The Pebble Watch made famous by the crowd source website kickstarter in 2012 promised big. In the slick hook video that accompanied the kick starter page, it look the bees knees to be honest. It promised seamless integration with Runkeeper, flawless notifications for SMS, iMessages and calls. In reality that's true 60% of the time minus the flawless part.
Rewind - 2012 I preordered a Pebble after coming across the kick starter site a few days after kicker starter 'backers' closed. While not putting any money down I did reserve one. Fast forward early 2013. I am requested for payment details which I supplied. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. 25/7/13 I am noticed the Pebble has shipped via singpost with full tracking. By mid August I start getting worried. Singpost can not trace after dispatch, auspost can it trace as it has not been scanned into Australia. Last Friday it just turned up. Finally it's here.
I charged my pebble and followed the instructions. Installing the iOS pebble app. Sharing my phone book.
Negatives:
What I did not know was that the pebble maintains a constant connection with my iphone5. Not the low powered connection that pulses data like my fitbit flex. I noticed the battery drain immediately. I estimate 10-30% faster than without the pebble connection.
iOS / pebble interaction is limited without jail breaking - emails, calls, texts. Caller Id for calls has dropped off after day 2.
I set out to find 2 simple downloadable watch faces that would add functionality I would require.
1. Time, date and weather of my local area ( Australia)
2. Dual time zone digital face.
What I did not realize that such a simple task would start a journey equal to a Bilbo Baggins stroll to visit Mordor.
Regarding the weather watch face. Apparent despite Australia being the fastest adopters of new technology per capita, finding weather loading (polling) faces that would detect my location outside of USA was non existent. So far I am up two my 6 app. No luck. All have required the additional app called httpebble which allows Internet access for polling of data.
Regarding the dual timezone. A search of similar scale was needed. While one face that met all my needs , should I leave the watch face to use another feature such as change a song through the watch interface. The watch face loses the timezone offset requiring resetting every time
Overall I disappointed at the lack of functionality for the iOS system along with the sketchy at best alert system for other apps. So poor is the Pebble at reconnecting with apps using push notifications that a procedure has been devised that requires going into the notification centre and reactivating the motivations of every required app. It has been named the 'finger dance' by the pebble community.
Another aggravating factor is the disjointed and dispersed collection of apps and watch faces. There is no one stop marketplace.
I hope it gets better. Presently it will not be coming on my month long trip if it does not get better, and fast.
Way back in August 2013, I wrote about my first 72 hours with the now famous original smart watch - the Pebble Watch.
) to keep track of my runs.
