9 ms·
Pebble Reveals Pebble Time Steel and a Smartstrap System
- thomasfl 12y agoFinnally I am convinced. I loved the color e-paper display and one week battery life. Now I don't feel geeky to wear one either.
- hopfog 12y agoAnd the battery life is even better on the Pebble Time Steel (10 days).
- Gigablah 12y agoApparently kickstarter didn't get the memo. Site buckling under pressure.
- 13 12y agoIt's completely down right now, showing varnish errors.
- smackfu 12y agoWeird, since it worked pretty well on the original Pebble Time launch.
- 13 12y agoThey might have bumped up the capacity for that, and then spun down afterwards not realizing they would get swamped today.
- knd775 12y agoKickstarter is crawling right now. I'm trying to change my pledge and it's pretty awful.
- mikestew 12y agoI keep getting errors when trying to switch to the plastic/steel combo. And when I retry, the number of displayed pledges keeps going down. Despite errors on the page, I got an email saying my pledge had been changed.
- feld 12y agoI don't want to wait an extra 2 months, so I think I'll stick with the regular Time and hand it down to my wife when the Steel is in stock, retail. She doesn't want the Steel version anyway and would be happy with an upgrade to her Pebble. The smartstraps are going to be really cool -- a lot of potential there.
- FLGMwt 12y agoFYI, they mention that if you back the Time + Time Steel (@$400), they ship them separately "so you don't have to wait". I might end up doing that >:D
- feld 12y agoAnd now you have me pondering this...
- mladenkovacevic 12y agoHm that's also a $10 discount off of one of them (at their lowest pledge tiers)
- smackfu 12y agoThat gold one with a red band is a bit reminiscent of another smart watch coming out soon. (And plenty of existing non smart watches, of course.)
- bryanlarsen 12y agoI think I prefer the regular Pebble Time. It already includes a stainless steel bezel, although the rest of the case is plastic. I'd use a custom strap no matter which watch I got. And 7 days is a long enough battery life for me -- I'd rather have the thinner watch than the longer battery life.
- knd775 12y agoWhere is the thickness mentioned? I looked but couldn't find anything about it.
- mladenkovacevic 12y agoThe Steel is 1mm thicker than the regular Time
- songgao 12y agoThe Pebble Time is 9.5 mm [0], and Pebble Time Steel 1mm thicker, making it 10.5mm [1]. 10.5mm is actually as thick as the current Pebble Steel so it's actually not bad. [0] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-time-awesome-smartwatch-no-compromises https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-time-a... [1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-time-awesome-smartwatch-no-compromises/posts/1151421 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-time-a...
- mladenkovacevic 12y agoThat's pretty amazing when you consider that Apple Watch will be about 12.4mm thick with the heart sensor included and high end traditional watches can be anywhere between 11 and 13mm.
- maxpert 12y agoI wonder why didn't Pebble user Mirasol instead of e-ink.
- FreakyT 12y agoThey're still calling the color display "e-paper", which in the case of the original Pebble meant a Sharp Memory LCD display (which, while a high-contrast LCD, looked nothing like the e-ink displays in e-readers.) Based on the appearance of the display, it looks a lot like the color transflective displays found on older portable Nintendo game systems, so I'm guessing it's relative of those.
- yincrash 12y agoThat's what it looked like to me as well. Here's an example[1]. These displays can be either back lit or front lit and don't get washed out in sunlight. [1] http://o.aolcdn.com/hss/storage/midas/a5cc0b92eb2febb051740c129ddf77b8/200533628/file.jpg http://o.aolcdn.com/hss/storage/midas/a5cc0b92eb2febb051740c...
- smackfu 12y agoMirasol doesn't seem to have been adopted very much, outside of the Qualcomm Toq watch. I wonder if it's not very impressive in person, or pricey.
- bdcs 12y agoI believe the latter. FWIW, Qualcomm's marketing demo/presentation was very impressive.
- unwind 12y agoSo, Pebble calls it "Smartstrap", but the TC article for some reason uses the names "Smartband" and "Smartstrap". The Kickstarter page doesn't mention it by either, but the Pebble blog post (http://developer.getpebble.com/blog http://developer.getpebble.com/blog) that the TC article references still links back to the Kickstarter page as a source. The blog post shows an image of connectors, but doesn't specify what the four lines do (I'm guessing two are for power and two are for data). So confused right now.
- jamestanderson 12y agoI'm a backer of the Pebble Time and received this announcement as a Kickstarter project update. In pebble's own words, they call it a smartstrap. Introducing Pebble smartstraps We believe your smartwatch should help you accomplish more every day. When we started Pebble, we opened up the platform and invited the software developer community to build remarkable experiences for Pebblers everywhere. Looking at all the amazing things our developers have created over the last 2 years, we decided to open the platform once more...only this time, for hardware developers. Have you ever wanted to go for a run without your phone and still track your speed and distance? How about a Pebble watch with a battery life of more than a week? What about a NFC chip for payments, keyless car remote, or a pollution sensor? Rather than trying to shove every sensor and doohickey into the Pebble Time, we decided to keep the watch simple and functional and give our incredible maker and developer community the opportunity to build from there. Up until now, if you wanted it all you had to compromise…on battery life, size, design or feature set. Not anymore. That’s why we created Pebble smartstraps. It’s simple: straps can now contain electronics and sensors to interface directly with apps running on Pebble Time.
- mladenkovacevic 12y agoAre you by any chance finding it impossible to upgrade your pledge to the Pebble Time Steel? Kickstarter is really crapping out on me today.
