The Pebble Smartwatch

A few months ago I backed the Pebble watch on Kickstarter. It took so much longer than I have expected for it to be made and delivered. However I am pleased to say that they really nailed building a quality digital watch.

The moment the package arrived in my office, I opened it up and turned on the watch, such is the excitement of un-boxing a new toy. The pebble came to live and asked to pair with an iPhone or Android phone. I have an iPhone, so I installed the Pebble software. The pairing was relatively easy, the Pebble was seen by the iPhone almost immediately and I just followed the normal instruction to pair with bluetooth device. This is definitely so much easier than pairing my iPhone with my car audio system!

Of course, after that I went to town installing additional watch faces from the Pebble app and it went really smoothly, no issue at all. Then I went to mypebblefaces.com to get even more watch faces. This website is great by the way.

Choosing and downloading any of the watch faces from the website in an iPhone presents an option to open the downloaded file in the Pebble application. As soon as the watch face is added to the application, the application elegantly transfers the new watch face to the Pebble automatically. I can then use the watch face straight away. Simple.

Physically, the build quality of the Pebble is very good. It does not feel like a cheaply built plastic watch. I can’t here the usual “creaky” noise of cheap plastic devices on this watch. On top of that the LCD is very clear and responsive. Under direct sunlight or strong light, the display is very clear and easy to read.

This is exactly what I expected when buying a quality product. Minimal but clear instructions, seamless integration and zero hassle with connections. A lot of the time the problems with bluetooth devices are pairing and connectivity, using a device that just works like this is truly satisfying. I can genuinely tell you all that Pebble was worth the wait.

Now, all that’s left is downloading the Pebble API and start developing watch faces…now where’s that C programming book…

Categorised in: Fun computing