LONDON: Pebble introduces a new smart watch named Time. The new watch is company’s first device with a colour screen. Until now, Pebble had used greyscale screens in its smart watches Though the panel remains e-screen, which should give it a much better battery life compared to smart watches that use LCD or AMOLED panels.
For now Pebble is selling Time on Kick-starter, a website that allows start-ups to raise money for new projects. Pebble was hoping to raise half million dollars for Time in 30 days but in several hours after it put up the project on Kick-starter it had raised over $7 million.
The kick-starter describes Time as, Colour e-paper smart watch with up to 7 days of battery and a new timeline interface that highlights what’s important in your day.
Just like other smart watches, Pebble Time will allow users to access notifications, monitor physical activity and glance at information like upcoming calendar events through the watch screen. Pebble said that the watch will support over 6000 Pebble-specific apps that developers have created so far.
Pebble Time will support Android and iOS and hence will be compatible with devices running these two operating systems.
In the race to create perfect smart watch Pebble has adopted a different approach compared to what Apple, Google, and others are trying. While both Apple and Google are essentially trying to shrink Smartphone into a smart watch, Pebble is trying to build something from grounds up. This is one of the reasons why the company has stuck to e-paper for the screen in its watches because this technology offers better battery life even though it can’t display images or graphical elements as well as the LCD or AMOLED screens.
