Source: Macrumors.com
So I myself have seen some lame products that are being promoted through the “kickstarter” program, so this site is where people go to try and promote whatever product they have to see if they can make it become a reality as a success in sales, if people like the idea and donate some money to help “kickstart” it. There are some products that some people wonder why no one had thought of it before too, just like with the Pebble digital wristwatch.
This watch uses a e-paper display which is alot like the screen on the Amazon Kindle, which connects to the iPhone and also Android smartphones through Bluetooth. The Pebble uses alerts that vibrate to tell the owner that they have incoming calls, emails, calendar alerts, Twitter and Facebook messages, Weather conditions alerts and even more. Additionally it has a very extensive SDK for any developers with it’s own “Pbble watchapp store”. It going to also be waterproof enough to shower with or swim with, though it won’t be good enough for diving unfortunately.
The firm behind this new product has a good experience with smart watches fortunately. Pebble has already been making a BlackBerry synchronizing watch aswell for quite awhile now, which it is called the inPulse, and is the graduate from the Y Combinator startup incubator. This product had taken in pledges for around $3.8 million from around 26,500 people on the Kickstarter site for a watch that will be going for around $150 when it is released this coming fall.
Bloomberg has also noted that Kickstarter wasn’t the first choice of Pebble for raising these funds. The guy tried to raise money through a regular venture capital firm, though “very few investors were liking the idea and didn’t want to bet on a hardware startup or release, or even dealing with the headaches that most often are assisted with goods from manufacturers.” Though, Kickstarter had apparently been capable of working this out quite well. The watch is apparently the most ever funded project ever compared to anything else.
It was said by MacRumors that Pebble told them that they are treating the Kickstarter program as a “discounted pre-order mechanism”, and of course as soon as the funding period shuts down in a month it will be continuing to be taking orders on their own website. Any U.S. purchasers can preorder a Jet Black Pebble watch through the Kickstarter program for $115, though any foreign consumers will have to pay a little more to cover the shipping costs for duties and taxes etc.
Apparently the Pebble has not just passed $4 million, so the success of this watch is looking very good. But I want to see a review of it before I buy something like this. It is certainly not a watch like the ones that have batteries that last around 3-5 years or more, but I can tell you that I love the sound of having the ability to control either an Android or iPhone’s music playing right from the watch itself. That makes it easier and legal to not use a smartphone for A2DP audio streaming from the smartphone to the car stereo, as while your driving you need to use your smartphone to control the music, so that’s a hazard. But with the watch, you dont need to slide the screen to unlock it, and then click on whatever to allow you to change the song. It makes it less hard. 7 days of battery life is pretty good too, I’m sure the second generation of this watch will have even longer battery life.
Via MacRumors
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