My First Fortnight with a SmartWatch
The Pebble: Is it a life changer?
A few weeks ago it was my birthday. As is obligatory, I get dragged out for a meal where there is a surprise group waiting for me, which I am supposed to pretent not to notice after the number of these that have happened in my life.
*shout* “SURPRISE!”
“Oh.. Wow…Yes… err… you shouldn’t have!…Soooocks! Great! Mine are now holey and smell unholy”
This time was ever so slightly different. The day was the same, you expect that with Birthday’s, the group was roughly the same, but the presents included a Pebble SmartWatch.
I have been thinking of a Smartwatch for a while, though never vocalised it. For the last couple of weeks I’ve been giving it a test run. For those that don’t know, before the higher end modern smartwatches like the Samsung Gear and Apple iWatch, there existed a “first generation” group of wtches such as the Pebble, which really were concept watches.
Now, I was the chap in school with Dunlop trainers, BBC Micro, Noke T-shirt and clothes that didn’t fit all that well. All of those courtesy of my mother. Some 28 years later, it was pretty obvious who had sent these over.
OK, that’s unfair. I’m always grateful for it and to be fair, the Pebble isn’t all that bad for a simple Nokia-like watch. So I decided to give it a run for a couple of weeks and report my findings.
Size, Shape and Facia
For a plastic watch, it’s not all that bad! I have to be honest. The front face of it is also quite cool. The display is a 1" monochrome LCD display and out of the box the watch has 3 different face types. Analogue, Digital or if those are too hard for you, the time in words.
Phone Binding & App Downloads
The phone pairs up with the watch through BlueTooth. It doesn’t run the phone nor watch battery down all that quickly.
There are two main ways to get Apps on to the phone. One is through the “Pebble Time” downloadable from Google Play or App Store, where you can also download other apps. For Android users there is also the Android Smartwear app, though I haven’t as yet started using that.
I uploaded a few apps to the Pebble, including the Compass application… in case I get lost in these days of GPS.
Charging Niggles
Probably the most annoying thing about the Pebble is the magnetic charging contacts and distinct lack of wall charger/adaptor out of the box. The charger is just a USB with a pair of annoyingly week magnets. Click the thing on and even putting it down pulls the connector off. Indeed, doing anything disconnects the connector. I printed 10 pages double sided a meter away and the connector detached from the vibration of the desk. It’s hopeless for earquake sitations then. Make sure you keep real compass… or charge your GPS or phone.
With that in mind, it’s a good job that the battery life is so long! 5 days comfortably before I have to think about charging it through that godforesaken connection that I’ve figured I’ll taps to it. It also takes very little time at all to charge, since the battery doesn’t have to be so big. That’s a definite plus!
Using the watch
Not being a touch screen, the watch takes some getting used to. There are up and down buttons on the right side and one button on the right. The middle button on the right is used to select and the solo left button to cancel. I’ve configured long-hold top right to view my notifications.
A lot of the configuration for the watch is done on the app, but there’s quite a bit you can do on the watch itself. The watch acts as a remote control for your music player, which is no bad thing if I am in the gym or out walking. I certainly find reading notifications on the Pebble more convenient than looking at my phone. The watch does have a vibrate functions, which I’ve kept off for the meantime.
The watch on the whole works well. I definitely notice the extra time I get back saving on the urge to pull out my phone from my pocket, which is a pain in the side when sitting down. The navigation is simple and effective and in a way, I don’t mind it not having a touch screen so far, as I’d forever be cleaning the face of it.
Durability
Now, I have a habit of knocking things when walking around. Door frames, walls, vases, bottles of wine. I’m probably not as clumsy as I think I am, but I notice it when it happens (and so does the thing I hit). Sure enough, I managed to ding it a few days ago.
To my amazement it survived it well. The pictures above were taken a few days after said event. All I did was clean the wall corner-chippings off the front and it was as good as new. No damage to the screen, no obvious damage to the LCD, a teensy amount of paint left on the pictures above, but on the whole quite durable. The strap is also quite chunky, so good all round.
As with all monochrome LCDs, it works off a polaroid film which stops light leaving to make it look black. I also have polaroid sunglasses, which made for LCD’s usual interesting effect during a recent sunny [but cold, oh so cold!] spell.
Developing for the Watch
I’d love to write more about this part, as I would have hoped to have tinkered with the SDK by now, but as usual, the demands of the company swallowed all my time. There is an SDK which I got as far as downloading, but haven’t as yet used. There is also the Cloud Pebble IDE which allows developers to build apps without installing anything, which may need a Linux VM if you’re working on Windows.
The developer site also has links to the components needed to connect Android and iOS apps to the phone. However, apps can be written in C and some GitHub repos present examples and sample applications.
Conclusion
On the whole, certainly a useful watch. I will continue to wear it. I’d probably have to try a touch screen watch or something with a bit more hardware under the hood for me to provide a definitive comparison, but that aside, it was a good gift!
Thanks mum!
Ethar Alali is Manchester based Chief Executive of Axelisys, specialists in lean enterprise IT. Follow them on twitter.
