- Hi, I'm Parris,
and today I'm going to talk to you about a product
that you probably don't want to go out and buy.
I just bought a brand new one,
but it's one of the last of the brand new ones.
This company is called Pebble,
I have their very first Pebble Watch.
This is what started
the whole smartwatch fitness band craze,
but five years after the company got started,
they've been overtaken by the craze,
and the craze has sort of passed on by.
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This is the Pebble Time.
This is not the very latest watch they were developing,
the Pebble Time 2 is the one I really wanted to buy
and planned to buy a brand new one this February,
but then I heard in December
that the company had gone out of business.
This was, not surprisingly, on sale for half price,
these normally go for about $150,
I picked this up for about $75 on Amazon.
They're of course selling out the rest of their stock
at different retailers and at the company's website,
to find out more about it
I'll put a link down below this video.
So why would I buy a tech device
from a company that just went out of business?
Well, I guess I'm foolishly sentimental,
I really did like the whole concept of the Pebble Watch,
and honestly, I haven't found another smartwatch
or fitness band that really does what I want,
this came the closest.
The smartwatch from Apple and Samsung,
you have to charge 'em every day,
and they're very expensive, $300 or more,
they're sorta like the electronics of your phone
put into a watch, and this never tried to do that,
then there are the more dedicated bands,
now, other family members here have the Fitbit bands.
This is the As Seen on TV version of that, a fitness band,
and this is an interesting one
that actually takes your blood pressure,
as well as other fitness information.
So these are both okay,
but they're not something
that I'm inclined to wear every day,
and they don't really provide me with the information
that I want my wrist to provide me.
My original Pebble Watch, as well as this new Pebble Time,
were waterproof down to a depth
that I would never descend to,
so when I first got this watch,
I did a number of videos showing how you might use it,
because that was the thing for me,
it seemed a little silly to me to get a watch
that was gonna talk to your phone.
You have your phone in your pocket anyway,
just take your phone out and see who's calling you.
Just take your phone out and check your calendar.
Why do you need a watch for that?
But I was so surprised that I found this product so useful,
and of the hundreds and hundreds of products
I've reviewed on this channel,
this was probably the most-used product by me.
Now, maybe you can see that the band broke,
and I didn't replace it,
it was having some issues with the screen getting faint
and a little smeary inside,
so I decided to wait for the release of the new,
coming out this February,
Pebble Time 2 that was going to have a larger screen,
that's what I really wanted.
But that was not meant to be, but I picked this up,
not because it does, really, much in addition,
I think it has colored backgrounds,
whereas this one's just the single-color background,
but I really didn't care about that,
I just wanted a newer device
that kept doing these same things for me, which are,
this would let me know when there was a notification
from the apps I selected.
So if I wanted to know
when there was a direct message on Instagram,
I could go into my phone,
into the Pebble software, and program it,
"Okay, I don't wanna know about any time
"someone follows me on Instagram,
"but I only wanna know
"when I get a direct message on Instagram,"
and that's what it would send to this.
And then this watch itself would vibrate,
a little vzzzt,
and it would light up for a few seconds,
so that's how you knew you were getting a notification,
and I could put in,
"I wanna know the sports scores,
"but not all sports scores,
"only the Seahawks sports scores,"
and it would give me updates on that.
Email that came in, also events on my calendar,
if there was a reminder that was going to make my phone ding
to remind me to do something,
I could have it happen on here as well.
In addition to the standard thing you would expect,
that when my phone rang or when I received a text message,
I would get a notification here,
the text message would come up and show me
at least the first part of it,
I could scroll down to see more,
and it would show me the number of who was calling.
Now, I couldn't answer the phone from the watch,
it wasn't a Dick Tracy watch where you talk into it,
but I could send them to voicemail
if I knew I didn't want it to keep ringing.
You could also control your music player from this,
though I never really used much that feature.
And because it was a very low-powered device,
the light didn't stay on all the time,
only if you flicked your wrist
or a notification came in,
I only had to charge this up once or twice a week,
so those were the main features I really liked about it,
and that's still really all I want from a smartwatch,
which this promises to be
without adding all kinds of fancy stuff I don't really need.
I like the red.
This one, the plastic portion around the screen,
the original color is red.
A company called Slick Wraps
contacted me after I did my several reviews
about the Pebble smartwatch in the shower,
in the pool, at the beach,
I don't remember, I used it so many different ways,
cuz I realized how useful it was for me.
They sell these appliques
that go over it in different patterns,
this was sort of their Valentine pattern,
they even have little cutout sections
so you can put stickers on the buttons.
And what ended up coming very much in handy for me,
though I didn't anticipate needing it,
there's a clear screen protector that goes over it.
This did not have Gorilla glass, this first version,
it was just some really tough plastic,
but early on, I managed, with my arm swinging,
to hit it on a doorknob and put a gouge in it,
so it was very nice after that,
especially at the beach with the sand,
to have that plastic cover over it.
So I liked that it was red and colorful.
I liked that people asked me,
"Hey, what kind of watch is that?"
and I would tell them about the stuff it would do,
and they thought it was so neat.
I was a great proselytizer for smartwatches,
especially the Pebble Watch.
So what happened over the course of five years?
Pebble started out as a Kickstarter project,
somebody had the idea of,
"Hey, why do you always have to take your phone
"out of your pocket to see who's calling you,
"to see the text?
"What if you could just see that on your watch?"
So they made a watch that did that,
and not originally, a whole lot more,
but it was an open-source software,
so programmers, just like at the App Store
for Apple or for Google,
programmers could go in and create apps and watch faces,
and different things to work with the Pebble.
I even had a version of Flappy Bird,
I don't know if you remember when that was a big craze,
that game where you would just make the bird's wings
flap up and down and try to get him through the obstacles,
and they even made a version for this
so when you were bored
you could sit and play Flappy Bird on your watch.
