Comment by NathanthePie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by NathanthePie | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Design has really never been Pebble's strong point.

Secondly (call me close-minded) I honestly don't get what use/niche 'Smart Watches' fill.

Got a notification? Whip out your phone.

Got a notification and need to respond? Whip out your phone.

Got a notification and need to respond but are 10 meters away from your phone? Sprint like hell to your phone...or conversely, wait till you find your way back to your phone.

Got a notification but don't want to obnoxiously check your phone in front of your significant other/friend/coworker/familymemeber/human? Newsflash: You're still being obnoxious when you check your watch/Glass.

Want to change your music? Come on, your phone lockscreen does that in one button touch too.

Want to check your "team's score"? Google Now. NFL app. Lockscreen changers. Etc.

Want to personalize your watch? Let me link you to a personalized watch store. http://www.amazon.com/Watches-Mens-Womens-Kids-Accessories/b...

Want to have a watch that works underwater? See above link.

Want to customize your watchband? See above above link.

Want to read it in sunlight? ...

Want to wake up (assuming you charge it at some other time) with it's gentle vibrations? Lots of smartphone apps ( and of course Jawbone Up, Nike Fuel Band, FitBit, etc) do that as well.

Want to know the time? Well...Sure.

I just don't really understand the rationale behind smart-watches [as they currently stand].

[Edit: I've read the below comments and I now understand.]

> Whip out your phone.

Well that scenario is more like this:

Fish your phone out of your pocket or bag, unlock the screen, pull down the notification bar, navigate to the app...

vs

Look at your wrist.

Pebble is quite convenient especially when you're on the go. Walking while staring at your phone is quite hazardous. Also, when my phone is in my pocket, I usually don't hear it ring but I definitely feel when something strapped to my wrist vibrates.

Yes, and that's if you can hear or feel it vibrate in your bag, which can be difficult, specially in crowded/noisy places.

Phones can show the info on the lock screen.

Does it really matter if you hear it or not though?

My phone is in my pocket. I don't need to respond to every minor notification. The only important one is when it rings and it makes a lot of noise then as well.

It does to me. I have notifications set up to appear from things I care about - and now I can see them instantly, which means I'm not pulling my phone out of my pocket to check for them when they haven't actually appeared yet, just in case.

I just remember stuff.

This is exactly why I bought mine, and it was totally worth it.

I've been watching my fiancé use his Pebble for a few months now and I think it's useful. It's basically the convenience in knowing the time, except you also get more information on everything (his face shows time, weather, phone battery, and calendar info) with reliable one-touch actions (touchid on our iPhone 5s's became moot while we had gloves on in Boston a few days ago so there goes any "one touch" actions on a phone in one common case). For a lot of people a watch is pointless or purely a status item in the first place.

Although... it may be that I want one because my phone lives in my purse/bag since girl pants tend to avoid pockets like the plague, whereas men tend to have pants pockets where they can put their phone. It would take one second to look at a pebble vs a few seconds or more to look for my phone and a lot of the time, it's some trivial message that could have waited but there's only so much sound/notification customization I can do. I could be shaving a couple minutes and a bunch of effort and annoyance every single day with a Pebble.

Unfortunately, as you mention, design has never been their strong point. I don't think I can walk around with one and not have it look like a bulky mens watch.

You're missing the utility it provides if you use specific applications built for the watch.

I have built tennis and squash scoring apps. I wear the watch day to day, however I get most value from the watch by keeping track of my racquet sport games from my wrist. Not sure if you've played before but after a couple intensive rallies it is really easy to forget what the score was, or where the next serve needs to be from.

There are plenty of other custom applications people can use to assist them in day to day activities. Something my friend has mentioned is when riding his scooter, he can use google maps without looking at his phone because the notifications are pushed to his pebble...

I really like the idea of squash scoring on the watch. Is it the version on mypebblefaces?

