WTF is that glare in the last image?
Pebble Time Steel ready in May. Plus: Now you can strap on sensors, GPS ... Geiger counter
Pebble is opening up its eponymous smartwatch to third-party hardware makers. They’ll be able to build straps or other attachments that that can provide a range of additional functionality to a Pebble – such as specialist sensors for fitness or medical tasks – or just additional power. It’s a very Pebble way of doing it – keep …
-
-
Tuesday 3rd March 2015 17:41 GMT Dave 126
Re: Light years ahead of competition
The competition have more features. If you want a connected watch with fewer features than the Pebble, there are Bluetooth watches that last over a year without charging or a battery change.
It's up for consumers to pick their own sweet spot on the features against battery life graph.
You've found yours at five days - and I agree that only charging every couple of days (so leaving yourself a couple of days margin) doesn't sound like too much hassle - and that's good.
-
-
Tuesday 3rd March 2015 14:41 GMT Nick L
"We apologize, but it looks like something's gone wrong"
"Gateway Timeout" on Kickstarter.com when trying to authorise a payment. Bit crappy, really: had the same problem when I tried to back the first batch... Oh well, looks like it's not meant to be.
We apologize, but it looks like something's gone wrong. We've been notified about this issue, and we're currently looking into it.
Thanks for your patience, and sorry for the inconvenience. Please try again later.
-
Tuesday 3rd March 2015 14:43 GMT JDX
Battery in straps
Why isn't this something being done as standard? Surely there's enough space in a strap you can get a semi-decent amount of storage? It makes 3rd-party straps harder to do but with something like iWatch surely that's not a major thing anyway - and lots of 'real' watches have the strap and face integrated anyway.
-
Tuesday 3rd March 2015 16:49 GMT Steven Raith
Re: Battery in straps
I'd imagine it's fear of having a lipo fire.
If you smack your wrist against a door jam or something else that punctures the battery pack - which you'll note, is strapped to your wrist - and if it catches fire (or at best, expands and heats rapidly), it can only be undone by the parts that are at that moment in time, on fire (or very hot and difficult to hold).
Highy unlikely, but having the battery exposed in a what by design needs to be a fairly soft and supple casing (IE the strap) would leave it more vulnerable to damage.
If we can get good capacity batteries that aren't made of....just awful materials (in terms of skin damage, fire risk, etc) then it's likely that'll happen though.
Steven R
-
Tuesday 3rd March 2015 21:40 GMT John Tserkezis
Re: Battery in straps
"If we can get good capacity batteries that aren't made of....just awful materials"
It isn't the materials that are at fault.
Lipo is a cell/battery technology that has a higher energy density than any other battery technology by far. And it's having all that energy stored in a small volume that's causing the problem - when things go wrong (and they WILL go wrong) they'll go wrong in a bigger way.
Improved charging techniques have been the staple of lithium rechargable technology for the first decade of its life, and this has helped dramatically with overcharged batteries blowing up. Improvements in making manufacturing more stable and repeatable has help a great deal too (though they still have glitches today).
The chemical makeup however is a different story, I might expect minor evolutionary changes to the recipe, but revolutionary changes require teams to do a lot of work - that takes longer and costs more money.
-
Tuesday 3rd March 2015 17:01 GMT Dave 126
Re: Battery in straps
And of course a USB plug would be integrated into the strap buckle...
The downsides to having the battery in the strap are:
- Prevents customisation of the watch by using different straps
- Limits the strap design - So NATO, leather or Milanese straps are out.
- The volume available for a battery is fairly small.
-
-
-
Tuesday 3rd March 2015 14:43 GMT TitterYeNot
Shaken, not stirred...
<Shop Assistant> There you go Sir, the very latest Pebble watch, in black as you requested. That'll be £250 then, please.
<Customer> Here you are. Sighs. The usual dollars to pounds conversion I see...
<Shop Assistant> And can I have an address for our records please, Sir?
<Customer> It's 85 Albert Embankment, Vauxhall.
<Shop Assistant> And your surname, Sir?
<Customer> Well, erm, its 'Q' actually...
-
-
Tuesday 3rd March 2015 22:17 GMT John Tserkezis
Re: Still Ugly
"I'm holding off until someone can deliver something that meets both criteria."
