Reality of the Day-to-Day with the Pebble Smartwatch

The Pebble has gotten a TON of press, so I'm not going to rehash my whole product experience. I'm far too late to the game to pull that. Instead I want to share some of the unexpected things I've found from life with a Pebble.

1. Battery life is not as advertised. It isn't bad, but 3-4 days is no 7 days. However, with a charger as beautifully designed as this one, I genuinely don't mind at all.
2. Do Not Disturb Mode - Your iPhone might adhere to Do Not Disturb mode, but your Pebble won't.
3. Light as a feather - really threw me off at first, but I love it.
4. Forget using it to golf. One of the top features I was looking forward to was using it on the golf course. I'm going to say, "there is NO golf GPS support." Then someone will reply, "Yes there is, there is Free Caddie." Then I will reply, "Exactly, there is NO golf GPS support." 
5. RunKeeper is a keeper. I walk 1-3x per day, and RunKeeper support is wonderful while you're using it. I just wish I didn't have to disconnect/reconnect/reboot the app/reconnect again httpebble every time I was finished using RunKeeper.
6. Dis-Connectivity. Bluetooth connectivity between watch and phone is incredible, no issues there. However, if you use httpebble for anything (watch faces with data on them for example) you'll find it disconnects 5-15 times per day, 100% of the time after using RunKeeper.
7. Limited to 9 watch faces stored on the watch.
8. Soft plastic face scratches easily.

This only looks like a list of (mostly) complaints because the praise has already been given. This is a very cool watch, it was very fun to be part of the Kickstarter craziness, and I still chose to wear it ever day. I like my Pebble, but it hasn't changed my life like I expected it to. It is exactly what you'd expect, a first revision product from a new (ish) hardware company.

I have high hopes for the company and their future. They made a splash in the industry disproportionate to their size in the tech world. Perhaps most importantly, they put wearable technology onto front pages of papers across the nation and into conversations of people who I would never have expected.

First In, Last Out - The Story of Waiting for my Pebble Kickstarter Watch

[UPDATE] I just got my tracking number! Finally, the email I've been anxiously waiting for. ETA is now Monday 7/29/13 - 471 days from the date of backing. It has been a heck of a ride; some ups, some downs, but above all excitement.

Make no mistake, I stand behind Pebble, I stand behind Kickstarter, and I stand behind my decision to back the Pebble project on Kickstarter... all 456 days ago (at the time of writing).

Let's back up. Like a lot of the tech news (absorbing) community I caught wind of the Pebble Kickstarter project on the 11th (day 1) or 12th (day 2) of April, 2012. It triggered that feeling we all have, the feeling of "hmmm, how can I justify 'needing' this tech to my wife...?" No convincing needed, she was on board.

Looking back now, it seems like an eternity between that point and April 14th when I finally pulled the trigger and ordered my white Pebble smartwatch. Cue the deep and longing sigh for a photo break.

If you did notice the subtle clues, I still haven't gotten mine. Using the Pebble-created tools*, I determined that by being a day 4 backer, I was "in line" at approximately 16,000 of 85,000 total Kickstarter preorders. There are no publicly available numbers to determine where I was in line with the white watch crew, but as of July 11, 2013 Pebble announced that 58% of white pebble orders were out the door. I can only assume that means the number of white Pebble orders were heavily weighted toward the beginning of the project.

To put that in perspective, when I backed the Pebble project, it had raised approximately $1,700,000. When the project closed about 5 weeks later they had raised over $10,000,000 - Ten. Million. Dollars. Clearly I wasn't really "first," but being within the first 20% of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns in history was, and still is, very exciting.

So, what happened?

Pebble announced that all of the black, red, orange, gray (some still in transit), and 58% of white Pebbles had been shipped out or delivered to customers. The order the colors are listed corresponds to the order they were produced in, so inherent to that is the fact that any white Pebble backers would be getting theirs later than most. The catch? We didn't learn about them producing one color at a time or what the order was until February/March of 2013, well after their estimated ship date of September 2012 (not complaining).

When Pebble was so successful on Kickstarter they had to completely change their plans for production. They moved from California to China. They changed materials. They made upgrades (water resistance, Bluetooth 4.0, etc). They changed nearly everything. Despite angering many folks, it was the right decision. Given the extent of the changes, dates started slipping. When they missed the projected date in September 2012 and it became apparent that they were nowhere near shipping, they made the decision to withhold further shipping estimates until they were positive.

The lack of detailed communication from Pebble was frustrating at times. It is hard not to want instant and complete updates on anything of interest in the instant time we live in. Add to that a sense of ownership given the contribution to funding the project, you get a fairly hostile group of backers. The other group were those who understood how much work really needed to be done for such a project AND could appreciate the decision to do what the CEO thinks is best for the company and stick to that decision no matter what.

Dates kept sliding out, but finally we got a tangible shipping date - January 23, 2013. Excitement soared, and that is when I wrote my first article to project shipping dates. I foolishly stuck to the optimistic "maximum production volume" estimates, and took Pebble at their word that we'd all have our watches by the end of March. Missing that late March target was completely outshined by their extraordinary success, rave reviews, and stories from happy Pebble owners. The miss was also less of an issue because the folks at Pebble wisely gave all of the color backers an option to get a black Pebble instead, immediately no less. Add this to their list of great decisions.

