Sometime in the spring of 2012, myself along thousands of fellow tech enthusiasts, committed to back Pebble in their Kickstarter funding campaign. After months of delays, vitriol and nonsense in late January Pebble announced it would soon begin shipping. Earlier this week, nearly 6 months after their original estimated shipping date, my Pebble finally arrived.
The watch looks pretty slick and has a "nerdy" chic design to it. The e-paper screen is pretty easy on the eyes and the initial setup/pairing as well as adding new watch faces with my iPhone was a breeze, so kudos to them in that regard. But, regretfully, that's all it does -- at the moment.
The watch lacks many crucial features that would make it more than a mere tech novelty. For instance, the watch is just begging for a touch screen. The whole 3-button navigation interface feels almost anachronic. Pebble also lacks comprehensive notification settings -- it currently only supports phone Caller ID and incoming SMS. The watch lacks and badly needs a recent history of notifications: how good are notifications if you can only see the latest one?
An important aspect that, in my opinion, Pebble either forgot or just didn't have the time to implement is the one-directional nature of Pebble. Pebble's use case is not very strong at the moment because of it. If Pebble was capable of, say, sending canned or predefined replies to text messages or if it was capable of sending a quick reply to a rejected phone call, it would have a place in the wrist of not only tech aficionados but also business types and the public in general.
As of right now, however, Pebble is merely an accessory; a luxury, if you will. There really isn't any feature in it that, at the moment, makes it a requisite for daily life. For instance, my smart phone, my car, my computer and so on are things that I need in order to get things done. Pebble is nowhere close to that level of "neededness" (sic) and until it does it will remain nothing more than a glorified wrist watch.
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