A few days ago the Pebble Smartwatch (E-Paper Watch for iPhone and Android) finally became available for pre-order. If you’ve not heard of the Pebble Smartwatch before then here is a quick run-down. The Pebble Smartwatch (or just Pebble) was pitched on the crowd funding site Kickstarter last year. They wanted to raise $100,000 to develop the smart watch into a product available for mass production. Well, the Kickstarter crowd went mad for it and the Pebble team ended up raising a whopping $10,266,845!
You can see the kickstarter page for the Pebble Smartwatch here. The concept of the Pebble is that it has an E-paper display – much like the Amazon Kindle and can talk to your iPhone or Android via bluetooth. Apps can be downloaded on to the watch, to begin with this means you can customise to look of the watch, but also the functionality. The pebble can alert you when your phone has received an email, text message or has an incoming phone call for example.
Pebble Smartwatch for Cyclists
So how does the Pebble benefit cyclists? Well as a cyclist I find this application of alerts quite exciting. When out on the bike, with phone in my rear jersey pocket I regularly miss phone calls etc simply because I can’t hear it or feel the vibration of the phone – mostly because the pot holes are shaking my bones to bits already.
But that’s not all. The Pebble Smartwatch already has an app that can hook into your smartphone’s GPS and transforms the watch into a GPS bike computer – showing you speed and distance etc! Pretty cool right? I think so. Runners get a similar functionality of course although I’m not a fan of lugging my phone around whilst running.
With the Pebble strapped to your handlebars you can get all the pace and distance data you want plus know when you have incoming messages, plus control the music from your phone if you so wish to do so! All in all, I think that’s a pretty compelling offering. Rumour has it that it can tell the time too.
The Pebble Smartwatch is still in Pre Order phase and costs $150. Check it out here.
What do you think? Let us know.