I'm really not sure why more smart watches don't try to be actual worthy jewlery. Pebble has this really cool and really functional tech, why not pack it into something worthy of being called a watch?
To me a watch is a tool, not a fashion accessory. I understand not everyone looks at it that way, but really I don't think there's any smartwatch that looks like an elegant timepiece anyway.
If a watch can convince me at all that's it's worth wearing it I need it to not look functional and techie and my guess is that would be a more widely appealing approach to these watches. Maybe I'm wrong. Or maybe there is just no market at all there and this is just a momentary fad. This will be interesting to watch.
Also, we don’t even know if a watch that is visibly not a tech gadget (like the Apple Watch aspires to be) will even be successful. In a very real sense the Pebble is more proven as a product than what Apple is doing.
(Also, on a personal level: Yeah, I don’t like the look of this Pebble, sure, but I currently don’t even wear a watch at all and currently I am not even convinced I will ever get an Apple Watch. That’s not at all a promising case study for Pebble to really put resources into making this a non-gadget watch.)
With the price at nearly half ($199) of what the low-end of the Apple Watch price range is expected to be ($349), however, this does open the smart watch option up to more people that don't have that sort of cash to spend on wearables.
Also, this is what they've done with the first Pebble - first the initial, plastic one, and only after - Pebble steel.
I think it may also be due to costs. The color e-paper screen obviously costs more, and perhaps a full Steel model would teeter within range of the fashion smart watches (including Apple Watch Sport), where the comparison would be less flattering.
To each their own, and may both markets be well-served. For those that would rather pay for function, there's the Pebble that doesn't look all that bad to me. We'll see how well Apple serves the high end.
This Pebble is 100% function over form. It's far more useful than a $2k Nomos, but also far less beautiful. It's not something I would ever cherish, or keep for decades, or pass down to grandchildren. I would never look at it and marvel at how it manages to work. I would never love it. But it would be useful.
The Apple Watch is likely something of a middle ground. It's prettier on the outside, but there's nothing interesting about the inside. The Moto 360 sits in this same category as well.
You can spend a pretty penny on pocket knives.
If you think it's bland, it's obviously not for you, but going by the rate at which dollars are pouring in, enough people seem to think otherwise.
I pulled up an images search of the apple watch and the white watch looks almost identical to the new pebble, to the point of "oh oh someone's gonna get sued".
I claim that a dude on the street at a glance is not going to be able to tell the difference between an iWatch and the pebble. Maybe with a couple minutes of study or if they have a watch hobby / fetish they'll notice quicker...
So is the trash talking about the pebble's style simply astroturfing or are there specific complaints that can be addressed (I'd respect someone who said it needs a Disney Frozen sticker or My Little Pony branding. I'd disagree, but I'd respect it a lot more than providing no specific data other than the mfgr label defining what makes it cool)
I'm ok with pebble not trying to be jewelery.
I also keep thinking about other ways in which the financial sector can get disintermediated. Bootstrapping is always an option, if a very long and arduous one. To speed things up there is Kickstarter in b2c, but what about b2b? Are there ways to get the future beneficiaries of a new b2b product to fund its development, and that don't involve spending 6 month to raise funding? It always bothered me that funding decisions are usually made by people who know a lot about finance and, as a rule, very little about the target market. Surely there is a lot of potential there for the insiders of the target industry?
It's not perfect, but at least Pebble didn't have to fork over 10% of the company for a few hundred grand in cash to investors who brought nothing to the table (besides money)
As far as B2B bootstrapping goes, companies invest in other companies all the time. Mostly for the reasons that you've outlined, because they want to help potential partners to grow and often as a precursor to an acquisition. They generally don't do it at the very early seed stage because it's too speculative. That's what angel investors are for.
Kickstarter has become a sales platform, whether that's what they wanted to be or not, and they should just embrace that. It started off as "fund great ideas and help them get off the ground" but as soon as they allowed products to be given away as rewards it became "buy stuff that doesn't exist yet, and you may or may not receive it". There's clearly a demand for it, and it doesn't seem like the failed products are enough to stop people with disposable income from parting with a few hundred dollars to be early adopters and feel like they're helping someone else. It's worth noting that under this system the amount raised almost always reflects revenue as opposed to funding/profit. A campaign that raises $100k on Kickstarter will usually only get to "keep" $40k-$60k of that as actual funding, because they have to pay for the cost of the products and swag that they give out as rewards. Sure beats starting from scratch though.
