Pebble set a Kickstarter record when it launched the original Pebble Smartwatch way back in 2012. That’s like the smartwatch stone age. Now it’s back with a new campaign for the Pebble Time, a smartwatch with a color e-paper screen and a somewhat more refined design than the original watch. If you think the internet might react negatively to a second Kickstarter from this company after the first one netted a whopping $10 million, you’d be wrong. It took only 17 minutes for the campaign to smash the $500,000 goal, and it’s now well into the millions.

The Pebble Time seems to have more in common with the original Pebble than the slightly more premium Pebble Steel. It looks nice, but not something you’d get away with wearing at a formal event. The body is plastic and the bezels are fairly large in relation to the screen. The back is curved to allow for a more ergonomic fit on your wrist. It still has physical buttons on the side for control rather than a touchscreen as most other smartwatches rely on. There’s also a microphone for voice interaction, but it’s not clear how that will tie into your phone yet.

The Pebble operates by connecting to an Android or iOS phone over Bluetooth. The Pebble app offers an assortment of watchfaces and apps for use on the watch, and all the notifications from your phone will be beamed over to the Pebble. The Time gets its name from the new Timeline feature, which organizes your important items like calendar events, alarms, and content from apps in a single stream.


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The original Pebble managed a solid week of battery life by going with a monochrome e-paper display, whereas most smartwatches rely on tiny LCD or AMOLED panels. The main advantage of e-paper is that it only uses power when refreshing. E-paper is also a transflective display technology, meaning it’s completely readable in sunlight. It’s the same for the color e-paper screen being used on the Pebble Time. It appears to be capable of fully animated rendering too. It’s similar to what we’ve seen from Qualcomm’s Mirasol screen technology. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out Pebble licensed Mirasol for the Time.

Again, the display is always on and it can run for a week on a charge. This is the single most distinctive thing about the new Pebble when comparing it to other smartwatches. All the Android Wear devices thus far need to be charged every day or two. The Sony SmartWatch 3 with its transflective LCD can sometimes make it three days before it needs to be juiced up, but that’s a far cry from a full week of runtime. The Apple Watch is expected to run for about a day on a charge when it comes out later this year as well.


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There’s no point in even discussing whether or not the Pebble Time is going to be a hit — it already is. The pledge total is rocketing upward faster than any campaign I’ve ever seen. I’ll be shocked if this doesn’t set another Kickstarter record. It does seem a little weird to go back to Kickstarter to fund a device after getting the first one off the ground, but the company appears to be treating this more like a pre-order. There are no stretch goals or vague production timelines. Pebble Time is nearly ready for sale. Backers who pledge $179 will get their watches in May. There was a $159 early bird tier, but that’s long gone. The retail price will be $199.


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