Pebble Launches Pebble Time on Kickstarter

Pebble is both going back to its roots, and moving towards the wearable future with its announcement this morning that they are launching both a new watch that can be backed on Kickstarter, as well as a new platform that will power Pebble watches moving forward. Oh by the way, they met their $500,000 Kickstarter goal in 17 minutes, and hit the $1 million mark in just about twice as much time.

Pebble Time is the new smartwatch announced this morning, which evolves their existing product line. The sleeker, thinner, watch brings the following new features:

• Color e-paper display, that is daylight readable
• Thinner, ergonomic design built with the curvature of wrists in mind
• A microphone for quick notes and voice replies to communications

In true Pebble fashion the Pebble Time will continue to be water resistant, allow for third party apps such as Jawbone UP and Strava, as well as continue to be cross platform which allows the watch to work with iPhone, Android, and Samsung phones. Noticeably not added was a touchscreen, Pebble instead opted for its existing four button setup. The Pebble Time will retail for $199.

The Pebble Time adds voice commands to give quick notes and voice replies.
Source: Pebble.

The Pebble Time will come in three colors: black, white, and red. The smartwatch will feature a silicone band and a PVD stainless steel bezel. Pebble Time is also compatible with any standard 22mm watch band. And of course, Pebble was sure to highlight that it continues offer a nearly 7-day battery life.

The next major announcement that Pebble gave this morning was the release of its new platform Timeline. The new interface focuses on time to organize your interactions with the device chronologically. CEO Eric Migicovsky states,

“We believe Timeline is how you will interact with wearables in the future to…keep tabs on the sports you follow, remind you of the events you care about without taking you out of the moment all while helping you get things done.”

Pebble’s new platform Timeline.
Source: Pebble.

Timeline organizes events and notifications chronologically, which the user can then scroll through in the past, present, or future. Per Pebble this allows users to get the most relevant information from the past at a glance, and plan for the future in an instant. Timeline will be available for both the original Pebble and the Pebble Steel, though a timeframe was not given for the updates.

Pebble also announced new developer support for the newly released products including: color APIs to support the new color e-paper display (64 colors), support for PNG and APNG, timeline APIs, and UI framework to design apps for the new platform.

To contribute to Pebble’s new campaign please visit the Pebble Time Kickstarter page.

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