So, I just received the Pebble Time which I pledged in their recent Kickstarter and I am surprise that there are not many in Geekhack who have one.. or are you guys testing it quietly? This is not a review, seriously lack of time to do one these days and besides, I've only used it for 24 hours but here are some thoughts.
I really like the
always on feature. I wear a watch everyday to work and I often find myself glancing at the watch without needing to move my hands (which are busy caressing the Topre keyboard, yeah.. ha ha ha). I don't like those state-of-the-art smartwatch that goes blank and then you have to deliberately move your hand to wake it up so you can tell time. That's not very useful. Pebble Time, though, is very good in this sense. At any angle, whether typing on a computer or driving or twiddling your thumbs waiting for a meeting to end, you could catch a glance of who messaged you, how many Tapatalk notifications you get, who just PM you and whether some kind soul send you Paypal money. Or if you win an eBay deal, LOL, not that I do.
And after a full 24 hours use, I am only down by 15% battery life. I haven't even charge this thing yet. It came out of the box with 50% battery, and after a full day of heavy fiddling and experimenting with various watch faces and apps, it's down by just 15%. That is pretty cool. I have to worry about charging the iPhone 6+ and the bluetooth hands free. I can't imagine having to worry about charging my watch, so always on yet with long battery life is definitely a huge plus!
I like that it is light as compared to my Seiko watch and yet it is not so light like some sports watch where you don't know you are wearing one. I like some heft to the watch I am wearing, so the Pebble Time is a good balance - I didn't really like Swatch watches because of its too thin. You can't take watches seriously when they are weightless.
The Timeline design is brilliant, really. Very easy to check your schedule or notification. It doesn't pick up the reminders from Reminder app though - hope they fix that soon. It works with Apple calendar and weather. The Evernote Pebble apps allows you to pick up reminders from Evernote, if that works for you.
For notifications, it will pick up whatever notification was sent to your phone Notification Centre. You don't get to choose which app you'd like to receive notification on the watch, which is a bummer for iOS (I heard that Android phones allow the Pebble to do so by app). My Notification Centre in iOS is pretty trimmed down anyway, so it still works for me. My only complain is that I wish they'd redesign the notification centre so we can see more text instead of displaying a useless green bar at the top part that is a waste of screen real estate.
What I didn't like is that in a dim environment - e.g. at night in the house - I could hardly read the watch face. This e-ink colour screen works damn well outdoor in bright sunlight, or even in my office which has fluorescent lighting and near the window, but it is too damn dim to read at night. There is a backlight which light up when you shake your hand but it last only 3 seconds. Before I could even read the message that was sent to me, the backlight switch off and I have to shake the hand or press a button to switch it on.
And speaking of messages, the damn font is too small for my old eyes. I wish there is an option to change font size. Between the dim screen and small font, sometimes it's just too difficult to read notification messages.
Bluetooth connectivity with the iPhone 6+ is very stable and good. I have not had a disconnection at all, so I was pleased with this. Some say the stainless steel bezel and gorilla glass scratch easily - we will see how that goes but I guess we have to remember that it is a watch, and all watches will hit something sooner or later and will scratch. So, have that expectation in mind and it will be fine.
The silicon strap is ok to me. I'd like to change it to some leather strap one day, I just don't know where I can buy one. They say it will work with any standard strap. I'll have to drop by a mall and look for one I guess.
As I use more I will comment in the thread.
