Pebble Time - First Impressions

I quickly became a fan of Pebble products. How I bought their first watch - so it became right away, since it’s very convenient to use it with them. As a result, I used plastic pebble for half a year, then Pebble Steel for a year, and for the last two weeks I wore Pebble Time, which I received for free from developers. Under the cat a short review of the latter.

Frankly, the last two weeks I have not found time to sit down and dig deeper into the clock. For example, I still do not know why you can use a microphone in a watch. Also with this review, I apologize in advance if it came out somewhat ragged or superficial.

I will not describe the appearance of the watch, the manufacturer from the very beginning did not make this secret. I can only say that even in the plastic version of the watch, the front side is protected by a metal plate, and the screen is protected by Gorilla Glass. So the vulnerability to scratches, like the first plastic “pebble”, apparently, is forever a thing of the past. Still, subjectively, the appearance of Pebble Time (especially my white instance) loses much in the solidity of Pebble Steel.

The strap is made of soft silicone. It is quite thick (almost 3mm) and wide (standard 22mm). I decided to replace mine without fail, since it is magnetized and small fibers from clothes stick abundantly to it. On a white strap, it looks untidy.

The screen is likely to cause a lot of discussion. Did the watch benefit from the fact that it became colored? Yes, of course! Monochrome dials look a little less contrast and with a slight yellowish tint.



With color everything is more complicated, it depends on their design. Some of the familiar dials after painting turned into a vinaigrette, which is not very pleasant to look at. The working version of my dial (in the photo in the header) for me personally was easy to read. In a word, it directly depends on the dials. The menu is pleasant, contrasting.

The screen backlight, as before, can be turned off completely or turn on when shaking or pressing a button. The backlight brightness is low and not adjustable. At first it upset me, but later I realized that it was necessary. In the afternoon, the backlight is not needed at all, since the screen does not “fade” from bright light, but on the contrary (as the developers assured) it becomes only more contrast. Therefore, the backlight is needed only in poor lighting conditions, and in these cases, its brightness is enough.

It is logical to assume that you will have to pay for a color screen with more frequent battery charging, but this is not so. I used the watch in a fairly intensive mode (regular notifications, digging through the menus, changing dials) and after six days the battery indicator showed 0. Another day the clock worked, after which I switched to energy-saving mode, in which only the backlight works, and the screen displays special dial (white background, in the center in small digits time and battery charge). In this mode, the watch lasted at least 6 hours. Total, more than 7 days.

A full charge takes less than an hour and a half. The charging plug, as in previous models, rests on the magnet, but is fixed very weakly. By the way, now it can be put in two positions (wire left or right).

The main software feature of Pebble Time is the timeline. He clearly demonstrates on the example of watches that "the present is the process of transition of the future into the past." Timeline displays the main events from yesterday to the day after tomorrow. Events are accessed by pressing the upper (to the “past”) and lower (to the “future”) buttons on the right side of the watch. By default, the timeline displays sunrise and sunset times, weather, missed calls, and events from Google Calendar. Since timeline is available for developers, the functionality of the tape is expandable.
Since I touched on the topic of buttons, it makes sense to further talk about them. The purpose of the remaining two buttons has not changed from the previous version of the watch: the middle button on the right is the menu entry / confirm, and the only button on the left is the exit / turn on the backlight. The buttons themselves are pressed a little softer than on Pebble Time, which I really liked.

The clock can display all the notifications displayed on the phone, but you can also configure (on the phone) a list of allowed programs. The notification language corresponds to what is selected in the phone’s system settings. Here lies the most unpleasant moment associated with Pebble Time - the firmware of the watch does not support the Cyrillic alphabet. As a result, squares instead of letters.



In the previous version of the watch, I decided this for myself using the YaNC Pro application, which on the phone side generates a picture with the notification text and sends it to the watch already. How iOS users are twisted in such a situation, I do not know, since YaNC Pro is only for Android. As it turned out, YaNC Pro works great with Pebble Time, as well as all the other applications and dials that I used.

In general, the clock still needs to be dealt with, but in two weeks they left a good impression. I was most pleased that the change of Pebble Steel to Pebble Time was almost imperceptible for me, which means that other users will not experience discomfort.