Pebble users are getting a bit of an early Christmas gift, with the company announcing the latest firmware release: version 1.14. The update runs the gamut of changes — new features, fixed bugs, and some improvements in general — among them being some handy functions like “Do Not Disturb” and a “Snooze Alarm” option. The […]
The past decade has seen the consumer electronics war grow more furious and more personal: your living room is a battlefield, as are your desks and your pockets. Now, more than a year-and-a-half since the Pebble (née Allerta) team saw its e-Paper smartwatch concept shatter a $100,000 Kickstarter funding goal, gadget purveyors of all stripes are vying for a spot on your wrist.
As I write this, a Jawbone UP24 is lashed to one of my wrists (being mindful of all the steps I’m not taking) and a Pebble just buzzed on the other. We unabashed nerds have embraced the smartwatch age with open arms and open wallets, but what’s been going on since those heady days of mid-2012?
The buzz around wearable second-screen tech has been enough to inspire players both small and massive to enter the fray. It used to be that you couldn’t check out the new projects on Kickstarter without basically tripping over scads of smartwatch concepts — some were neat, some seemed more than a little shady, but all of them were meant to capitalize on the notion that using our amazing pocket computers of the future didn’t make consuming information easy or frictionless enough. And of course, bigger players are itching to make their market on a growing market, too.
Don’t take this as a completely comprehensive list, but Pebble, Martian, Samsung, Sony, ZTE, Fitbit, Basis, Neptune, Metawatch, and Qualcomm are all companies that have either already let their smartwatches loose on the world, or have confirmed that they’re working on a smartwatch. Qualcomm is a particularly interesting example, too — it’s best known as a semiconductor maker, a chip slinger whose wares are obscured by shells of plastic and metal, but its new TOQ smartwatch is slowly making its way out to media outlets and average joe consumers in exchange for $350.
Meanwhile, LG, Dell, Apple, and Google (which, remember, is still very distinct from Motorola) are strongly rumored to have wrist-worn gadgets under development behind closed doors. That list features the world’s most prominent consumer electronics players, and it under represents all the upstart companies who think they can deliver their own gadgets faster and better than their lumbering rivals.
If smartwatches are going to be as disruptive as so many companies believe they will be, at least one of them is going to have to strike a chord with a wide consumer audience in a big way. But which combination of price, performance, and PR is going to make that happen?
In a Google Hangout with YouTube tech personality Marques Brownlee, Motorola Mobility CEO Dennis Woodside confirmed that it was working on a wrist-worn gadget of its very own (probably the purview of the new “world-class wearables design group” it’s been slowing putting together). What was more interesting than that tacit confirmation was Woodside’s candid — if clipped — exposition on the potential pitfalls that come with dramatically trying to augment what the concept of a watch entails.
“There’s clearly gonna be something that changes on your wrist, how it works and what exactly it is is something our teams are working on hard,” Woodside said. “Whatever it is, it has to compete with what works now.” He added later that the wearables team has been given a set of challenges to surmount, too: “We can’t have something fragile, we can’t have something that needs to be charged everyday. You’re going to have to have some functionality that’s just killer otherwise why spend the money on yet another product.”
If that last bit sounds a little “well, duh” you’re probably in good company. That said, the approaches that smartwatch makers have taken vary wildly. At one end of the spectrum you have watches like the Martian, which looks almost completely like a something your father would wear albeit with small text displays and the ability to heed voice commands. One the other end are devices like the hefty Neptune Pine which basically shrinks an entire smartphone down to the point where it (sort of) fits around a human arm. The rest of the pack hovers somewhere between those extremes, making for a smartwatch market that’s both crowded and tough for average consumers to grok.
Speaking of consumers…
There’s also the little issue of how many people would actually want to own a smartwatch, an accessory that, at worst, mimics what your smartphone can already do and, at best, augments it substantially. What few sales figures announcements out there point to some slowish uptake though: Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky told us last month that the startup has sold over 190,000 of its smart watches, nearly 100,000 of which were sold after the Kickstarter campaign officially closed. That means they were moved through the Pebble website, and through AT&T and Best Buy Stores — they’re all good outlets to move units, but they all seem to have plenty of the units in stock now which could represent slackening demand after the initial rush.
