Ars Technica Goes Close Up With the Pebble Smartwatch

Ars Technica takes a close look at the crowd-funded Pebble smartwatch. The reviewer had to put up with repeated delays in production as a Kickstarter backer, but seems happy with the watch and optimistic about the future of third-party apps; an SDK is due later this month. "It currently ships with three default watch faces, as well as 12 others that you can load onto the watch with the companion app (free on iOS and Android). By far my favorite custom watch face is 'Fuzzy Time,' which rounds the current time to the nearest 5-minute interval and translates that number to what you might say if your friend asked you the time. While seemingly trivial, I love this rough approximation of time. Rarely do I need to know that it's 5:13:23pm, but seeing that it's 'quarter after five' is awesome."

I have one, and really like it.

[gerardv]

I have one, and while it is a bit rough and clunky in some ways, there are three things about it that really work well for me: 1. Caller ID and SMS messages displayed. My phone is now always on silent and often left in my bag, because the watch alerts me better than a ring tone does. 2. Music play functions, so I can change tunes easily while driving (I have a borrowed car so not worth installing a kit). 3. The big watchface with big numbers because without my specs my eyesight sucks. So all in all I am a happy customer.

Re:fuzzy time eh?

[kermidge]

I've noticed the past decade or so that people who grow up with much more exposure to digital clocks seem to have a bit of difficulty with interval and passage of time.

If it's 10:11 am and I've got to be somewhere at 10:45, a glance at my old-fashioned* watch and it's a no-brainer to grasp that I've got about a half hour to get there. It's almost funny to ask a digital kid how long we've got to the appointment and watch him stop to do the math.

Analog approximation, one side of brain, done. Digital, one side of brain to the other and back.

Years ago I came across a good article on testing done to help choose analog or digital output for certain kinds of data when designing gauges and displays in cockpits and nuke plants, e.g. The folks who did the study referenced, among others, much of the same material used at PARC when designing GUI. I sure would not mind if people designing our current 'digital experience' displayed more awareness of these kinds of studies.

*Well, not so old-fashioned; it's got solar cells on the watch face keeping charged a battery which powers a quartz-oscillator and motor which drives the hands. I will say the pebble looks pretty neat, but I'll keep with what I've got.