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Pebble Round 2

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Re: Pebble Round 2

#81

Post by TrainedMonkey »

com2kid wrote: post #50

I have no idea how the 2 major smart watches (android wear, apple watch) have such horrible battery life. Microsoft Band had a 3 day battery life that would've been 5 days if we weren't forced to use a trash accelerometer that drained our battery by a crazy amount. That aside, Android wear being a complete OS is a waste of power. There aren't any useful apps for it that take advantage of the watch running a full OS.…

Withings smart watches are kind of insane with 30 day battery life, but the subscription farming in the app is infuriating.

All I want from a smart watch:

- Waterproof, wireless charging, at least a week of battery life

- Automatically track exercise and sleep, let me update the data if needed.

- Track my fitness trends over time, looking at you resting heart rate

- Optionally, learn a couple of recurring patterns to improve automatic exercise assignment. If I hike twice a week and you see an exercise session with a consistent heart rate profile you better believe I am hiking

Re: Pebble Round 2

#82

Post by wvenable »

com2kid wrote: post #50

I have no idea how the 2 major smart watches (android wear, apple watch) have such horrible battery life. Microsoft Band had a 3 day battery life that would've been 5 days if we weren't forced to use a trash accelerometer that drained our battery by a crazy amount. That aside, Android wear being a complete OS is a waste of power. There aren't any useful apps for it that take advantage of the watch running a full OS.…

I can get days out of my Samsung Watch 7 if I turn off everything like the always on display, constant health tracking, Wifi, etc. But I don't.

Re: Pebble Round 2

#83

Post by lm28469 »

RestartKernel wrote: post #66

Looks great, but a mere 30 day warranty for manufacturing defects is kind of insane. I'm glad they're planning to fully support notifications on iOS in the EU due to the DMA, but that warranty wouldn't even be legal if they sell directly within the EU.

> Looks great, but a mere 30 day warranty for manufacturing defects is kind of insane.

It's illegal in advanced societies, but americans call these things "communism" (the rest of the world uses "regulations")

Re: Pebble Round 2

#84

Post by mrinterweb »

Pebble seems to be the only watch company that I feel understands what a smartwatch should be. It feels like everyone else is trying to make a phone replacement. Pebbles are more of an extension to your phone. Sure it can do some things without the phone, but it isn't trying to make calls, access mobile data with its own sim, use GPS. Those kinds of watches feel like they are designed for athletes who want to leave their phone at home. I'm not that guy. My phone comes with me everywhere, so why would I want phone-light on my wrist when my phone in my pocket can do it better?

Pebble also gets battery life. Pebble's 2 weeks compared to 1 day on my pixel watch 3. Want to use that cool sleep tracking feature on your smartwatch? Guess what? Its on the charger.

Re: Pebble Round 2

#85

Post by doctorpangloss »

erohead wrote: post #3

Proud of this one! Feel free to ask any questions you might have. (Pebble founder)

this is supposed to be the part where i say something about the smart watch. i own a $20 Casio F91 that should cost $3 at retail, which is to say, i'm not really your intended audience. is performative positivity an obligation for interesting questions? is it the only framework to figure out products? do you see?

is positivity the only valid emotion for a product launch?

how do you balance your experience with the rewards of taking risks?

Re: Pebble Round 2

#86

Post by mmmlinux »

ossusermivami wrote: post #56
com2kid wrote: post #50

I have no idea how the 2 major smart watches (android wear, apple watch) have such horrible battery life. Microsoft Band had a 3 day battery life that would've been 5 days if we weren't forced to use a trash accelerometer that drained our battery by a crazy amount. That aside, Android wear being a complete OS is a waste of power. There aren't any useful apps for it that take advantage of the watch running a full OS.…

garmin is arguably one major smart watch vendor and has a great battery life

Garmin is more fitness tracker than smartwatch.

Re: Pebble Round 2

#87

Post by Pfhortune »

mrinterweb wrote: post #84

Pebble seems to be the only watch company that I feel understands what a smartwatch should be. It feels like everyone else is trying to make a phone replacement. Pebbles are more of an extension to your phone. Sure it can do some things without the phone, but it isn't trying to make calls, access mobile data with its own sim, use GPS. Those kinds of watches feel like they are designed for athletes who want to leave t…

Exactly this. Pebbles feel like they were built from the ground up to be a watch, whereas the Apple Watch and Android Wear feel like they started from a phone and stripped things away until it became a watch.

Separately, it baffles me that Garmin, despite them having also built a watch OS from the ground up, never understood watch/limited-button UX. Their Instinct and Forerunner watches have all sorts of wonky, hidden and arcane interactions with buttons (long press this to X, press this here to Y). Pebble proves that a simple, shallow, and linear menu system works great!

Re: Pebble Round 2

#89

Post by aidenn0 »

apparent wrote: post #58
walletdrainer wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the (fancy, mechanical) watches I had within reach seem to actually have the crystal slightly protruding out of the case.

I don't have any fancy watches in reach, but was just talking about watches in general. I think it makes sense to compare $200 Pebbles to similarly-priced watches (smart and otherwise) in this regard. I can imagine that diamond-encrusted or otherwise dearly-priced watches differ in terms of use case and design tradeoffs.

My Seiko Kinetic that I got for around $100 has the crystal surface about 1mm above the case (it is beveled though, so slightly narrower on top than where it meets the case; I assume a right angle would be both unpleasant to touch and more liable to break the glass; it's too cheap to be a mineral crystal.

Re: Pebble Round 2

#90

Post by aidenn0 »

walletdrainer wrote: post #55
jerlam wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except, of course, the most popular smartwatch (Apple Watch) which extends the glass above the case, giving it zero protection against impacts from the front.

FWIW the same is true of the Rolex Daytona and Patek Philippe Nautilus. There’s probably an actual reason for why this is done. On a mechanical watch I’d often prefer for the crystal to be damaged rather than the case, though I’m not sure that the same logic works for Apple Watches.

Does one ever polish a crystal? Having it raised would make that much easier (also if one does, tell me who can do it to mine, my crystal is scratched to the point where I can't read my watch if the main lighting is behind me).
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