Has anybody bought and used the new Pebble Time with their iPhone? I just picked one up, and am wondering about others' experiences (good or bad). Thanks.
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Pebble Time - any early adopters?
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I'm also interested in the PT - having bought and sold the Apple Watch, I'm interested to see how this compares. I liked the Apple Watch but couldn't justify the expense for the benefits I got from it, but I do miss some elements ...
Well, I guess you and I are the only ones who care about the Pebble Time!
I set it up last night and have been wearing it all morning. My early impressions are:
- Set up was semi-brutal. For some reason, my iPhone and the Pebble were "playing tag" for bluetooth pairing for almost 45 minutes. It just wasn't syncing... and then it suddenly worked. I'm not sure what was the magic sequence that got the two to recognize each other. The PT did have a firmware upgrade though, so maybe that helped.
- I did download the wrong Pebble app initially, so that might not have helped with the set up. I did reset several times. There are two Pebble Watch apps on the App Store - download the Pebble Time one. It did not come up initially, but I entered the two word string as a guess and sure enough, it came up.
- Battery seems good as advertised. I stopped charging about 2 am last night, and now it's 11 am and the battery still shows a full (or nearly full) charge. This is a good thing.
- Aesthetics... many review sites seem to rag on the PT about low build quality and how it pales compared to Apple. Let's be blunt... the PT does not look like a Cartier, Rolex, or Omega. But it's NOT bad either, nor is the build quality bad. Yes, it's plastic, but it does not feel cheap. It looks and feels like a slightly understated, moderately priced Timex. If that's not your thing, don't buy it. It won't make any fashion statements, but I certainly prefer the Pebble to some of the other Android alternatives I've seen. Then again, you're not likely to have it stolen either when you're traveling... Some have complained about the size of the bezel too. Ah, who cares? It's alright.
- Buttons. Some of the review sites find the buttons hard or awkward to press. I can't say it really bothers me all that much, if at all.
- Fit... one aspect others have positively commented on is how the Pebble feels like a watch: slightly curved, lightweight, and it wraps nicely around your wrist. I agree. Again, this is a good thing.
- Versatility. An email or notice comes in, I look at it quickly, and then I’m up to date. I don’t have any option to respond on iPhone (I can if I had an Android phone), but then for me, it's probably good enough just to know something needs or does not need my attention later. No fishing around for the iPhone if not necessary.
- Notification - vibration. At least one website complained that the vibrating notification is really, really loud - you can notice across the room! I have no idea of what they're referring to. You can set the vibration intensity. Mine's on a more modest setting - it's pretty discrete.
- To be honest, I don't know if I want to do a whole lot more: it's a small screen on my watch after all. There are things I don't want to do on my iPhone either because of its smaller screen size compared to my laptop.
- Apps. Lots of apps, but limited in breadth. I'm not sure if I care that much regardless: I don't have a lot of apps on my iPhone either. I do not care for games on any platform or device, so that's a non-issue for me.
- Screen. This is probably the most significant and valid criticism. You're not going to have the resolution you'll find on the Apple Watch or even some of the Android watches. That does not really bother me. However, the screen is a little dark though – I wish it was a little brighter on its default setting. If you shake your wrist, the backlight comes on, but you have to shake it fairly hard to get it to come on. It's easy to read in outside light, but if you're wearing sunglasses, then it's harder, and then you shake your wrist, but it doesn't make much difference... and so it goes.
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Well, I guess you and I are the only ones who care about the Pebble Time!
I set it up last night and have been wearing it all morning. My early impressions are:
So, on the whole, I'd say my initial impressions are more positive than negative. I'd give it about a "B" grade. I'll decide after about a week's worth of use if I want to keep it.
- Set up was semi-brutal. For some reason, my iPhone and the Pebble were "playing tag" for bluetooth pairing for almost 45 minutes. It just wasn't syncing... and then it suddenly worked. I'm not sure what was the magic sequence that got the two to recognize each other. The PT did have a firmware upgrade though, so maybe that helped.
- I did download the wrong Pebble app initially, so that might not have helped with the set up. I did reset several times. There are two Pebble Watch apps on the App Store - download the Pebble Time one. It did not come up initially, but I entered the two word string as a guess and sure enough, it came up.