You're quite welcome to design your own if you like, or even easier still - to join the Pebble team in their design department. At least do something.
See? Talk does not row the boat (to paraphrase an old proverb).
-
-
-
Tuesday 3rd March 2015 17:24 GMT Dave 126
Re: A Minor Quibble
Agreed - this Pebble just reminds me of a c.1984 CRT monitor.
If you don't mind the 'Sports Watch' look, and you only want some limited functionality, you might look at the Casio Bluetooth Watch or the Citizen EcoDrive Proximity. Battery life is 1 year for the Casio and forever for the Citizen.
-
-
Tuesday 3rd March 2015 17:00 GMT Salts
I think...
I will have this one, the wife is going to get the iWatch on release, she is like that, I will hang back and see what it is like, but I don't like version one products so the Pebble suits me better.
This is a bit of a u-turn did not think I would have a smart watch as I like my dumb watches, but hmmm, I also like tech and nothing else is catching the eye at the moment.
-
Tuesday 3rd March 2015 17:03 GMT Dave 126
I like the company...
...but I just can't get on with the sharp cornered screen within a rounded black rectangle design. It looks like something from a mid-nineties tech demo video. Oh well.
Off topic: *This* is a watch:
http://www.hodinkee.com/blog/just-because-the-omega-seamaster-chronograph-ref-st-176001
-
Tuesday 3rd March 2015 22:36 GMT Potts
Re: I like the company...
I agree, the sharp corners of the display sit badly within the rounded corners of black glass bezel. Would it have been such bad design to have given the black glass square corners or instead sourcing a screen that was just a fraction larger?
On the other hand, I was tempted to b̶u̶y̶ pledge and quite liked the idea of creating a custom face based on the 1970s red LED digital watches (Pulsar style), with a bit extra functionality, of course.
-
-
Tuesday 3rd March 2015 17:05 GMT SniperPenguin
Not impressed with the greed.
Dont get me wrong, I looked at the Pebble time when it was announced and thought "Yep, thats for me" so I pledged / ordered one on day one, just missing the early birds.
Now, when a kickstarter hits a target, its pretty common for stretch goals to be introduced in which more gear / features get thrown into the deal because of all that extra crowdfunded cash. A prefect example is the "exploding Kittens" card game, in which my same order got upgraded from a single deck with NSFW cards, to:
- a full, separately playable NSFW deck
- Carry box for two decks
- Kickstarter exclusive item inside the box for the pledgers.
(All of the above were seperate goals, added after each was completed)
Now, take Pebble Time which as the time of looking was at 12.7 MILLION dollars (of a 500K goal). So far they have announced:
- The Pebble Steel (this was simply a marketing tactic... the design and tooling was already in place)
- Smart straps (which they aren't going to make, or invest in, or design) which use the connector they already have in the watch.
- Anyone who "upgrades" their Pebble Time to the steel version loses their extra discount from being an early bird.
Sounds like they are basically using Kickstarter as a marketing platform, I'm not seeing many rewards to the fans that handed them 25x their target.
-
Wednesday 4th March 2015 01:48 GMT wdmot
Re: Not impressed with the greed.
Sounds like they are basically using Kickstarter as a marketing platform, I'm not seeing many rewards to the fans that handed them 25x their target.
It's exactly what they're doing. In an interview I heard the other night with one of the Pebble guys (don't know if it was Eric Migicovsky or someone else, as came in in the middle of the interview), he said unashamedly that they use kickstarter for marketing even though they're "extremely well funded" because it allows them to reach out to their customers and get feedback from them more easily. Funny they didn't mention anything about getting development pre-funded, a free loan...
-
Wednesday 4th March 2015 12:01 GMT kmac499
Track Pad in the Strap..
If a portion of the surface of both halves of the stap could be the track pad and 'mouse' buttons for the watch. Your free hand could select options without obscuring the screen..
So assuming watch on left wrist, place right hand over back of left hand puts the index finger on the 'top' strap half to navigate, and your thumb over the 'bottom' half to 'click' the options. Even zoom may be possible by sliding both fingers towards or away from the face of the watch.
If both halves of the stap were identical, lefties simply reverse the functions of the touch areas, invert the screen display and only the watch buttons are in a slightly awkward position.
Pat applied for (I wish)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