In the old days 3) was i) nothing happened as the VC guys feared risk or ii) They did lend/invest but with a lot of risk built in to the terms to reflect the uncertainty.
Now 3) = "Let's put it on Kickstarter. That way both of us don't need to guess - we'll just know. If you get $x million of pledges we're happy to give you $y cash at $z valuation"
Seems like everyone can win?
It's just all-around suspicious when a product you'd expect to be able to get traditional funding, is listed on Kickstarter instead.
Seems to me that Kickstarter are the banker, taking 5% of the funds. And their payment processors are taking another 3%.
1. There is no discretion involved. When you're trying to finance a new development you have to convince bankers/VCs to give you money. Payment processors don't exactly need to be convinced, and Kickstarter is open to anyone.
2. The size of the cut taken by the middlemen is in direct proportion to the sales volume. With a bank you would normally take out a fixed-sized loan, then spend all the money on manufacturing, then pray that you can sell enough of your gizmos and pay back the loan. With buyer-financed manufacturing there is no guesswork involved.
Less discretion and less guesswork => less overhead.
Another model that I do not personally believe in but seems promising to others I respect is https://assembly.com - they work to bring teams together to build things and have gamified equity comp. You can even go in there and squash an important bug on a project and get equity in the project forever (ostensibly) for doing it based on the "bounty" that is set.
I run a software company and one of my clients raised nearly £500k in 2 weeks by crowdfunding via an intermediary.
There's also organisations such as https://www.fundingcircle.com/ that provide crowdfunding on a scale...
Sort of... I've been spending my free time learning the ins and outs of retail/distribution. It's not the most transparent industry but 'factoring' plays a pretty big role. If you are pitching/selling a physical product (iphone case) to category buyer from a Big Retail chain and they like your product, then send you a Purchase Order to buy your product, but you don't have the funds to manufacture/package/distribute the product you can find a Factoring Company who will fund the money in exchange for the Purchase Order from the Big Retailer. Some say the rates are too high and terms aren't great, but they can be a good source of backing. A lot of companies use Factoring. Perhaps maybe some Angels will start thinking about doing Factor deals in the near future.
The reason I would say that it is an impossibility to talk about selling business to fortune 500 type business is because invariably, they have venture arms which function like the finance industry and are usually staffed by former employees of Goldman, JP Morgan, etc. So, the insiders have found a way to do what they want - they're their own bank, unless we're talking about major mergers and acquisitions, which obviously require such fast sums of capital that it's unreasonable to expect such an accessible market.
Let's say a VC invests $2.4 million dollars in a company. Let's assume the company does well and sells out to Facebook for $2.3 billion. The VC, being wise in the ways of finance, profits handsomely from that $2.3 billion.
What if, instead of a VC investing $2.4 million dollars, it was a large collection of mortals each investing a small sum, say $300.
The collection of mortals would simply give the company $2.4 million, and after selling out to Facebook, the company... screws over the puny mortals and simply pockets it all.
Sure, the company gets to keep out the eeeeevil VC and bankers, but the little guy sees no return on their $300.
Yay?
Wait, no, we all got a shiny Oculus Rift out of the deal to play with.
On the Oculus example: I got what I paid for. Did they ever say equity? Did they ever say that backers got decision making rights for a company on the financial high-wire (both IP and hardware capital expenses).
Really, I thought the outcry against Oculus just exposed how little people think through the hard choices of running a business and how entitled they feel for so little expenditure.
Kickstarter works by a person paying for something in advance. Often backers get discounted prices, in return for taking on this risk of backing. Obviously your example diminishes that value of the "shiny Oculus Rift", but it isn't at all clear why.
Your post seems to indicate that you think the backer should get both the product, and a piece of the company for the same price.
How's the economics of that supposed to work?
Specific to the Oculus Rift example, I understand that people resent the company being bought out by a company (Facebook) whose philosophy differs to what they thought Oculus's should be. I can see why people resent that, but I don't think it counts at "getting screwed" in any economic sense at all. I think it is more a moral violation of values they though were shared with a company. I'm not sure how this problem can be solved in any easy way.
I, as a "mere mortal", have already _given_ $200 to Pebble, and $400 to ZPM Espresso.