But that was part of the cool thing about Pebble,
is there were lots of people doing things
to help develop it.
But as so often happens
when you're a company that first develops a product,
comes out with a new idea,
other companies wait and see,
and if you're successful,
suddenly they come out with their own version of it.
And so, over the past few years,
the smartwatch category
went crazy with companies making smartwatches.
The only problem was,
I guess they didn't really convince people
that they needed them
or show them the benefits of how to use them,
because it's sort of a thing
that's come and gone in popularity.
The only people who are really having a go
at making money with the smartwatches and the bands
are Apple and Fitbit, I think.
Fitbit is the company that bought all the remaining assets
and brought over, I think,
a lot of the programmers from Pebble
when they went out of business.
Here is my new Pebble Time.
I love this color.
The Pebble Time has the same layout
as the original Pebble Watch.
It has the one button on the side that you can press,
three buttons on the other.
Now, this one had the charger on the side,
well, not the charger, but the connector for it.
It irritated me so many times
that this did not have a standard USB micro-USB connector
because if you lost the cable that came with it,
you could no longer charge it.
It's a little magnetic piece
with the little connectors there,
and there's only one that would work with this watch.
With the Pebble Time they moved it to the back,
but I realized that the reason they did this
is it's the only way you could have this waterproof
so that you could swim with it
and go into the shower with it,
because a connector that you actually put a cable into
would certainly get water into it over time.
But on the days when you could not find this cable,
it was not caring about the fact
that that's what let it be waterproof,
all you cared about was,
"I can't charge it until I dig up that cable.
"Why isn't it a standard micro-USB connector?"
So there's little magnets,
and it grabs on there and then it's charging,
and if you accidentally pull it off,
at least it doesn't break anything by doing that.
Here in the extra little pouchy thing which they've included
with the Pebble Time,
I guess that's all that's in there,
it's my new charging cable.
Yep, looks very similar to the old one,
and I'm gonna be just as upset when I misplace it.
It occurred to me,
"Hey, maybe I can use my cable from the original Pebble
"on my new Pebble Time,"
but nope.
They made the connector slightly different in size,
that's not gonna work.
Also included are instructions, stickers, and warranty.
This really isn't valid for anything right now.
The assets of Pebble were sold to Fitbit,
but I just got an email from them saying,
"Hey, welcome to the Fitbit family.
"And here's $50 off to buy a Fitbit device."
But, they didn't say "throw away your Pebble devices,"
here's what they say:
"Get up to $50 off a new Fitbit device,
"or keep rocking your Pebble Watch.
"While you won't see many new rollouts,
"your Pebble software and services
"will run smoothly through 2017.
"Just remember to keep your firmware and app updated."
So that's sort of what I thought,
that if you already had one of these watches
and it was working fine, it'll continue to work.
They won't be releasing updates to the software,
so over time some of the apps may get a little buggy.
When there are newer versions of Android that are released,
the software that integrates with this watch
may have issues.
It's not gonna continue to work forever,
but they did say they'll keep it up-to-date and functioning
at least through 2017,
so I figure I at least have two or three years
that this'll work for me,
which is about how long this one worked for me.
When I turned the Pebble on it told me to charge it up,
so I did that.
Then it told me to download the app
from the App Store to the phone,
and I did that.
Then to pair them together with Bluetooth,
the phone updated the watch
so it now has the very newest firmware installed.
Whether or not there's gonna be a new on this year,
I'll make sure and check before the end of the year
before they stop including any more updates.
And as soon as it was set up
it came up and told me this:
The weather in Austin right now and for tomorrow.
Pressing the button here lights it up for a few seconds
so I have a chance to read it.
And the app on the phone
showed me some of the available watch faces.
I can select one or more of these
and it will put them on the phone,
and I can choose which one I wanna have as a watch face.
There it is, it sent it right over.
I can set up informational notifications
from different websites and companies.
I love this watch face already,
I've found that it moves when I move,
in other words when I flick my wrist and the light comes on
the little bars move around,
and otherwise they stop and wait to save power
until I flick my wrist again and wanna see the time.
What's next on my to-do list?
Well, apparenyly picking up Kimena at six o'clock.
I actually have to leave here pretty soon.
And then watch the sunset.
Any watch that tells you
you need to go and watch the sun set,
that's my kind of watch.
As for sunrises, I think I'd rather manually program it in
if I wanna be woken up for a sunrise.
So let's see what's next on the menu.
Well it's tomorrow!
And all day long is President's Day.
So I went and picked Kimena up
wearing my new Pebble Time watch.
Got notifications along the way of emails that came in,
so it seems to be working fine.
I'm really enjoying having a Pebble Watch again,
I think it's probably been about eight months or so
since first I lost the charging cable for like three months,
and then the strap broke when I finally charged it up
and started wearing it again.
So it's nice to have a Pebble Watch again.
Now, I can't recommend you go out and buy one
because there's now warranty on it now,
and eventually without software updates,
it'll no longer be compatible with software on the phones,
but this is two, three, maybe more years out in the future.
Still, at that point it'll just be a regular watch,
it won't talk to the phone anymore.
So what can I tell you?
Sometimes, old technology and old technologists
are just what you need,
and the way things change so quickly in technology,
that you start out being the darling of the industry,
and then pretty quickly you become just a commodity,
and after a couple more years it's like
"Who are you again?"
And I can relate to that.
But sometimes if there's something
you really like and appreciate and enjoy,
instead of having to go and get the newest thing,
just hold onto it for as long as you can.
I'll be back soon
doing reviews of technologies that are not dead.
You can keep checking back for those videos,
or you can click that subscribe button down below.
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See you on the next review.
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