Wednesday 14 August 2013

Pebble Smartwach - status after the first month.



Once the initial newness of the Pebble subsided, I have settled down into a prioritized use pattern. It would be interesting to see what people are actually using their Pebbles for, and whether the Pebble lives up to these requirements. For me, my prioritized list is as follows:

  1. Running/cycling app integration with iPhone (iSmoothrun) - works perfectly, toggling between current and average pace would be nice
  2. Audiobook/Music control access (Built - in app) - works perfectly, volume control would be nice.
  3. SMS/call notification (Built - in app) - works perfectly, volume control and stable caller-id would be nice.
  4. Timekeeping: day/date/weeknumber and calendar with weeknumbers (Engweek & Calendar) - works perfectly, looking forward to being able to customize a watchface with weeknumber at watchfacegenerator.de update.
  5. Turn-by-turn directions for city walking (Google Maps) - works perfectly.

These are my need-to-haves, on-the-fly functions where it is a huge advantage not to have to dig out my iPhone, unlock and tap through to what I am looking for. For everything else (specifically, actions which take more than a few seconds, such as checking and reading mails) I find I am perfectly covered by accessing my iPhone directly. Accordingly, I feel that the Pebble lives up to my requirements already, although I am looking forward to the improvements outlined above.