Today, Pebble announced their latest smartwatch the Pebble Time. The new smartwatch was made available to backers on Kickstarter before its release to the general public. What’s amazing about the release of the Pebble Time was how quickly it reached its goal of $500,000 dollars, which also led the Pebble Time to break the record for the fastest campaign to reach $1 million dollars.
The Pebble Time reached $500,000 dollars in just 33-minutes and passed $1 million dollars in only 49-minutes. This blew the 162-minute record held by Reaper Miniature Bones out of the water. Currently, the campaign has received over $7.5 million dollars pledged and continues to increase in backers. At this rate, it does not appear that the Pebble Time will struggle to surpass the $10 million dollars pledged in the original Pebble campaign; especially with 30 days to spare.
Pebble also introduced their new interface “Timeline,” a new way of organizing and accessing your information. Pebble Time is also 20% thinner than the original Pebble and has an ergonomic curved design to more comfortably fit around your wrist. You can find out more about the new smartwatch in the video Pebble put out below:
If you did not catch everything in the video, here are some of the key features of the Pebble Watch:
- Always-on, daylight readable color screen with a great backlight
- Up to 7 day battery life even with the color screen
- Use any standard 22mm watch band
- Water resistant and durable
- Tactile buttons for easy eyes-free clicking
- Silent vibrating alarms
- Step tracking with Misfit and Jawbone
- Language and international character support (Chinese coming soon!)
- The timeline feature will work on Pebble and Pebble Steel (exact date TBD)
- Works with iOS 8 on iPhone 4s and above
- Works with all Android 4.0+ phones including Samsung, HTC, Sony, LG, Google, Motorola, Xiaomi and more
One of the major differences of Pebble watches (including the Pebble Time) is the fact that it does not feature a touch screen. This helps the watch provide greater batter life. It will be interesting to see how the Pebble Time does after the release of the much-anticipated Apple Watch. Although if their Kickstarter campaign is any indication of their ability to contend, we shouldn’t have need for concern.
Do you think the Pebble Time will be as successful as the original Pebble? How do you think the release of the Apple Watch will impact the Pebble Time? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.