Comment by hauget | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hauget | Hacker News Reader

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If they could get rid of that horrible bezel design, more people would probably buy their product. I still can't understand how they shipped the round with that HUGE bezel. WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?! Did no one want to tell Eric that that was a bad idea or was he just stubborn in wanting to ship it like that? Also, what was up with their terrible website design? SEE THIS FOR CONTEXT --> https://web.archive.org/web/20141230224643/https://getpebble... I mean, I know they wanted it to look friendly but it made Pebble look like it was marketing a toy (or something specifically for nerds), and not a well designed consumer product.

Honestly, there's a lot of talented people at Pebble, but their vision IMHO has just been the wrong one. I still think they should partner with someone like Timex, Casio or Garmin and ship something like an F-91W or a G-Shock with PebbleOS. That would be really interesting. Hell, if they partnered with Garmin they could probably build an awesome developer community around solid HW.

All this said, I really admire Eric and the rest of the staff at Pebble. They've put in a lot of hard work to ship something functional, BUT they really need to rethink how they're marketing themselves, who they're marketing to and what the vision of the company/product should be if they intend to survive.

Lots of the smartwatch manufacturers appear to have engineers and designers who've never actually used watches all that much. The Fitbit is another great example of hardware fail: both of my parents and one of my brothers bought a Fitbit Surge about a year ago. In the last month, the strap broke on all three. Well, that's typical for a plastic strap watch, just buy a new strap. Oh no, the strap actually contains antennas and stuff, so you can't! So all three were returned to the shop as warranty claims. Thanks to good consumer protection laws, my parents got Samsung Gear, and my brother a Garmin, instead of defectively designed hardware. The man at the shop said they were getting Fitbit returns at a rate of about five a week.

Look at the useable screen estate on these: https://www.google.nl/search?q=casio+watches&source=lnms&tbm...

You're comparing it to the wrong product. I think their vision is spot on compared to other manufactures, I can't understand why Apple/Google don't pursue a watch with this type of screen and battery life.

(1) The usable screen on those watches WORKS FOR THOSE WATCHES. Form follows function sir. (2) I don't want them to literally transplant PebbleOS onto those watches. No. That would be stupid. What I am saying is that Pebble is a watch company first and a tech company second and that it would benefit from having solid watch designs complement their amazing app ecosystem and OS. (3) Apple/Google won't pursue this because they are NOT in the business of making watches first. Apple Watch for example COMPLEMENTS an iPhone and is useless without it. Same for Android Wear.

Ok, so then we are discussing taste, I think this is beautiful ("solid watch design") around my wrist:http://core0.staticworld.net/images/article/2015/08/pebbleti... Discussion stops here I'm afraid :)

As for the form follows function: The bezel/screen ratio enables longer battery times (smaller bezel in the same casing means a more power consuming screen and less space for the battery) so that applies to Pebble as well.

It's a bit unfair to link to a version of their page which is two years old --- the current one is completely different.

As for the bezel... it's not actually a big deal in real life. It looks way worse in photos. I was concerned until I had a chance to hold one in my hands. I think it's because that watch interactions tend to involve very focused attention for very close up. If you get a chance to try one in real life, I'd recommend it (actually put it on).

I imagine the reason for it is simply that Sharp Memory LCDs don't come in very many sizes and they need somewhere to put the works; i.e., a technical compromise.

(I would much rather have the small Sharp screen that a bigger OLED. You have no idea how much nicer the Sharp screen is.)

To exaggerate your statement you're basically saying that Pebble is making a crap product that doesn't appeal to anybody, though that's provably incorrect by their market penetration. You could say that they could make a better product, but that's a very different argument.

I DO NOT think they make a crap product that doesn't appeal to anybody. YES I am arguing that they could make a better product. IMO they have solid SW but ugly functional HW.

Agreed. I really wanted to buy a Pebble, but that bezel is just atrocious. Really really bad. Especially the new round Pebble.

I truly can't understand what they're thinking. By this point there should be minimal bezel.

It is literally the only thing that turned me off buying one.

And that's the gist of it. Pebble is supposed to be a watch first. It's just not a very pretty one. Everyone I know who buys watches for how they look and not for what features they offer is turned off by Pebble's design and bezel.

Maybe noone needs a watch neither a smart one, anymore?

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