Well it ended up being about six months late, but…my Pebble Smartwatch finally arrived! I backed this on Kickstarter knowing it might be a bit delayed (most projects there are), but wow, sure took ’em a while. So, was it worth the wait? To be honest, I’m still undecided. The build quality is very nice and the product is exactly as it’s been portrayed…except for one glaring omission. This is, at its most basic level, just a remote display for your iPhone…what makes it special are the apps it runs to help extend functionality of your phone. I figured that with such a long delay on the manufacturing side, the software would be further along and would blow me away, but that’s not the case. There are no apps. It’ll control the music playing on your phone, and display text messages and some other phone notifications…but its functionality doesn’t go much beyond that. I think this is a problem easily solved and I do expect that situation to improve…but this company can’t afford delays, there are very large competitors eying this market and contemplating a move into it. Pebble needs to move fast, extend their reach and dominate this market or else they’ll quickly be pushed aside by the 800-pound gorillas in the room. Their hardware is good…they need to quickly build their app ecosystem now.
Pebble Smartwatch – first impressions
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