The nice thing about the fairly new Pebble Smartwatch, is that it looks pretty good as a watch. Although it might not be as sexy as say, your average Rolex, it still does look pretty darn nice, AND, it can do a whole bunch of cool things that a Rolex can’t (since it’s for more than just telling time). The default black watch with black wrist strap makes it look pretty good on just about anyone, pretty similar to the look and feel of your every day digital watch, with a few exceptions.
One interesting feature of the Pebble, is the “text-face” that comes with the smartwatch automatically. So, when you look down at your watch, instead of it saying “1:37”, it will say “one thirty seven”, in a column fashion. Definitely much smoother and better looking than when these watches try to emulate analogue watches with similar-looking graphics. Somehow, that just never looks good.
Also, one minor annoyance I’d like to mention with this new watch, is the fact that from many different angles, you can actually see the glue that puts together the watch… I don’t know how the creators missed it, and if they saw it, why they’re not doing anything about it, but if you put money into their kickstarter campaign, you simply expect more out of them than to make such lame, newbie mistakes.
Another nice feature however, is that the Pebble is charged using a magnetic charger, which allows them to make the watch 100% waterproof. This gives it a distinct advantage over just about every other smartwatch on the market, since, let’s face it, who wants to deal with the hassle of taking on and off a watch, and finding a place to put it, every time you take a shower, or want to go for a swim in the pool.
So, looking at the function of the watch itself, it’s nice to see that it’s very easy to sync up with an iOS and Android operating system, in just a couple of minutes, using apps available right on the watch. This is mission critical to the success of this watch overall, because as far as I’m concerned, it would essentially be no good without these features. So win there. Also, both of these OS’s are laid out in a very user-friendly way, making for a very short learning curve, for someone already familiar with one of these OS’s, or even for a complete newbie.
On the whole, I’d say that Pebble still definitely has their work cut out for them, to get this watch up to speed, and to be a real competitor to other smartwatches, and wearable technology in the market, but right now, I’d say this device has the potential to really be something special. I can’t wait to see them fix the flaws, and possibly even add a few cool new features, onto an already solid smartwatch. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on this one.