And of course, there’s Samsung. After rumors that it had sold a scant 50,000 Galaxy Gears to users began to bubble up, Samsung publicly insisted that it shipped 800,000 to retailers. Of course shipping units to stores and selling units to end users are two entirely different beasts, so the actual number of people walking around town with Galaxy Gears on their wrists remains frustratingly vague. Bear in mind, those are two of the most prominent smartwatch players out there right now. At this point it seems all too possible that the number of smartwatches that get churned out could exceed the number of people who find any sort of value in them.
There’s nothing like a good push on the biggest shopping day of the year, especially when you’ve got a device that’s just about the size of your traditional stocking for stuffing. That’s what’s up with Pebble this weekend when they reveal that they’ve released the device to Amazon as well as on their own site […]
The jury is still not out on whether the smartwatch craze is here to stay for the long run or if its just a bubble that might burst in the near future. Samsung launched its smartwatch earlier this year and already there have been reports of poor sales. One of the poster childs of the smartwatch bandwagon is the Pebble, which was once a Kickstarter campaign that went on to receive over $10 million in donations from over 85,000 contributors, ultimately becoming the largest Kickstarter campaign. Pebble has been out for quite some time, but now it is finally available for purchase through Amazon.
Earlier this year it was announced that Pebble will be available from Best Buy as well. Adding more retailers would no doubt serves Pebble’s interests, as it looks to generate as many sales as it can. Currently only the red and black variants of Pebble are in stock on Amazon, which is offering the smartwatch for $148.99. Customers who want a broader range of color choices can purchase the smartwatch from Pebble’s website, where it is being sold for $150 in red, orange, black and white. A silver variant is listed as well but it appears to be out of stock as of now.
Pebble Smartwatch Now Available From Amazon original content from Ubergizmo. 
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Pebble’s slowly been expanding the places you can buy its e-paper smartwatch, but today it’s landed at the biggest retailer of them all. Ahead of the Thankgiving celebrations, the company took to Twitter to announce the availability of the Pebble at Amazon, where you’ll now be able to buy black and red models (rocking the new software update) for $148.99. While you’ll still find them at Best Buy stores and sold by AT&T, Amazon’s promise of free next-day Prime delivery might sway you if you’re on a post-turkey impulse buying binge.
Filed under: Wearables, Mobile, Amazon
Via: Pebble (Twitter)
Source: Amazon
There’s a brand new bit of firmware and software needed for the newest update in Pebble’s smartwatch experience were released this afternoon in full. These updates for the watch and the iPhone bring the Pebble environment up to the place that was explained earlier this month, full iOS 7 notifications and all. Users will be […]
Today Pebble unveiled its software update with deeper integration with iOS7and its brand new SDK 2.0.
Pebble became very famous when the company raised over 10.2 million dollars from over 69,000 backers on Kickstarter. Since the product started to ship in January 2013, 190,000 Pebble watches are now worn by happy users and over 50 applications are available in iTunes and Google Play, a total of 2,200 apps and faces are on mypebblefaces.com and 80,000 watchfaces were created on watchfacegenerator.de.
Basically the update will allow Pebblers with iPhones running iOS 7 to see all the notifications from the Notification Center on their watches. Before, they would only get sms, email and caller ID notifications.
Now, when users enable the notifications they want in the Notification Center on the phone, such as Calendar, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn, Evernote, Path, Flickr, Dropbox, WhatsApp, Flipboard, they will appear on the Pebble screen.
Developers will be happy to get the SDK 2.0 which will make their lives easier, thanks to the four new APIs: Javascript, Accelerometer, Data Logging and Persistent Storage:
Pebble Smart Watch Update for IOS 7 and SDK 2.0 original content from Ubergizmo. 
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The smartwatch known as Pebble is seeing a software update today that brings on full iOS 7 integration – across iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch – for full notifications support, just as on Android. This update, which will be pushed out OTA to all users, adds in support for notifications that don’t just include calls, […]
In its first major update since it began shipping early this year, the Pebble smartwatch is gaining a slew of new notifications today thanks to an updated SDK and integration with iOS 7. Now, any banner notifications you get on …
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