Pebble announced a new version of its trailblazing smartwatch last week called the Pebble Time. The Pebble Time has a color screen, new design, 7-day battery life, a microphone for voice commands, and it’s available for preorder on Kickstarter right now for $179. Pebble also announced new software for all of its watches called timeline, a reorganization of notification data into past, present, and future viewing modes. As before, the watch will work with both Android and iOS, and will have interchangeable wrist straps.
This week, Pebble continued its campaign hype by announcing a new version of its higher-end metal Pebble Steel watch, called Pebble Time Steel, with an improved design over the previous Steel and increased 10-day battery life. Pebble Time Steel watches will come with a leather strap and a stainless steel strap, and it’s available for pre-order for $249 on Pebble’s Kickstarter. The final retail price will be $299.
Pebble also announced some modular features for both watches this week. Smartstraps, as Pebble calls them, are hardware add-ons to the Pebble Time that can communicate with its software, in the form of wrist straps. Pebble provided some examples of the possible functionality of smartstraps, including a GPS strap to track your speed and distance during runs, an NFC strap that would work with mobile payment systems in stores, and a battery strap that would give watches increased battery life.
Pebble passed the $10 million mark on Day 2 of their Kickstarter campaign, quickly breaking the record set by their last campaign. As of this writing, their total funding sits at $14,893,960, just shy of $15 million and with 23 days left in the campaign, making this project the most funded in Kickstarter’s history. Though Pebble’s decision to return to Kickstarter for what essentially amounts to a pre-order was initially confusing, it’s easy to see why they chose the route now. Pebble gets much more press by launching a new product in this unorthodox way, and in turn much more money. They’ve smartly not announced everything right off the bat, instead gradually revealing more news throughout the campaign, and they’re probably not finished either.
With the smartwatch market growing increasingly crowded, Pebble will have to put in extra effort on this next iteration of their watch. They’re on the right track with now-standard features like voice input and a color display, though there have been more than a few complaints about the Pebble Time’s design, which is admittedly not the biggest draw of the device. Still, the new timeline interface looks interesting (watch their Kickstarter video for an idea of how it will look when it comes out), and the Pebble Time Steel reaches the very cusp of “good-looking watch”-status, were it not for an unfortunately large bezel. There’s still 23 days to go in the campaign, and the first round of Pebble Times are expected to arrive to backers in May. Hopefully Pebble will be able to position the new watches as budget-friendly alternatives to the looming Apple Watch and put a dent in its sales.
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