- Battery seems good as advertised. I stopped charging about 2 am last night, and now it's 11 am and the battery still shows a full (or nearly full) charge. This is a good thing.
- Aesthetics... many review sites seem to rag on the PT about low build quality and how it pales compared to Apple. Let's be blunt... the PT does not look like a Cartier, Rolex, or Omega. But it's NOT bad either, nor is the build quality bad. Yes, it's plastic, but it does not feel cheap. It looks and feels like a slightly understated, moderately priced Timex. If that's not your thing, don't buy it. It won't make any fashion statements, but I certainly prefer the Pebble to some of the other Android alternatives I've seen. Then again, you're not likely to have it stolen either when you're traveling... Some have complained about the size of the bezel too. Ah, who cares? It's alright.
- Buttons. Some of the review sites find the buttons hard or awkward to press. I can't say it really bothers me all that much, if at all.
- Fit... one aspect others have positively commented on is how the Pebble feels like a watch: slightly curved, lightweight, and it wraps nicely around your wrist. I agree. Again, this is a good thing.
- Versatility. An email or notice comes in, I look at it quickly, and then I’m up to date. I don’t have any option to respond on iPhone (I can if I had an Android phone), but then for me, it's probably good enough just to know something needs or does not need my attention later. No fishing around for the iPhone if not necessary.
- To be honest, I don't know if I want to do a whole lot more: it's a small screen on my watch after all. There are things I don't want to do on my iPhone either because of its smaller screen size compared to my laptop.
- Apps. Lots of apps, but limited in breadth. I'm not sure if I care that much regardless: I don't have a lot of apps on my iPhone either. I do not care for games on any platform or device, so that's a non-issue for me.
- Screen. This is probably the most significant and valid criticism. You're not going to have the resolution you'll find on the Apple Watch or even some of the Android watches. That does not really bother me. However, the screen is a little dark though – I wish it was a little brighter on its default setting. If you shake your wrist, the backlight comes on, but you have to shake it fairly hard to get it to come on. It's easy to read in outside light, but if you're wearing sunglasses, then it's harder, and then you shake your wrist, but it doesn't make much difference... and so it goes.
Good write up. Good info. Thanks.
I have a watch and love it, but I'm still very interested in what's going on outside. I looked at a demo unit in best buy recently but it seemed to be frozen so I really couldn't get a feel for it. The screen was a bit dark and gloomy, however.
Thanks... I think the best way to describe it is that the Apple Watch puts your iPhone versatility on your wrist. The Pebble Time doesn't: it's intended to be a smarter watch. Different approaches.
As a follow up on battery life... the watch has been up and running for about 30 hours now, with what I consider moderate (average) use (maybe even a bit more since I'm still experimenting with it), and it's at about 60% battery charge.
You mentioned the setup took about 45 minutes, how about connection after that? I know that iOS 8.1 did a number of bad things to the Pebble in terms of staying connected. I owned the previous Pebble for about a week, got tired of having to constantly reconnect, and missing connection/notification. Are you experiencing any of these problems? I'm really not asking too much beyond just staying connected to my iPhone and give me my notification as they arrived.
It's been over a week now, and I have to say that the Pebble/iPhone connection seem fairly stable. I did find unexpectedly one morning that the bluetooth connection had broken - and yet weirdly the Pebble was still displaying email notifications - but nothing else worked. I reconnected - it was a little play back and forth again for a couple of minutes - and the Pebble was back in business. By chance, I think I might have discovered why my efforts at connecting were not working, and that is because I might not have dismissed the prior connection on the watch, rather than just the phone. The screen on the watch is not exactly obvious however on what should be done.
I'm not sure if this hiccup was related to the latest iOS 8.4.1 update or not. And to be honest, I'd like to see if it's better on Android.
As a follow up note, after about 3 days of use, I was down to about 10%. I'm not sure how Pebble claims 7 days or other reviewers achieved 5 days. Mind you, I had to go through the connection issue several times.
I have to admit... the watch seems to be growing on me. I also ended up getting a price adjustment discount, so the price was a little easier to swallow.
I have an OG Pebble (not the Pebble Time) but two things are guaranteed to drop my battery life: animated watchfaces and weather watchfaces. If I set my watch to just display my Misfit app all day, I easily get 5-6 days...but if I use Studio Clock or any of the weather watchfaces, I'm lucky to see 4 days.