I started out liking the alerts for using google maps, but ended up finding it intensely annoying when driving in the city since there ended up being far too many notifications when going through roundabouts etc (approaching, turn off roundabout, distance to next turn).

Relatively minor annoyances (including double notifications sometimes when unlocking) compared to the utility I get from it though.

The funny thing is I read all this stuff about people disliking the look of the plastic Pebble, but all I've heard from people who see it has been positive (I don't wear it as a dress watch though).

Yeah thats the last version.

I am working to convert them over to v2 of the SDK.

Tennis app is almost ready. Doing the squash one will not be too hard.

I bought a Pebble – thinking it'd be great to know who it was calling/texting me while I was riding my motorcycle, so I could decide whether to pull over and get my phone out of my pocket. It turns out that the answer is _always_ "No!". Now that I've had my Pebble for almost a year, I don't even look at it when I feel my phone ringing in my pocket while riding the bike.

It _has_ gotten me back in the habit of wearing a watch though, after something like 20 years of relying on a phone if I wanted to know the time I now feel like I'm "missing something" when I don't have it on my wrist.

(Turns out probably the most useful thing it does as a "smart watch" is being used as a replacement for the bicycle computer I lost - I now use Runkeeper running on my phone and the Pebble on my wrist to do the keeping track of speed/time/distance that I used to do with my ~$20 bike computer. Not a spectacularly successful outcome for a ~$130 toy…)

I have been using the Pebble for about a month. Being able to just glance at your wrist to check the notification is just so convenient. I don't have to take out my phone and then enter my password to check each and every notifications.

There are also a lot of interesting third party apps. The ones I like locks the phone and vibrates the Pebble if it the Pebble and phone are disconnected.

Smart watches are not useful if you are idle or nearly idle and the rate of notifications is low. But if you are busy or the rate of notifications is high then that changes dramatically.

What are some examples? Doing any physical work is a perfect example. Maybe you're cooking, or plugging together and configuring a rack full of networking or AV equipment, or soldering, or building a house, or basically doing any of the million things people do every day where an interruption long enough to check a smart phone is a serious disruption to the flow of work.

And what happens when you're not just receiving 1 notification per hour or even every 10 minutes but perhaps 10 notifications in 1 minute? Not all day, but all it takes is 10 notifications per minute to happen once or twice a day to make having a smart watch worthwhile.

It may not be the sort of thing that is ever useful to you, but that's fine, don't buy one. But they are plenty useful for a lot of people.

Well if you get that many notifications, I'd just start ignoring them / turning them off. Too much noise, too much distraction. Plus, it's probably not important / something one needs to respond immediately to.

It's not noise though. For me a smartwatch would replace a radio. With a radio you can easily pass a handful of messages back and forth every minute with low overhead, but with a smartphone that many messages becomes a burden. With a smart watch it's not a burden.

I've been wearing a Pebble for a little over a month now, and I find the key convenience of it is that I spend less time on my phone.

Before Pebble, I'd get one notification (perhaps from Facebook), but after checking that one notification, I end up getting lost while catching up on my entire News Feed.

Now, I glance at the Pebble. I get that one notification. If it's important, I act on it. Otherwise I dismiss it and go about living in the real world.

Pebble allows me to keep my phone in my pocket, which makes "whipping out my phone" the barrier to an action that will ultimately lead to my distraction.

Personally, I use my Pebble as a 2nd alert device - which is very handy for meeting alerts, as I don't have emails showing up on there, only SMS and meeting reminders - so if my Phone buzzes and I'm heads-down, I can ignore. If I'm wearing my Pebble and it buzzes (likely along with the phone), I pay attention.

That and my old watch died about a year before I got my Pebble, it's nice to have a watch again.

I'm always missing phone calls and timely text messages because I don't feel my phone vibrating in my pocket.

Pebble solves that. Plus the white version is, as far as I'm concerned, a nicely stylish accessory too.

That justified the use, for me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com