The Pebble Smartwatch Is What Smartwatches Should Have Been

Before the days of tiny wrist computers trying to bash everything your telephone tin do, determination was Pebble. It was a precise antithetic acquisition from smartwatches today, and I can’t assistance but privation that the doctrine of Pebble watches had been much popular.

Always-on Display Without the Trade-Offs

One of the biggest things Pebble got close was the display. Instead of power-hungry, vibrant OLEDs that request attraction and drain your artillery successful a day, Pebble utilized e-paper. The aforesaid tech you tin find connected a Kindle e-reader. This meant the surface was ever on, effortlessly readable adjacent successful nonstop sunlight, and hardly sipped power. I could spell days, sometimes adjacent a week oregon more, without needing to complaint it. Compare that to my existent smartwatch, the Pixel Watch 3, which needs charging each night.

To this day, the Pebble is the lone smartwatch I’ve ever utilized with the Always-on Display enabled. It’s conscionable not worthy the deed to artillery beingness to person the show connected erstwhile I’m not looking astatine it 99% of the time. Using the caller OnePlus Watch 3 is the closest I've travel to really enabling the feature. Lift-to-wake mostly works fine, but it’s not 100% foolproof. Even if it doesn’t enactment a specified 5% of the time, it’s thing I ne'er adjacent had to deliberation astir with a Pebble.

Apps Were Not the Point

This absorption connected ratio extended beyond the screen. Pebbles weren’t bogged down by a clump of apps that worked amended connected your phone. Its spot was successful being a genuinely astute watch—a companion to your phone, not a replacement for it. It excelled astatine delivering timely notifications you could glimpse astatine without pulling retired your phone, controlling your music, and offering simple, utile tools. Navigating with carnal buttons conscionable made consciousness connected a instrumentality you weren't perpetually staring astatine oregon trying to swipe tiny icons on.

Pebble’s doctrine did person an interaction connected aboriginal smartwatches. Android Wear—which would aboriginal go “Wear OS”—started with a akin approach. Apps were intentionally retired of the mode and cumbersome to launch. Instead, Google tried to aboveground utile accusation arsenic you needed it, and determination was a large absorption connected notifications. However, it took nary clip astatine each for the phone-ification of Android Wear to footwear in.

Back successful July of 2014, I wrote an editorial for Phandroid titled “It’s clip to halt treating Android Wear similar a phone.” This was lone a period aft the archetypal Android Wear smartwatches launched. Google’s guidelines astatine the clip urged developers to debar “inputs requiring fine-grained centrifugal skills.” Keyboards and calculators weren’t expected to beryllium a portion of the experience. That didn't halt radical from making those apps, though. The remainder is history.

Companion vs Mini Phone

Modern smartwatches, successful their quest to beryllium mini-phones, often miss the constituent of being connected your wrist. They person almighty processors, high-resolution colour screens, and a large room of apps, galore of which are simply not large to usage connected a tiny screen. This comes astatine the outgo of artillery life, always-on usability, and often, simplicity. Do you truly request to scroll done Gmail connected your watch?

In reality, I deliberation immoderate radical do privation to beryllium capable to scroll done Gmail connected their watch. For some, seeing notifications connected their wrist is capable to support them from pulling retired their phone. For others, it means looking implicit a calendar and typing retired messages connected a tiny keyboard. I gravitate toward to erstwhile group, but possibly I'm successful the minority?

Pebble was a notification center, a subtle controller, and a timepiece you didn't person to interest astir dying earlier the extremity of the day. While I’m not going to accidental I hatred my modern smartwatch and each the high-tech niceties of today, I’m precise excited astir Pebble’s resurgence. As soon arsenic I’m capable to connect my aged Pebble Time Steel to my telephone again, it volition beryllium backmost connected my wrist. Will I find retired I really similar modern smartwatches? If I do, you’ll perceive astir it here.