Pebble: the smart watch only company.

If you don’t think that smart watches have a place, or you think that they are just a fad. Pebble exists to prove you wrong.

The smart watches offered by the usual suspects (Samsung, LG, and maybe someday Apple) are all based on the premise of a cut down tablet/smartphone. Bright LCD touchscreen affairs, they range in levels of features and adoption.

Pebble has gone at the problem from a different route. They seem to have taken the ever classic high end digital watch and gone from there.

At the start, it tells time. the importance of this is that it tells it when it is needed. Which is all of the time, hence an e-Ink screen for a long battery life. My Casio watch has lasted 3 years so far, I expect another 4 or so from the ten year battery due to my over use of the light.

The next idea of the timeline is inspired, there is what you have done and what you are going to do. It is a simple, slightly skeuomorphic approach to how time and planning works for people. Your plans are for the future, your inbox and information is in the past.

The rest of the good times come from sensible hardware & software engineering. Accepting the limitations of what can be run on a small processor the SDK is in C. This limits the size of executables (further reducing the hardware cost), and also the scope of projects people are likely to take on (keeping the watch experience down from being another full blown web interface).

You have to at least admire their purity of focus, for they have produced a watch for only watch like things. The Android wear devices are all singing and dance while charged and connected. Though they are not watches, as there is no reason to have an android watch without your phone active, as at best it tells the time but for much less of the day.