Subjective feelings after a month of using Pebble Watch

Part one. Lyric

Do we really need a smartwatch? I have an office laptop, an iPad for surfing and on the go, a Kindle for reading and an iPhone for music, podcasts, calls, etc., Fitbit as a fitness tracker. Why do I need another gadget incomprehensible functionality? What can he give me something that the iPhone can't give me, for example?

The second question - if you buy a smart watch, which ones? Do I need a color screen? Do I need a pulse meter? Do I need the ability to read messages or just a notification icon is enough, and the message itself can be read on the phone?



After examining all the offers on the market and seeing different models with friends, I came to a definite understanding of my needs:
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• the ability to control the music played on the phone (switch tracks, volume, play / stop)
• the ability to display a wide variety of notifications in order not to have to constantly pull out the phone (SMS, PushOver, phone calls, etc.). This is especially true for winter, when the smart is somewhere deep in the depths of clothing.
• fitness tracker with step counting so that you don’t have to carry / charge two devices (I had FitBit), well, plus it’s very convenient that you can just glance at your hand to understand how many transport stops you need to go through in order to meet the standard.
• alarm clock
• the calendar
• the weather is outside right now, especially the temperature and the presence of rain within the next 3-4 hours
• exchange rates from the Moscow stock exchange (related to the type of activity, you need to monitor the state of the currency market at some points in order to quickly change the domestic sales rate)
• more or less presentable appearance (glass, metal)
• at least three days of work on one battery
• availability of an open SDK for self-development of applications. Ideally, in order to use this SDK, it was not necessary to study the 500-page documentation.

What am I absolutely on the drum:

• the ability to watch videos
• ability to type messages
• high resolution color screen
• the possibility of drawing hearts and transmitting my pulse to the second half (hi Apple Watch)
• built-in camera

Then a couple of controversial points. I'll start from afar. Look at the smartphone or tablet lying on the table. What do you see after three minutes of not using it? That's right - you see nothing. The screen fades and turns black without displaying any information. Why this is done is quite understandable: so that the battery lasts at least a day. Now the YotaPhone with a second screen on electronic ink has appeared on the market and I think this is really cool. Not according to the technological component, that someone dug a second screen into the smartphone, namely, user expirience. You do not need to interact with the device to get information.

In watches this is doubly important. How do watches with a normal color screen work? Either you need to knock on them, or press a button, or turn your hand at a certain angle.

First of all, it very quickly bothers, such a thing as “looking at the clock” goes away, the feeling of time goes away. The second moment - everyone sees when you look at the clock, because the clock lights up quite brightly at the moment of interaction with them. In some cases, such as meetings, this will be a sign of bad taste. The third point - it annoys me: he raised his hand to lean on the doorjamb - the clock flashed went out, slightly moved his hand - the clock flashed went out.

Part two. Problem of choice

In fact, there was practically no problem of choice. The only watches that were and are on the market at this moment that satisfy my needs were the Pebble Watch. There was some doubt about the expediency of the purchase, as no commentator in the reviews showed particular admiration: well, yes ... you can wear ... but it seems to be a useless toy.



Well, a toy, so a toy, I thought. Adult uncles also want to have fun sometimes. As a result, exchanging 9 000 rubles. I received a pebble watch steel with a watch with a black leather strap and charging into the bargain.

I agree with many reviews - the strap could have been made better, it does not look presentable. The problem is complicated by the non-standard fastening of the strap in the form of a trident, so go and change it to the nearest watch shop will not work. I tried to trim the usual 22 mm wide strap, but eventually I threw it into the trash can. Perhaps the hands are growing from the wrong place.

As a result, a genuine leather strap was ordered on Etsy.com . The clock on the hand began to look very different. You can easily put on a jacket or suit, but with jeans it looks quite not bad.



If the look of the watch is not so important to you, you can buy ordinary pebble, which are supplied in a plastic case and have exactly the same technical stuff as pebble steel

Part Three Technical

I will briefly go over the main points of the start of using the watch. Unfortunately, the watches are not delivered officially to Russia and do not support the Russian language out of the box. Instead of Russian letters in messages, phone calls, etc. squares are shown. The problem is solved by creating custom firmware on pebblebits.com . Plus, this custom firmware slightly modifies the native music management application and makes a couple more improvements.

On the smartphone you need to install a proprietary application. After that, you have a native pebble appstore in which you can install applications on the clock, as well as the ability to pick up a de-doper account (why I’m going to tell you about it later).

All this has already been described a hundred times in different reviews, so I will not dwell on this.