I got exactly the return I wanted and was entitled to from Pebble, I've had a smart watch on my wrist for ~2 years now and _their_ company has thrived (and they are not under any legal, moral, or even politeness related obligation to offer me anything more except perhaps an opportunity to participate in their next big idea. I certainly don't expect a cut of their eventual acquisition payday).
I got an outcome that, while not my most desirable one, was certainly one of the outcomes I was prepared for from ZPM - a bunch of updates indicating they were working furiously trying ti achieve their dream - and finally a message says "sorry people, didn't work out". And I'm perfectly fine with that too.
I know not everyone views Kickstarter that way (and the "blame" for that falls firmly on both project creators and Kickstarter themselves), but if you expect it to work like a shop - buy your stuff from a shop - they'll ship it with close to 100% certainty, you'll be covered by consumer protection laws and credit card fraud policies and other similar well know remedies. "Kickstarter" even implies in it's name they're not like that. You're often funding pre-manufacturing ideas - along with all the risk associated with the assumptions of getting things finalised and manufactured, and hopefully benefiting by getting your trinket well before the general public and probably at a discounted price for assuming some of that risk.
I've _never_ been "screwed" by Kickstarter - even though I've funded several failed projects. That's part of the Kickstarter game. The same as all those non 1000x exits the VCs fund - they're not getting screwed there, they're playing the risk/reward number game. If they didn't want to get "screwed" by the 99.5% of the companies they invest in failing to return 1000x, they'd be investing in government bonds or blue chip stocks.
You only "get screwed" by a successful (or failed) Kickstarter project/company if you choose to view yourself as a victim (or have a tremendously overactive sense of entitlement).
None of us think we are buying equity when we put money in, and yet clearly 31,000+ people are willing to put their money in to pre-order the product without equity. Good for that company, that they have that level of pre-order demand, no?
Offering multiple quantities of a reward is prohibited. Hardware and Product Design projects can only offer rewards in single quantities or a sensible set (some items only make sense as a pair or as a kit of several items, for instance). The development of new products can be especially complex for creators and offering multiple quantities feels premature, and can imply that products are shrink-wrapped and ready to ship.
Perhaps this campaign violates what you perceive as the spirit of Kickstarter, but Kickstarter itself has never had a problem with established companies/entertainers using the platform.
When you can use it as a store by a company that raised more than $10 million, and this time sell a fully completed product with no special rewards or community input. They didn't even try to come up with any rewards this time - at any price, or show any part of how it was designed. it blatantly has nothing to do with the kickstarter spirit whatsoever.
The nominal amount I might save by doing the pre-order is more than offset by the risk I'm assuming. I'd much rather wait until the product is released, and then read some independent reviews... especially ones where the reviewer has been wearing it for a month or so.
I've only funded two crowd-sourced projects. One was for a buddy of mine, the other was for Sandstorm.io, where they were already basically done, and just wanted some more funds for enhancements. And it was open-source, so its just the same in my mind as when I send money to Debian or OpenBSD (which is not often enough, but that's another discussion). And even with Sandstorm, one of the principals is also a friend of a friend, so I had confidence the money was going towards a good purpose.
The downside is that you eat a lot of fees by using Kickstarter, when you might have been able to run your own drive independently like Lockitron, so it's interesting to consider that they went with Kickstarter. I guess the idea of being a "big success on Kickstarter" would be good PR, when Apple is, well, Apple.
Maybe people are just much quicker on the draw with the credit cards there, which wouldn't surprise me. Especially after the Stripe payment system.
In general I'd stay the hell away from hardware projects on Kickstarter, but in this case Pebble has a proven track record of delivering a quality product in a reasonable time frame. I assume that gives them a little more leeway when Kickstarter is approving their campaign.
I'd agree with you that Pebble probably have a better chance than most at delivering on their promises, but as people have commented elsewhere, Pebble are only really back on KS as a promotional exercise. This is not really comparable to most other KS projects.
Still, it's one rule for them, another for everyone else. KS are doing well out of this promo too.
Perhaps someone should go and report Pebble for their other rule-breaking? Those watch pictures at the top of the page are clearly computer renderings. "If a simulation or photorealistic rendering is discovered after a project launches, that project will be canceled." :)
Perhaps I'm remembering this incorrectly, but wasn't the Pebble a textbook example of significant production delays for a Kickstarter hardware project? I'm pretty sure I knew someone who hadn't received his watch from Kickstarter many months after the supposed delivery date, while at the same time he could have gone to Best Buy and bought one.
