Pebble smart-watches. I had them from the original kickstarter, and eventually had a Pebble Time Round which I loved. Whilst I now would never buy a smartwatch, I think that theirs were by far the best. Slimline, with a great UI, and nice functionality, and also not locked into either mobile ecosystem.
I'm not entirely sure what caused their death, but my personal view is that they tried to become too big, and I don't think the wearables market is really that valuable. They could have remained a small house which maintained a great product for a segment of the market that really appreciated it. I'm sure that's a simplistic view, and definitely ill-informed since I wasn't on the inside.
I still think they are far better than the Apple Watch or any of the Android Wear devices I've seen.
> my personal view is that they tried to become too big, and I don't think the wearables market is really that valuable
I think you're spot on here. They had a perfectly viable 20-30 person company going in a nice stable little niche, and then the smartwatch hype cycle reached its peak and VCs threw a ton of cash at them along with a mandate to become the Next Big Thing. And so they hired way too many new people, churned out too many new models, and collapsed when the market just wasn't there.
Everything needing to become a unicorn today is killing a ton of good products and services. It's apparently impossible to just be a successful small business for a few decades in the tech industry.
Indeed. You see it here a lot, someone will be sneering at a business with $10 million annual turnover and 20 staff and calling it a "lifestyle business", as if owning a double-digit percentage of such a business is not an excellent outcome by any sane standards.
Venture capital might be the only way to fund a moonshot-style startup but it seems to be the kiss of death for already-established, already-profitable businesses.
Moonshots would be cool if they were actually aiming at the Moon, not just churning out websites only incrementally different from other websites. I do wonder how much this churn contributes to the West not being able to do any actual moonshots.
Smartwatches are not "moonshots". They shouldn't be treated as such. They could be a component of one, though, and society would benefit from components being economically stable, instead of imploding after few years. Pebble was arguably the sanest smartwatch design out there - long battery life, power-efficient screens, hackable[0]. Because they suddenly wanted to get too big too fast, the world today does not have any smartwatch of comparable quality and utility.
--
[0] - not just in terms of writing watch faces; people did try to use them as medical devices[1], and they even had a protocol for attaching custom hardware that didn't go anywhere, but probably would if the company was still around
I still wear my Pebble every day and am not looking forward to the day when it conks out.
The thing that blows me away is no one has really swooped in to replace it. I got a Pebble because I wanted an always-on screen with high battery life (I charge mine roughly once every 5 days), and I have no idea where I'm going to find one when the time comes.
I'm still getting by with my Pebble Time Steel, and I've been watching (no pun intended) Fitbit's releases to see if they're yet up to snuff. It looks like the most recent revision of their smartwatches would work OK for me (and add HR sensor). Don't know if they'll be sufficiently reliable, since this has been a weak spot for Fitbit in years past.
If I'm able to eke out another 2-3 years, I might get an Apple Watch, which would presumably have 3-4 day battery life by then.
I tried the charge3 and the step and stairs-climbed counters both read wildly incorrectly. It also had a tendency to track steps taken when driving. They also hadn't got the pulse-ox sensor doing anything at the time I returned it.
The OS on it is quite nice, the iOS app isn't bad either, but the inaccuracy just drove me nuts.
I moved on to a Garmin vivosmart instead. Not quite as pretty, but a lot more accurate.
I second this. Garmin's wearables are excellent. My Instinct gets almost 2 weeks if battery life with approximately 30 minutes of GPS run tracking 5 days a week.
Thirded. I get about a month between charges with everything turned on (notifications - the main purpose of the device for me, as well as heart rate monitoring, step and sleep tracking). Its no Pebble in terms of functionality or third party development, but I had Pebbles since the initial Kickstarter and while initially I installed every app I could find and tried to use it for anything and everything, eventually I worked out that (for me at least) it worked best as a extension of my phone display, not a replacement.
I use my Pebble Time Steel every day and will continue to use it until it dies. I tried a few different smartwatches and, for me, nothing comes close to the battery life, always-on display and hardware buttons combo.
For my purposes, it is a productivity boost to have calendar, slack etc. notifications and be able to mute everything by holding a button.
At the time there were no other options in the niche, and it fitted well with what some of us wanted: huge battery life, few features that worked well, lightweight, robust... cheap! Meanwhile Samsung, Garmin etc. went after Apple looking for features at the cost of everything else.
