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Pebble on Tuesday officially announced its new smartwatch, the Pebble Time. It offers plenty of new features, including a color display, and is launching on Kickstarter with orders starting at $159.
The Pebble Time features a new “timeline interface,” a color e-paper display, a microphone for voice interaction, up to 7 days of battery life, water resistance and more. It also features support for all of the existing Pebble applications, of which there are now more than 6,500, which means you’ll be able to use the same apps you already know and love on your current Pebble.
Pebble said the unit is 20 percent thinner than previous generations, despite all of the new features, and promises that “its ergonomic, curved design fits comfortably on either wrist.” It features a stainless steel bezel, a Gorilla Glass display and a similar 22mm watchband that should make it easy enough to customize with your own bands.
The unit also features a new button layout and Timeline interface. The top button will allow you to quickly access past notifications, whether they’re messages or sports scores or anything else. The middle present button shows you the home screen, while the bottom button provides access to future events, whether it’s the weather, upcoming calendar appointments, alarms or something out.
“As with all Pebble software, we’ve built an open platform,” Pebble explained. “You can allow apps and developers to add ‘pins’ to your timeline, so you can keep track of things like upcoming events, sports, weather, traffic, travel plans, pizza specials and more.” The company said it will eventually roll out the timeline user interface to older Pebble and Pebble Steel models, but didn’t provide a definite timeframe for when that will happen.
Pebble explained that the new Pebble Time, like earlier models, still works with multiple operating systems. That means support for iOS 8 and above on the iPhone 4s and newer, and with phones running Android 4.0 and newer.
The company decided to launch on Kickstarter again and has several pricing tiers. The entry-level pledge costs $159 and provides you with a single Pebble in one of three colors, including red, black or white. There are only 5,000 available, however, and once that’s sold out you’ll need to choose the $179 pledge, of which there are 20,000 units available. Still, that’s better than the permanent retail price of $199 when the Pebble launches this spring. Early backers should expect their Pebble units by May of this year anywhere in the world.
Update: Wow, that was fast. The company was originally looking to hit a $500,000 goal, which it surpassed in a matter of minutes. At the time of this update, around 10:25 a.m. EST, Pebble already has $695,890 in backing.