Hardly.
http://readwrite.com/2013/07/09/why-i-cancelled-my-pebble-sm...
My understanding is that the Kickstarter policy came in BECAUSE of the original Pebble selling packs of several devices. It's ironic that the policy was reversed and the same company is using that same "multiple products" trick to make a new record on the platform.
Ultimately it DOES change the Kickstarter brand. New projects use "Kickstarter" in their press releases and they're set to the same bar of selling millions of items. I feel like the whole concept of "a kickstarter" is no longer what it used to mean.
They should have stuck with the "Kickstarter is not a store" policy.
However the best thing I find on the pebble is - Battery Life, - Readability in daylight, - Slim and light weight.
Smart Watches are quite nascent tech and if we get to where we get ones that are amalgamation of all these features, I'll be a content man.
Oh, and saying "What's my name" and having Siri respond "Your name is <name>, but since we're friends I get to call you Captain James T Kirk". But that's just personal amusement.
Another problem is typified by a commmon Android Wear app which allows you to request a fake phone call on your phone. This example shows one of the use cases for a wearable: its a device you can look at when its socially or physically awkward to pull out a phone. You don't want to say, "Google, this meeting is boring!" But you might want a button that lets you do something about it.
What's fiddly about buttons? It's much faster than swiping a couple of times to get to the option you want.
I also own a Moto 360 which is okay but honestly I'm not as big of a fan as I thought I would be. If they made Pebble Time have touch controls to get rid of the big buttons I would buy this thing in a heart beat.
I very much prefer to type, it's faster even on a touch screen.
So here I am, waiting for a subvocal recognition system and the comeback of off-line speech processing.
I'm not sure if it'll use it anytime there's a data connection, though.
I've also noticed it has a couple of flaws, like you can't use "newline" with it.
Maybe it's because I'm from Minnesota and sound like Don LaFontaine, but Google's voice recognition is easily 95% or better for me. Probably closer to 98%, even on spoken sentences for sending emails or texts. When I'm navigating, or trying to call someone, it's closer to 99%.
If you look on the wear store, apps that create rows of icons on your watch face are very popular. I think that shows that this is a common concern.
Its just too annoying for most people to use.
What voice recognition reminds me of, is a disobedient / distracted little kid, the kind you have to tell everything twice.
Meh, most of the time I can just whisper something ambigious if I'm concerned about privacy, or just pull out my big ass phone and type on it, which is what I would have done if I didn't own a moto 360.
I tried one of those keyboards for the watch, and its really a non-starter. Wearables only make sense as voice devices. Even the large moto 360 can't support an on-screen keyboard and I imagine future smartwatches will be smaller, especially one's marketed at women and children.
I just saw a TV show the other day where the bomb squad was driving a robot with an iPad. Yes, all driving input and finite movement of the robot arms was done on a touch screen.
Terrible idea; nobody would do that in real life.
Kickstarter have all the right tools for selling and a proven capacity to scale well. They've sold over 4 million dollars worth to over 20 thousand people in three hours without any hassle. They're handling all the user management, accounts, live updating figures, "stock" and payments.
How much would it have cost them if right at the peak their site went down for 2 hours? Or people weren't sure if their order was accepted? Could it cost them 5% of their orders minus the amount it would have cost them to build on their own? How long would it take to have built and tested their own site to handle the load of orders (and given that they only see this peak for a short period after launch).
Plus of course marketing and the fact that a lot of people already have a kickstarter account (reducing even more the barrier between "oh cool" and clicking buy).
That's very sad.
You can't really even have a "under normal use" battery life claim. My Pebble lasts between 4-5 days depending on app usage. Other have theirs lasting 2-3 days. My personal iPhone sometimes needs to be recharged in the middle of the day. My work iPhone gets charged once every three days.
"Up to 7 days" is the most meaningful number they could put there, because it shows you what to expect while using it as a watch. Everything else is up to you.
Being able to sleep with your watch on most nights of the week is a bigger deal than a lot of people realize.
So if they can increase that to 7 days and I can charge once per week then I'll be even happier. But largely I like the idea of a colour one.
The original Pebble does what I want it to do. In fact, it does more than it promised pre-shipping (counts steps, as one example). I'm hardly one to be brand-loyal to a watch, but ignoring late shipping to KS backers, Pebble has exceeded expectations, so I'll give them another whirl. Apple, OTOH, is going to have to do a hell of a job to convince me to spend almost twice as much on a new platform that needs daily charging. And I say this as one with a house full of Apple gear, much of it pre-ordered on the day of announcement.
