanfleet
> Tell me what time it is. Yes, I can reach for my pants and fight my pocket
> to get the phone out. But the watch is just faster and easier.

Obviously this is the killer feature of it.

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adricnet
Actually this week, how cold it is was (weather) even more important than the
time, or day ... or texts, email, or phone calls. And with Glance (or other
apps) this is on the watchface, for well, glancing at.

It was quite alarming as the temperature outside crawled down into negative
degrees Celsius and I'm pleased to see it climb back into small positive
integers today.

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jlees
I don't pay much attention to the exact degree weather outside. I guess if it
was on the cusp of freezing it might be interesting, but generally.. it's
cold, I'm not going to change my behaviour as a result. Is the quantifiable
degree increment interesting to other people?

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atmosx
The most disturbing thing about Pebble is the lack of proper UTF-8 support[1].

The most positive is of course the notifications: I leave my phone at a desk
when I'm at work, far and away from me and still get all the notifications in
the world, never missing a phone call.

[1] [http://www.convalesco.org/blog/2013/03/05/the-pebble-
experie...](http://www.convalesco.org/blog/2013/03/05/the-pebble-experience/)

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btbuildem
> Waking up to a vibrating watch on your wrist still beats by far annoying
> iPhone alarms blasting full volume while you are half asleep.

or you could use one of those apps that track whether you're in REM sleep or
not and wake you up when most appropriate..

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CJefferson
A big advantage of a vibrating watch is not waking your partner at the same
time.

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wkd415
if you turn vibration off on your phone you can confirm phantom vibrations are
real.

