Pebble, you will be missed;-(
ok…where to start….guess it would be shortly before christmas 2015, when my father asked me what type of phone I had. I told him which phone it was, and he then told me he wanted to know whether it was iphone or android. I told him it was android, and asked why he wanted to know. He lied to me and told me someone he worked with was looking to upgrade their phone, and wanted to know which to get. I didn’t think anything more of that.
Then….christmas day 2015, one of my presents is in a rather small box…I unwrap it…and see a black box with some images and writing on it (pebble steel). I then realize why he wanted to know. I thank my father, and look up how to set it up and use it. I charge the watch up, download the pebble app to my phone, download sone watchfaces and a few apps. I’m starting to like this.
The more I use the watch, the more I like it. I could be at work, get a text message or something come through on my phone, and I wouldn’t have to get my phone out to see what it is….I just simply glance at my watch (which looks perfectly normal to customers) (I work for a supermarket on the checkouts). I had a few customers comment on it, asking me if it was an apple watch. I knew a bit more about pebble by then, and I would tell them, no…it’s called a pebble…and in my opinion, it’s lot better than an apple watch.
Nearly a year later (November 2016), I notice that when my watch refreshes the screen, small artifacts of what was on the screen before will be left behind. I had read up on this..it’s called screen tearing…and it’s caused by the display connector becoming loose. It’s a common issue with the original pebbles, and also the pebble steel..they fixed it in later models though. I could have fixed it myself, but since it was still under warranty, I got in touch with pebble. They asked me to send a few images, showing the screen tearing, and also a picture containing a piece of paper with the case number they gave me on it.
Shortly afterwards I recieved a reply thanking me for sending through the details and images, but that my particular watch was no longer produced. They gave 3 options…a pebble steel in silver, a black pebble time, or a gold pebble time steel.
I already knew that the most expensive option was the time steel, and so opted for that. I also ordered a truffol 2 tone gold band for it.
Shortly before that, I had pre-ordered a pebble time 2 via pebble’s website. This was an updated version of the pebble time steel, with a larger screen, and a heart rate monitor built into the back of it. There was also a pebble 2 (basically a cheaper version of the time 2, but with a plastic rather than steel case, and only a monochrome screen).
I kept a close eye on that order status, and it never changed from ‘order placed’.
At the start of december 2016, I start noticing rumours, that pebble is to be sold to fitbit. On december 7th this is confirmed with an e-mail from pebble. They also announce that they are ceasing all hardware manufacturing immediately, the pebble time 2 will not ship, and all preorders will be cancelled.
My thought? Damn.
Pebble had a good thing going here, and their ceo (Eric Migicovsky) had decided to sell to a company which would take all his hard work and destroy it.
I noticed that some poeple were starting to make preparations for when the pebble servers go offline (at the end of 2017), and had started seeding torrents containing the entire app store. I downloaded this onto my own dedicated server, and have been seeding it myself ever since.
It was later that fitbit notified us that there would be one last update realeased for the pebble app, which would mean it would not be reliant on the servers anymore.
Earlier, this week, I purchased a pebble 2 from amazon, purely because I know that they will incredibly hard to get hold of eventually. I love this watch….it would be nice if it was a time 2, but I know that will never happen.
The point of this post? Pebble had a good thing going, but they went about advertising it in the wrong way…what they actually needed to do, was to advertise on TV, in shops etc. They didn’t do this, and it ended up costing them dearly. I imagine there are some poeple that would not be interested in smart watches, but there would also be sone poeple that would see it, and think…hmmm….that looks cool…I want one.
I’ll carry on using my pebble’s beyond 2017, and will still enjoy them as much as I do now.
It’s just a real shame that pebble failed, and I will dearly miss them, as will many others.