Part Four Collective

There are three types of applications in the watch: watchapp, watchface and applications running in the background. Watchapp and watchface are essentially the same application and differ only in that the watchface was pushed into a separate menu item and made it impossible to listen to events from the buttons. According to the authors, the watchface is like dials, which are always turned on and display information, and the watchapp is an application that interacts with the user through buttons and starts occasionally to perform a particular function (for example, music control). An application running in the background does not manifest itself at all, but simply collects and processes any data from either the watch's sensors (for example, accelerometer indicators for fitness applications).

On the Internet, you can find a bunch of articles like the 25 best applications for Pebble which describe the potential of hours, up to the launch of Doom (http://forums.getpebble.com/discussion/5113/watch-face-sdk-2-0-doom- 2-1-available-now). For me, such reviews are of dubious value, so I will describe the applications used not in terms of technical capabilities (see, cool, three-dimensional ball spinning), but in terms of meeting their needs, which I described above.

The choice of the dial. Pebble comes with three preset watchfaces, none of which I liked. For me, in general, the idea of ​​trying to play on the Pebble analog dial with arrows is doubtful. Therefore, having tried several options, I stopped at YWeather .



What a given watchface can do:

• show time, date, day of the week
• display of local temperature in the street (determined by GPS), weather conditions (rain, snow, overcast, clear), wind strength and direction
• time of sunrise and sunset (relevant for planning trips)
• weather forecast for the next 3 days
• "Beat off" the vibration of each hour. With seeming simplicity - for me this is a killer feature. You have a sense of time. You have no feeling “wow, the day has flown by, but I have not noticed.” It can be said that every hour you sum up some intermediate result and understand: whether you are doing business or doing nonsense. In general, words can not be explained - you need to try.

Music - surprisingly, almost never use. I somehow don’t see what track is playing, but I can switch tracks and adjust the volume with a Bluetooth headset. The only thing convenient when using wired headphones that are connected to a phone hidden somewhere in the depths of clothing.

The alarm clock - nowhere is easier - you set the time - they start to vibrate at this time. In principle, it is convenient when you need to set yourself some kind of reminder. For the morning awakening I do not use it, because it is inconvenient to sleep with the clock on my hand, but they don’t have any dynamics at all - just vibration. It is possible to create several alarm clocks, but there is no possibility to plan the alarm clocks by day of the week.

Notifications is a standard application where all SMS messages from a phone, notifications, etc. are poured. It is configured very flexibly on the phone. In fact, you just need to specify a certain type of alert on the phone and it will automatically come to Pebble. There is one inconvenience - in the application, you can adjust the font size, but the problem is that with a small font, you need to look at the screen fairly closely - you don’t read much in the car or on the go. And with a large font, very little information is placed on the screen and you have to scroll up and down with the buttons - this is also not very convenient on the go.

It is impossible to reply to the message, even with prepared phrases (it concerns only the iPhone, on Android it seems that you can play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.wearable.app ).

When an incoming call displays the name of the person from the address book or the number of the caller. Buttons can answer or reject a call. During a call, the duration of the call is shown. In general, it is quite convenient when you go in the car, and the phone is “somewhere”.

Misfit - fitness tracker + sleep monitor in one bottle. It has several screens with statistics and allows you to synchronize with a proprietary application on the iPhone. I use only counting steps throughout the day. This whole fitness-socialism - choose a partner and compete with him who takes more steps - I somehow do not start, but my friends say that it stimulates them for fitness feats.



Pebble-Cal is a regular calendar. Allows buttons to drive back and forth months.



RuCurrency I did not find the Russian currency rates, so I wrote my own application RuCurrency, which anyone can install from the Pebble App Store. The application displays the current exchange rates of currencies from the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange, updating the information every 20 minutes.
https://apps.getpebble.com/applications/5480c6b5d581a106f200006d

Perhaps later, in an article on Habré, I will describe my experience in creating this simple application.

Part Five. About future...

Currently, watch manufacturers are trying to grope the SmartWatch place in the general ecosystem of devices. While most manufacturers perceive the watch as a mini-smartphone with a strap that is fastened on the arm.

But the watch has a number of features not available to the smartphone:

1. The watch touches your hand and skin. What does this mean? This means that the clock can interact with you through vibration, taps, tingles, rotational movements, etc. Hours through these interactions can tell you a lot of information by analogy with the alphabet for the blind .

A clock can give you a certain [limited] amount of information not through the screen, but through tactile sensations.

2. The clock is always in sight. You do not need to climb behind them in your pocket, press the button to turn on the screen. They should always be included. This is an information space for rapidly changing information.

It is the manufacturers' understanding of the special functionality of the watch and the disclosure of this potential that will make the watch an irreplaceable gadget that answers affirmatively to the question “Do you really need a SmartWatch?”