Picture courtesy of The Verge
Hey folks, Kevin Sutorius here! Last time I posted, it was a Top 20 movies of 2012, and this time, I thought I’d do something different. I’m a huge technology nerd (“Techno-phile” I dub myself) and I wanted to share a gadget I’m looking forward to: the Pebble Smartwatch. Wait, what’s so smart about a watch? What does is it do? Before we get started, I want to share some history.
The History:
Pebble was, and still is, the most successful Kickstarter project. Kickstarter basically got its notable popularity because of the rampant success and massive amount of funding for the Pebble Smartwatch. And for those unaware, Kickstarter is a website where people post a project they’re working on, submit an amount of money needed to get the project started, and source the income from people who back the project by donating money. To give you an idea of how successful Pebble was through Kickstarter, it needed $100,000 to start production and it ended up with $10 Million.
Picture courtesy of The Verge
So now onto the watch itself: What does it do?
The $150 Pebble is a waterproof digital watch with an e-paper display(similar to what’s on a Kindle Paperwhite or a Nook Simple Touch), that is backlit when activated, and a Bluetooth antenna. Its purpose is to, obviously, show the time with different fancy watch faces, and play various alerts from your Apple i-Devices (running iOS 6) or Android smartphone (running Ice Cream Sandwich or Jelly Bean operating systems). The battery lasts about 7 days and can be recharged with its magnetic USB cable that comes with it. You control the watch through an app, available through the Apple App store or the Google play store, that syncs/connects to your mobile device through Bluetooth. It has four buttons, 3 on right and 1 on left, to control the alerts as they come in. It comes in multiple colors – Jet Black, Arctic White, Cherry Red, Orange and Grey – with a standard polyurethane wrist strap (the first batch of watches were for all the Kickstarter backers and they got the Jet Black version). The wrist strap is a typical watch size, so you can get a different strap of your own and customize, if you so desire.
Picture courtesy of Pebble
There are several alerts currently available to view on the Pebble, including emails, SMS texts, iMessage (for Apple i-Devices only), phone calls, tweets, Facebook posts, and more. It also has a built-in vibrate motor that’s silent, to physically notify you when an alert has arrived. The reason the Pebble is very significant in this area is that the company is leaving the software open source, so anyone can create an alert for another feature.
Picture courtesy of Engadget
Now, that you know what it does, What do I think of it?
This watch is a great idea and has the potential to create a new smartwatch market, similar
to what Jawbone did with bluetooth speakers, or Apple did with tablets. Two tech blogs I follow, engadget.com and theverge.com got to review the watch, so if you want the opinion of someone who’s actually used the watch, make sure to check them out! I’ll post the links at the bottom of the page.
Picture courtesy of The Verge
I think this generation of watches is a great start, and once this gets off the ground, the following new models will only improve what is already looking like a great product. I already pre-ordered mine, and should receive it sometime in March or April.
The Verge review:
http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/28/3924904/pebble-smartwatch-review
Engadget review:
http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/25/pebble-smartwatch-review/
Pebble’s website:
http://getpebble.com
