So, I bought the Original, the Steel from Kickstarter, the Time Round, and Pebble 2.
The story was about unintrusive technology. An Apple watch is an iPhone on your wrist. It does so much that you forget all the things it does. Problem is:
1. Doing things on the watch sucks. It just does. It is too small and takes too long.
2. The ability to act on things makes it a tool for distraction.
The Pebble watches were simple -
- Watchface display
- Fitness Tracking
- Calendar
- Media Controls
- Notifications
The last one was important, by not being able to act on notifications and by being able to filter the notifications in the app, you could configure it to only buzz you when things actually matter. You can see that notification and then the hint of resistance to reply to it made it easier to stay in the moment.
Other advantages were:
- Battery Life (weeks, not a day)
- Weight & Size (The Pebble Time Round being the smallest smartwatch ever made)
- Tactile controls
- Transflective LCD (Made for incredible outdoor lighting performance)
I would also note that their design team was ungodly good. The Timeline OS's perspective on time and how it interacted with your day was 4D chess brilliant. Liron Damir's ux was some of the most fun ever, sadly the guy got stuck on all kinds of brave products that were good but failed due to biz sabotage. (They worked on the WebOS team at HP, Portal Team at Facebook, etc.)
The story was about unintrusive technology. An Apple watch is an iPhone on your wrist. It does so much that you forget all the things it does. Problem is:
1. Doing things on the watch sucks. It just does. It is too small and takes too long.
2. The ability to act on things makes it a tool for distraction.
The Pebble watches were simple -
- Watchface display
- Fitness Tracking
- Calendar
- Media Controls
- Notifications
The last one was important, by not being able to act on notifications and by being able to filter the notifications in the app, you could configure it to only buzz you when things actually matter. You can see that notification and then the hint of resistance to reply to it made it easier to stay in the moment.
Other advantages were:
- Battery Life (weeks, not a day)
- Weight & Size (The Pebble Time Round being the smallest smartwatch ever made)
- Tactile controls
- Transflective LCD (Made for incredible outdoor lighting performance)
I would also note that their design team was ungodly good. The Timeline OS's perspective on time and how it interacted with your day was 4D chess brilliant. Liron Damir's ux was some of the most fun ever, sadly the guy got stuck on all kinds of brave products that were good but failed due to biz sabotage. (They worked on the WebOS team at HP, Portal Team at Facebook, etc.)
This is a great read as well: https://medium.com/@ericmigi/why-pebble-failed-d7be937c6232