New Pebble Time Round smart-watch is launching this year and created quite a buzz when the announcement was made. The design of the watch features a round shape and looks more like a regular watch than past Pebble smart-watches.
- The new Pebble Time Round is launching this year with a smaller, lighter frame than any previous Pebble smart-watches
- It has a very slender frame but is not as impressive as previous Pebble smart-watches in terms of battery life and it is not waterproof.
- Buyers will have to be patient about the applications available for the watch, as many of these have not been updated to fit the smaller screen yet.
However its light and round design may have come at the cost of a better battery life and water resistance. Past Pebble products had a battery life of at least a week, the new Pebble Time Round can only stay charged for two days at the most. That isn’t bad compared to other smart-watches but previous Pebble products were a lot better when it came to the battery longevity so, in this sense at least, it is a compromise of form over function.
At 38.5mm across and 7.5mm thin, it is the slimmest Pebble smart-watch to date and is even approximately half the size of competitor smart watches such as Apple’s Smartwatch or Motorola’s Moto 360. However, its slender frame means other functions had to be sacrificed. While previous versions of Pebble products were waterproof, the Time Round is not.
Engadget’s Nicole Lee tested the product and observed that if she used the Time Round at full brightness the battery life went down to 20 percent after just 24 hours, which is not great news. However she tested the product again the next day with the brightness set to medium and it performed better, with the battery down to just 50 percent after 24 hours. . It does, however, recharge pretty fast which might compensate for the need to often plug it in.
But even though battery life and waterproof resistance were features sacrificed for the small frame and light weight of the Time Round, it might not have necessarily been the best decision the creator of the watch could have made.
Although a light weight and small frame are desirable and the new round screen makes it look like a real watch, the combination of these characteristics might not mix so well. There is only one inch of usable screen on the watch which makes it hard to follow and look at. The circular face of the watch could also pose other issues as there is only a limited number of watch faces and applications available for it.
Despite the fact that there are many such apps and watch faces available online already, not many of them have been adapted to the Time Round’s small size yet. But as the smart-watch trend is all about round watches, it should only be a matter of time before these apps are made available for the new version as well so Pebble enthusiasts will just have to be patient about it for a little while.
Image source: www.flickr.com
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