While it isn't a true smart-watch, it does provide alerts from your phone. I imagine for many users, that's enough.
If I hadn't stopped wearing a watch completely a few years ago, I'd probably buy this one.
>We've included a soft silicone band with each Pebble Time, but all standard 22mm watch bands will fit. All new Pebble watch bands include a quick-release pin, letting you swap bands in under 10 seconds.
Standard watch bands is something that most other wearables aren't embracing. This makes the Pebble significantly more enticing.
The fact that most watch bands are painfully incompatible with <insert your laptop here> wristrests is laughable in this day and age.
Watchbands need to be reengineered if these companies want people to wear them for more then the first few weeks.
Source -- love my pebble but only after suffering with that stupid buckle for months, stopped wearing it and then finally found a buckle free band.
That said, kudos to them for getting it out and being independent competition to Android Wear and the Apple Watch. We need that.
At least come out with a shiny gold, brass and rose gold colored versions. Not actual gold mind you, just gold colored. There are certain market segments that love those colors.
Mind you, I'm technically impressed that an E-Ink display can now be animated, but I can't wait for the end of the animated UI boom.
If animated transitions disappear, it'll be because something newer and better comes along, not because they fade out of style.
It's actually the only issue I have with Pebble. They are all amazing and unicorns, but why on Earth intentionally confuse people to think they're buying an e-ink display? It's not e-ink, it's e-paper, a fancy name for something that is not the thing that uses zero energy when not updating.
The user perceives lag after 300ms, and switches thought in less than a 1000ms. If your screen doesn't engage the user while it's making the switch, you risk them starting something else. And where's the fun of building a product people don't engage with for as long as possible? :D
And now that the 'early tier' is gone (great UX on that, they took me to the credit card page, I entered my info, then they reloaded it and went "oops, that tier's full now tee-hee!"), why would you save $10 to pay them for a product that might ship 2 months later if they get around to releasing it? So, no Kickstarter for me, it's actually plus because I'll get to see real reviews and not hype.
Meh, you get it a few months early, and they're not shipping retail until the Kickstarters are released. That, and as an original KS backer I get a special engraving I'll never, ever see. :-)
There's precedent in the watch-world to not care what the watch looks like. Watches are not always fashion items, which is why the watch section exists in Wal Mart. I keep hearing people say "it doesn't look as nice as the Apple Watch or Android Wear" (personally, the Apple Watch looks awful), but if you're looking for features over fashion, this is the device for you.
Maybe a smartwatch would be more useful to me if I was more popular and had calendar events to keep track of or more friends who contacted me regularly, but as your typical socially-isolated introvert software engineer, this thing seems to have limited utility.
I realized that the physical habit that we've all developed of pulling our phones, unlocking , checking time or messages etc is a really really annoying physical habit.
It's disruptive and awkward to do, interrupts conversations or basic interactions with things in your environment.
A two handed fumbling time check/message check becomes a no handed operation with a smart watch.
I don't actually check my messages any more often, in fact less, since the notification is actually much more obvious then phones chirping in a pocket and my decision about whether to handle the information now or later is just much more quick and fluent.
I really like deciding if messages are worth my time without having to dig out my phone and I really like being able to send quick messages without fiddling about with unlocking and on-screen keyboards.
It's great to see they have a strong supporter base, and that will force Apple and others to stay active and compete.
I will for sure miss the long lasting battery of my Pebble!
It looks good enough that it will probably find a place to stay in my life anyway...
edit: Now it seems that the stock will run out by the end of the day :)
Edit: To clarify, it was already at $775k at 16:27 CET.
Russia?
I find Cuba to be interesting. I thought we ended that embargo in December.
Is that a record?
(What else has sold anywhere near this fast?)
So this would be a replacement 'watch band' for the Pebble Time, which provides biometric data to it? Your website seems to suggest it'll work with any device, will it still interface with the "smart accessory port" on the Time? Do you have advance information about the protocol/form-factor that the sensors, or are you going to finalize that part of the design once it's available? Also, I'm not sure I understand why it's called "contactless".
Seems very interesting though. It seems most wearables lean either towards "interface for your phone" or "fitness device", so something that boosts the Pebble's biometric tracking could be pretty cool.
