For the people who placed the 85,000 pre-orders for the Pebble Watch through its Kickstarter campaign, the wait will soon be over. CEO Eric Migicovsky announced at he Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas today that the first watches will ship out on January 23. All of the pre-orders are estimated to be filled by the end of February at which point it will move on to new orders.
The Pebble has been the most funded Kickstarter project so far, collecting more than $10 million in pledges and surpassing its initial goal one hundred times over!
Based on reports from CES (I am not there) it sounds like the watch lives up to all the anticipation. It is smaller, ligher and sleeker than other smart watches (particularly those that involve wearing an iPod Nano on your wrist) and are water-resistant.
The Pebble comes bundled with some different watch faces and a starter set of apps. An SDK will allow developers to create apps that integrate the Pebble with iOS or Android devices via bluetooth. The RunKeeper app that was announced as something the Pebble would ship with will not now be ready for a couple of months, but there's plenty to keep the early adopters happy. One of the most useful things is that text messages from your phone cause the watch to vibrate and then are displayed on the 144 x 168 pixel e-paper screen (similar to a Kindle with a backlight option.) Here is a hands on video from The Verge showing the real watch in action:
Kickstarter put together a great web presentation of their Best of 2012, but Pebble, mysteriously did not make the cut. No matter, I didn't pre-order, but definitely want the orange one!
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
To keep up with Quantum of Content, please subscribe to my updates on Facebook or follow me on Twitter.