- mikestew 12y ago
- AlexMuir 12y agoI've been continually impressed with Pebble since their very first Kickstarter. They've done a lot on a few levels: - For smartwatches (and possibly even wearables) they produced and shipped what I'd consider to be the first mainstream phone-connected wearable. I'm sure it was on the big players' radar but Pebble produced a decent product relatively on time and I'm sure people learned quite a bit from them. At the least they showed their was a market. - For crowdfunding: Pebble got a MASSIVE stack of money. Way beyond what anyone expected. They managed the sudden increase in scale well, and I think showed that startups could be funded to the tune of $millions rather than $tens-of-thousands. - For hardware startups: Pebble showed that an independent startup can compete (and continue to compete) with giants who have a vast existing customer base. And that funding is available for that endeavour. I also think they set the standard for communicating with customers. I still remember their updates from factories in China. I think they blazed something of a trail for companies that followed (Amp, Navdy, Ouya, off the top of my head). Smartwatches aren't for me - I've lost every watch I've ever owned - but I'm in awe of this team.
- yellow 12y ago> Pebble produced a decent product relatively on time Their branding is great. Now whenever i see "time", it reminds me of the watch...
- lettergram 12y agoI would add that Pebble gave away a ton of free Pebbles to universities[1]. This boosted their app production, and made them super popular. Everyone on my campus was like, "awesome, you got a pebble!" it made something to be desired, and makes you stand out as a CS or ECE major. I know I am purchasing a Pebble because I was so impressed by the free one they gave me. [1] https://blog.getpebble.com/2013/12/16/pebbling-schools-in-the-name-of-awesome/ https://blog.getpebble.com/2013/12/16/pebbling-schools-in-th...
- stcredzero 12y agoI've lost every watch I've ever owned I've lost every watch I've ever owned, except for the irreplaceable vintage Rolex my Dad gave me. I keep that in a case in a drawer!
- addicted44 12y agoIt may not be successful, but I really think Pebble has the right idea with smartwatches. I really hope that the smartwatch industry doesn't devolve into the monoculture that is the smartphone industry (well, technically a 2 platform culture, but Android and iOS are basically 2 sides of the same coin now. Neither one offers anything the other doesn't).
- stcredzero 12y agoFunny how Android got more iOS like while iOS was getting more Android like. (Talking both functionality and degree of openness.)
- mladenkovacevic 12y agoPebble is unique in this early smartwatch space because they just became a hardware platform in addition to being a software platform. If the smartbands are easy enough to change and provide a significant variety of meaningful functionality it might be the advantage that wins out over the other two major platforms.
- aet 12y agoThe win here would be to get acquired by... Amazon?
- joshstrange 12y agoI get that Pebble is trying to milk this (marketing-wise) for all it's worth but this leaves a bad taste in my mouth... Should I also expect that next week they will announce the "Pebble Time Steel +" ?? Now I have to decide if I want to pay $70 more and wait 2 more months (best case).... If you thought Pebble was abusing KS before....
- joshstrange 12y agoSo don't get me wrong I love my Pebble Steel and I'm a backer for the new Pebble Time I just don't like how they are handling this.
- gareim 12y agoWould you have preferred if they delayed the Pebble Steel Time a few more months so you could feel better about your order? You could switch your order to the Pebble Steel Time right now. I don't see how this adversely affects you at all.
- joshstrange 12y agoI would have liked it if they would have dropped it all at the same time, this is obviously a marketing move to keep their KS relevant. I was on the fence on "Should Pebble be allowed to use KS are their e-commerce platform" and this pushed me over the edge. They didn't add a tier b/c they it some goal, they added it because it was planned from the start. I like to have all my options available to me when I make a decision and with Pebble it's not clear if we have more surprises in store. This means that I have to re-evaluate my options and I've got better things to do then re-decide what I want every week when they add/change KS reward tiers. Just my opinion and obviously not a popular one here on HN...
- bsurmanski 12y agoI like the idea of smart watches, but I don't see why there would be a demand for them. Specifically, I can't think of a single "killer app" that would make a smart watch better than the phone that everyone is currently carrying around. Can someone enlighten me? Whats going to be the killer app for smart watches?
- yatoomy 12y agoI can speak of the one I'm developing. We're using the Pebble to track seizures through the accelerometer (neutun.com). With these new bands, and the amazing battery life, we could have multiple device and signal support, allowing us to branch out to other types of seizures and conditions.
- jkestner 12y agoCool. That's sort of the opposite of a killer app.
- yatoomy 12y agoWe have users buying Pebbles for the soul purpose of using our application, that would otherwise not have purchased it.
- robwilliams 12y agoHe was making a joke as your app saves lives instead of being a "killer".
- delecti 12y agoRevealing it this way leaves a bad taste in my mouth. At the very least, I'm glad that they revealed it during the main campaign rather than shortly after, but it's a pretty significant shift in the campaign. It's like an even bigger "fuck you" to the Kickstarter model, because clearly they knew they'd be doing this. Plus, it resulted in a big shuffling around of orders, which means a bunch of people were able to "cut in line" and get the extra discounted Early Bird level. Though all of that is only in regards to the Steel model, I'm actually extremely interested in the Smartstrap system, and I'll definitely be interested in tinkering around with it once I receive my only slightly discounted non-steel Pebble Time.
- smackfu 12y agoVery smart of them to release a gold version. If watches are all about fashion, and people want a gold-colored watch because they like how it looks, they probably can't afford it from Apple. It may be seen as a copy by some, but a $5000 product is not competing with a $300 one.