Today there is a myriad of competitors; when pebble.com went down, I bought one with 45 day battery life and otherwise the same features as a Pebble HR+ at the same price, plus GPS. There's third party apps for a few bucks.
I do miss the always-on display and its clarity, but not dealing with the slow and buggy software and lack of sync or ability to export the data. And I have more confidence in Xiaomi being around in a few years, not that it matters with Google Fit, MyFitnessPal and local CSV backups.
I had a Kickstarter Edition pebble. It was terrible, both in hardware and software. After a few months it developed an issue when the contents of the display disappeared, and I had to physically press the display to see something (googling this it seemed I wasn't the only one with this problem). It also supported running only 1 watch app at a time, which meant if I had a timer running and I got an SMS which took focus, the timer stopped. I would have thought that running a timer on a watch would be basic functionality...
Rolex is a terrible example. On top of their products aiming to last generations (nobody's going to leave Apple Watch to their grandchildren), they're also well known for not reporting any sales figures what so ever.
Nobody can tell you how many Rolexes there are in total, let alone the sales figures of a specific model of a Rolex. That's partially what makes them so valuable. People usually don't change Rolexes every year when the new model is out.
Changing an Apple Watch/Android Wearable even once every 3-5 years must be the 7th circle of hell for someone like Dieter Rams.
It's incredible how normal it has become to switch out $500-$1200 products at such a cycle. Wasteful, next to no functional gain (certified electro-cardiography being exempt in my books), supporting narcissism...
It's consumerism to the max. We should all take a step back and think about what we are doing.
The watch market must be pretty small these days considering everyone has the time on their smartphone...
The only people I see wearing watches are business people who wear suits to work or work outdoors (people in the military). That's only a small percentage of people with a ~$100 product.
I see people of all kinds with Apple Watches all the time, some of them with the higher-end models. Even prompted a few conversations with strangers about the series, bands and faces.
I'd actually bet that phones will be supplanted by a combination of smartwatch + smartglasses in the future.
If you have ever detachedly watched a crowd of people holding out these slabs in their hands and craning their necks over them, you might agree that it looks rather archaic and is begging to be put out of fashion.
I see a lot of watches among 'fitness' people as well these days. I'd estimate that roughly half the people in my office wears a watch of some kind and non of them wears a suit to work.
My wife loves the crap out of her several Pebbles, and she didn't even get them until after the acquisition and shutdown plans were announced. She still gets speech-to-text thanks to rebble. If there were something comparable still being manufactured, I'm sure she would jump on it in a heartbeat.
I think their reliance on selling a device and not services as their source of income made them great, but also made them vulnerable.
If they sold additional services that weren't necessary for the watch to perfom, then maybe they'd have survived without depending on Kickstarter for funding.
I'm sad they're gone. There is nothing quite like it on the market.
If you miss the Pebble pick up a Fitbit Versa - it’s the same form factor, and the OS is the one Fitbit acquired from the Pebble fire sale. Unfortunately the display isn’t quite as good, but it definitely feels like a Pebble 3.
When my PTR died, I thought I'd really struggle without it. I used to evangelise the idea of it, claiming the convenience of on-wrist notifications, fitness tracking, my diary to hand (I have a very busy diary), etc..
I realised a couple of things once I lost it:
1. very few notifications need my urgent attention. In fact, I frequently have my notifications turned to "calls only" on my phone, and frequently leave it in another room on purpose so I don't have the temptation to look at it. A smartwatch would be thus a negative aspect of my life in this regard.
2. I don't need to track every aspect of my life, in fact that just generated more anxiety for me. I'm pretty fit, sleep soundly not enough (but tracking that never helped), eat very healthily, etc.. Tracking didn't help, it just added to the mental noise / anxiety (disclaimer: I don't suffer strongly from anxiety).
3. While I loved the PTR form-factor, I can't stand bulky watches (and really dislike cuboid watches). There just isn't a smartwatch with an aesthetic I'd consider wearing.
I'm not entirely sure what caused their death, but my personal view is that they tried to become too big, and I don't think the wearables market is really that valuable. They could have remained a small house which maintained a great product for a segment of the market that really appreciated it. I'm sure that's a simplistic view, and definitely ill-informed since I wasn't on the inside.
I still think they are far better than the Apple Watch or any of the Android Wear devices I've seen.