After Kickstarter Record, Pebble Smartwatch Lands $15M From VCs

LeadSongDog writes "The Globe and Mail is reporting that the 'Pebble' smartwatch has matched the $15M record for Kickstarter funding after initially being panned by the VC crowd." One advantage that the Pebble has over rumored watches from big names like Google and Apple is existing.

I'd be pissed

[Anonymous Coward]

If I contributed to the kickstarter, I'd be royally pissed. Kickstarters basically gave $15M to the VCs, who are going to basically own this device. Kickstarters paid for development and initial manufacturing so the VCs wouldn't have to.

Re:not an advantage

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you want to be the first to jump into the water, or see what happens to the other person when they jump in the water?

Ask Micrososft how waiting for a market to have established itself first has been working out for them lately...

Err... you're completely missing the fact that Microsoft was that person who jumped into the water first. For both tablets and smartphones. They did a lot wrong, but they also showed others what doesn't work.

Pebble Owner Checking In

[WoodburyMan]

I have now owned my Pebble for a month and have been using it with my iPhone 4S the entire time. I absolutely love it. The ability to keep my phone on silent while still seeing text messages, and who's calling without pulling my phone out is great. I backed it back in May 2012 when it was first featured here. One thing I love about the Pebble is it's usable! The E-Paper display and 7 day battery life got me. I once owned a Fossil Abacus (Look it up) back in 2006. It ran PalmOS 4. Battery like was dismal, a day at best, and it didn't even display the time unless you pressed the button. There was no connectivity, as smart phones were just coming into existence. After a month of use I called it quits because of the dismal battery life, always needing charging. Why I got the pebble is because I already have to charge my iPhone daily, or every other day. I don't want another device I use all the time always needing a charge. I regularly get 6 days battery life on my Pebble, and that's when Low Battery comes on. If i let it go no doubt it would go a full 7 days. Why I think Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, Google etc will fail in this market. I believe if any of them got into the SmartWatch market, they would use Full-Color LCD's. This means a dismal 2-3 days of battery. And the average Android and iOS user would want Video's, Songs,and all their favorite Android and iOS apps to work on it, like a tiny iPod Touch. This means battery draining graphics and higher end processors. The Pebble is great in this market because it accepts it's a Watch and a Companion device to a phone, where I dont think Apple and the other big players would try to market it as such.

Another Pebble Owner here

[Anonymous Coward]

My thoughts, for what it's worth:

Appearance - not bad but not great. I wouldn't get one in any of the bright colors that they offer (but if that's your look, then there you go), but my plain black Pebble looks okay. It's a bit big, but not as big as I thought it'd be. It looks 'normal' enough to not get a whole lot of looks in a typical business-casual environment, but it's not going to win any design contests. However, for me, I wanted it for the functionality, so the look isn't that important to me.

Build quality - so so. I don't feel like it's going to break if I drop it, but it's mostly plastic and doesn't feel as rock-solid as, say, an iPhone 4/4S/5.

Battery life - Great, now. It was pretty poor at first (when sync'ed w/ an iPhone; I heard Android users had better luck), but a recent software update has improved the battery life tremendously. I now get 7+ days regularly (though I usually turn the bluetooth off at night).

Watch - it tells time well enough. :-) I love the ability to change watch faces. They just recently opened up the SDK, so I expect more watch faces to be available as well as other apps.

Accelerometer -- I'm sure this will be used in many apps in the future, but for now, it's still kind of a cool feature that I can just flick my wrist to turn on the backlight. :-)

Phone sync - this is what it's all about. It's...okay, but it has potential, and keeps improving rapidly. There is currently an annoying iOS bug where it doesn't always sync up with all the services (SMS, email, calendar, etc) you want it to, and you have to toggle the alert in the iOS settings for it to see the connection again. I usually do this once a day whether it needs it or not, since it only takes a few seconds. Regardless, it's GREAT to have. My personal favorite is the calendar reminders (I'm in a out of meetings a lot all day at work). It's great to check quick text messages without pulling out my phone too. Emails are usually too long to be worth reading on a watch, but it can do some of that if you want. You can also control media playback with it, pretty much out of the box. And it displays the number or name of someone calling you, or whoever you're on the line with, so for example you can check your watch and ignore a call without taking out your phone.

Apps are finally starting to arrive. Supposedly Runkeeper has some Pebble integration now, though I don't use that app personally.

There definitely seems to be more you can do with it on Android, but I'm an iPhone user at the moment, so I can't speak to that at all.

Recently released updates seem to have enabled some key functionality for someone to possibly make a "killer app", so I am anxious to see what starts showing up in the near future.

It's well worth keeping an eye on if you consider yourself to be even a little bit of an early adopter:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-e-paper-watch-for-iphone-and-android/posts

Re:Pebble Owner Checking In

[Lincolnshire Poacher]

The E-Paper display and 7 day battery life got me.

Yes, E-Paper and not eInk. If it was the latter your battery life could perhaps be several weeks.

E-Paper is a clever marketing term for ... a Sharp monochrome LCD display. It still requires a low current to maintain the display, even when the graphic is static.