Considering my Kindle lasts over a month on a single charge, I'd be thrilled to have an e-ink watch that showed me a listing of notifications and the time that lasts just as long.
You'll be waiting a very long time.
> Considering my Kindle lasts over a month on a single charge
Your Kindle isn't maintaining a bluetooth connection to your phone or updating the screen frequently, and has a much larger battery than a watch.
> I never have to think about charging my watch so I can always rely on it having the information I need.
With the Pebble you don't have to worry about it either. It notifies you when it's getting low (has a day or two of battery life remaining) and you charge it when you get the chance. And if you don't have time to give it a full charge, in my experience with just 10-15 minutes charging time you'll get a few more days of use.
I agree with your sentiment about battery life though. It's why I don't understand why anyone would even consider any smartwatch besides Pebble. Fall asleep without charging your watch one night and you can't wear it the next day? That's crazy. It also means you can't really use your watch as an alarm if you need to charge it each night.
If its like my brothers older sony reader (b/w ePaper), the refresh rate was slow but the battery lasted a long long time. If I remember correctly it only uses power when the display changes.
I guess the minus would be its harder to read in the dark. If the refresh rate is too slow it might be annoying but I for a watch I don't think its going to be a problem.
They have a great product, but not 13K / 60 min great
hth, adric
* Original Pebble used greyscale version of same tech from Sharp.
* Available in 1 inch size.
* In production spring 2015.
Edit: Ok, I pulled the trigger, I can always get a refund or just resell it if the Apple Watch blows it away or something like that.
Anyway, you'll need to wear something while your Apple Watch is charging. :-)
I was really hoping their v2 would have axed the buttons. I would be very tempted to pick one up if they did but oh well.
I can change the current song or take a call while on the bike without taking the of the road, just because I know where the press. This would not be possible with a touch screen. If I want to do stuff where a touch screen would come in handy I take out my phone anyway.
Kind of a small thing, but actually pretty handy when you're walking around or in a meeting or other places where glancing at your wrist is easier or less intrusive than using your phone.
(Plus, it tells time.)
This review goes into more detail: http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-smartwatch/
> up to 7 days of battery
is a deal breaker for me; when/how do you recharge a watch? Isn't the point of a watch to never go off your wrist?
I'm old enough to wear a watch (and to not remember a time when I didn't) and having to thing about recharging it would kill the whole watch experience for me...
I sure hope the previous model told time as well ... but they seem to really be pushing the angle this time 'round. What with literally calling it Time.
The future is now.
I am a fan of Pebble, but I find this campaign on Kickstarter (after an already successful Kickstarter and three years of continued success), to be both excellent marketing and an utter disgrace to the goals that Kickstarter once stood for.
Personally, I use my pebble for just about whatever you'd think. It's nice to control my music (don't laugh- the nexus 6 is a pain to take out of my pocket just to change tracks), to have a quiet and personal alert of important emails, (the notification is a lot less noticeable by other people than the buzz of a vibrating phone) and to have ridiculous watchfaces.
QR code of the current time in a watchface. My favorite! https://github.com/TrueJournals/pebble-qrwatch
Finally, Android L has this nice new trusted-bluetooth-device notion, so when I'm wearing the pebble, I don't have to unlock the phone. I know it's a bit of a security risk, but it is one I'm willing to take.
In the video, Eric makes a very good point - most smart-watches are trying to replace the phone, but instead should focus on what's critical to a watch - Time.
All the best,
https://blog.getpebble.com/2013/12/16/pebbling-schools-in-th...
It was some good marketing, because I just bought a new one because I loved it so much.
So I guess I won't be buying this one either, doesn't work with my 1520!
I guess i'll stick to a real watch.
I had one to work on some prototypes about a year ago and it was nothing but frustration. Bad documentation, scattered, outdated already.. Getting code running on it was painful and most ideas were very limited by the watch abilities.
To top it off, the ios application to sync notifications was a complete joke. Bluetooth is pretty typically bad about staying connected, but the Pebble should win an award for how frustratingly often it would drop. To get it back, you must open the app or repair.
Beginning to end, a very poor experience. I get the design being pretty poor on the first version, but it seems like they didn't work very hard to fix that for v2.
Maybe I just happen to meet the only people who had these problems too, and every other person who bought one was very happy, but I'm honestly baffled.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/920064946/oscilloscope-...
As soon as it ships, of course ..
Nice. I own a pebble and pebble steel. Hardly use them but the full refund policy won me over.