I could barely contain my excitement after seeing how beautiful the product was, so I forced myself to "stop reading" about Pebble since it made the waiting seem to be that much longer. When I say "stop reading" I should probably say "read slightly less, but still follow on Twitter and anxiously await the Kickstarter Project Updates," but a little self-delusion never hurt anyone, right? I digress...

When the colored Pebbles went to production I kept kidding myself white would come next, it didn't. The "Pebble is finally shipping!" tech blog craze came and went. There was software update after software update. And there was my dumbwrist. My poor lonely dumbwrist.

So now "everyone" has their Pebble and I'm breaking my "just don't think about it" rule. Every time my wrist phone alerts me of an email my heart skips a beat. It could be any day now. Any minute now. Pebble landed a deal with Best Buy to get their products into the mainstream, to get their product out to folks beyond the early-adopter type. Cue more complaining from the few Pebble-less Kickstarter backers... "shouldn't you take care of the people that made this possible first?"

My answer: they already did, for the most part. Now, with the huge number of very big players entering the smartphone arena (Apple, Google, Sony, etc.), Pebble is doing what is best for the company. Given the size of the marketing wallets of their soon-to-be competitors, they're doing everything they can to be the name that is synonymous with smartwatch. It is their best chance at surviving this. It also helps that the other startups are trying to create smartphones for the wrist instead of focusing, like Pebble did, on simplicity and user experience.

Pebble has a long and challenging road ahead. They have come a long way. They made mistakes. They made headline after headline. Most importantly, they made PEBBLES. Damn fine Pebbles.

I just hope their "long road ahead" swings by my neck of the woods and drops off a white Pebble. Cheers to you and the team, Eric, from a very anxious day 4 Pebble Kickstarter project backer.


*The tools used were the (now neglected) ispebbleshipping.com and the 3rd party Kickstarter tracking utility Kicktraq. I also used my original article on determining the shipping date of your Pebble based on the available data at the start of the year, it proved to be wildly optimistic; though in all fairness, it was relatively accurate based on the numbers and information available at the time.

Determine the Ship Date of Your Pebble Kickstarter Order [Outdated]

UDPATE - This post is quite outdated due to some updates from the folks at Pebble. My attempt to re-estimate was lost in the Blogger auto-save world and I don't have time to redo it.

If you haven't heard, they announced at CES yesterday that Pebbles will start shipping on January 23, 2012. This is very welcome news for my fellow backers and I who have been following their story and updates closely since early April 2012.

Image from Pebble

Thanks to Kicktraq we can use the funding progress graph to determine an approximate ship date for your Pebble smart watch.

Image from Kicktraq

First you'll need to find the date that you backed the project, personally I did on 4/14/12. As far as I can tell, the only way to get this information is from the confirmation email they sent you. If you log into Amazon Payments, you get the 5/18/12 date since that is when the project finished the Kickstarter campaign and credit cards got charged - this isn't the date you backed the project.

[UPDATE] - Thank you to Brian Phillips for pointing out this tip on how to determine your backer date if you cannot find your email from Amazon Payments: "...sign into Kickstarter then go to My Backer History (drop down the menu under Me in the upper right corner), it will tell you what day you backed the project."

Now you'll need to figure out how much money was raised at the time you funded the project. There were 85,000 watches ordered with $10,266,844 raised. Naturally there are various factors we cannot account for - some people only backed a few dollars rather than buying watches, and some watches cost more than others, so this is an approximation.

It is crude math, but let's say the average watch cost $120.79 ($10,266,844/85,000) - a reasonable assumption if you ask me. They said they will be making 15,000 watches per week, and shipping starts on 1/23/13. It is safe to assume at least 30,000 watches will have been made at that point since they entered mass production around 1/9/12 or before - meaning at least 2 full weeks of full production before they start shipping.

This means that 35% of watches will be made when orders start to ship. So looking at the math, we see that if you ordered by 4/16/12, you are likely to be in the first batch of shipments. However, looking at this chart of backers by day, you see that backing as late as the 18th might still mean you're in the first shipment since that was the day they hit ~30,000 backers.

Image from Kicktraq

If you backed after the 16th (or 18th, depending how optimistic you are), you can assume that 15,000 new watches being made every week, resulting in these approximate shipping dates:

I used data from Kicktraq, and as you can see not all $10.2M or 85,000 are accounted for exactly, so there is an error margin here. However, this should give you a pretty good idea of when your order will ship. I will say that these dates seem a bit optimistic compared to the "6 to 8 weeks" Pebble stated would be required to fulfill all Kickstarter orders. I have absolutely no affiliation with Pebble, nor do I have any inside information. This is just an attempt to use publicly available information and numbers (huge thanks to Kicktraq) to put this together.

They will be shipping via USPS and will be contacting you approximately a week before your order ships.

I hope this help since I'm sure all of you fellow backers are as excited as I am about this!