What is a smart watch

Wikipedia defines a smart watch as follows: a smart watch is a wrist watch installed with an embedded system and used to enhance functions such as time reporting. Its function is similar to that of a personal digital assistant. Early smart watches can perform basic functions such as calculation, translation or operation of handheld electronic games, while middle smart watches can realize the function of wearable computers. Most smart watches can run mobile software applications, some can run mobile operating systems, and a few have complete mobile phone functions. Other functions are mostly related to portable multimedia playback, such as playing FM radio and audio or video files, and listening through Bluetooth headsets.

And the smart watch may include multiple functions, such as camera, accelerometer, thermometer, altimeter, barometer, compass, timer, calculator, mobile phone, touch screen, global positioning system, display map, display graphics, external speakers, scheduler, watch, SD card, and as a mass storage device, and can be charged. It can communicate with wireless headphones, head up displays, insulin pumps, microphones, modems, or other devices.

Looking at these descriptions, do you think it is completely applicable to replace the smart watch defined above with a smart phone? Yes, many smart watches now have most of the functions of smart phones. Today's Pebble is not a mainstream smart watch. It is basically equipped with a variety of sensors, such as heart rate monitoring, and it can not achieve telephone communication without a touch screen. It only realizes a few of the functions mentioned above.

The most successful smart watch

This does not prevent Pebble from being one of the most successful smart watches today (whether Pebble is a real smart watch or not). Pebble is known as the "king of crowdfunding". The first generation of Pebble was once a great success on the crowdfunding platform. The second generation of Pebble Time pre-sales products worth $20 million through crowdfunding, which accounted for nearly one-third of the total amount of hardware crowdfunding in the United States in the first quarter. Not only that, before the launch of Pebble Time, the sales of Pebble smart watches had broken the 1 million mark. Since the launch of Android Wear, the total sales volume by the end of 2014 was only 700000. Besides, Pebble is still a startup company.

We mentioned earlier that Pebble does not have the ability to take over the work of smart phones as much as possible, although it also has an embedded system and can install some applications. When I first came into contact with Pebble, I installed various applications like a new mobile phone, and kept changing the style of the dial to explore everything it could do. But gradually I found that Pebble's playability is not high, because the system it carries is neither Apple Watch OS nor Android Wear, and it is also related to Pebble's color e-paper screen and its lack of touch control. Soon, Pebble has only two basic functions left on my hands, namely, checking mobile phones and pushing messages.

Not only functions, but also appearance design and configuration of Pebble lag behind Apple Watch and Android Wear. In terms of appearance design alone, Pebble's square dial design is not as beautiful as Moto 360. The display effect of e-paper screen is also far inferior to LED and AMOLED screens which are popular and have better display effect.

Simple victory

But Pebble has won in its precise market positioning. Eric Migicovsky, the CEO of Pebble, once said that the key to the success of smart watches is simplicity and practicality. The three main functions of smart watches are reminder notification, exercise and fitness, and customized dial interface. Until today, these are still the three most important functions for people to use smart watches.

First of all, Pebble supports both iOS and Android platforms on the alert notification. Pebble can directly display messages such as Facebook Messenger, Twitter and SMS email on the watch. And Pebble's information push is extremely fast and stable. Sometimes you may even find that the information has been pushed on the watch but the phone is still receiving.

In fact, exercise and fitness are not Pebble's strong points. It does not have various built-in multi-function sensors, which can not monitor the user's heart rate, the pressure and temperature of the external environment, etc. It only provides a simple step recording function.

Pebble does a good job in customizing the dial interface. At present, there are thousands of dials and applications available for users to download in the Pebble store. However, due to the limitation of Pebble's screen hardware, the display effect may not be particularly good.

In addition to paying attention to these three points, the Pebble team also attaches great importance to watch performance, including longer battery life, waterproof, durable and affordable. And he believes that under the background of today's charging technology, a smart watch must have a battery life of more than 24 hours to have practical value.

Its standby time can easily reach 3 to 5 days. If the message push is less, its standby time may reach more than a week, which is unmatched by Apple Watch or Android Wear. At the same time, it has the waterproof function of 5ATM (50 meters), so it is no problem to take a bath and swim with it. Neither Apple Watch nor Android Wear can be implemented.

Lightweight smart watch

Just as mobile phones are divided into function phones and smart phones, watches can also be divided into smart watches and non smart watches. Pebble is not as versatile as Apple Watch and Android Wear, and even like Gear S, it can make calls and send text messages independently of mobile phones. Pebble only provides the most basic functions of smart watches. Standby and message push are its strengths. Pebble is just a product between smart watches and non smart watches, or what we call a lightweight smart watch is more appropriate.