Gadgetory

this is called pebble steel so it's a brand new watch that we're launching and it's kind of an evolution of the current pebble pebble is as you know is a smart watch it talks to iphone and android smartphones it brings notifications like email caller ID Facebook Twitter all of that to your wrist and then it opens up your wrist to apps so we've also launched the pebble appstore which enables people to find you know thousands of apps that are available for pebble and put them onto your wrist cool and this is um a surf report from spit cast calm we also made it smaller in pretty much all dimensions it's thinner it's it's tighter we also improved the buttons we improve the strap we improved pretty much everything about the physical hardware it's the same core pebble inside so it's it supports pebble OS to it supports the pebble appstore so even though it's metal and and looks a little bit more like a classic classic watch it's still water resistant metal definitely poses some challenges when it comes to wireless connectivity can you tell me about how you maintain the connectivity to your smartphone this steel ring over the top of the watch is actually our antenna it's separated by a bit of plastic from the main housing but we're able to actually send a signal up from the circuit board to the ring on the top of the watch that radiates the signal out so I'm here and then you could look at the watch and see see me as well the possibility of putting something a little bit more classy on your wrist while still getting access to all your notifications all your apps that you've that you've come to love presumably classier means costlier as well yes pebble pebble steel starts at one 249 okay so 100 hours more than the current pebble yeah if we did our work well if we designed our product well it measures into your everyday life and just becomes part of your routine without having to actually change your routine so water resistance long battery life ease of charging how do you see a watch like the galaxy gear comparing to either the new steel or even the current level I think you'll see more and more competitors on the market this year last year this year but they're all kind of it's interesting they're all kind of avoiding the fact that this is a very personal device a watch your wrist has to work well it has to mesh well with the devices that you already use instead of trying to replace your phone like that's definitely not kind of what we're going for we're looking at ways that your watch can become extraordinarily useful during your everyday life our emphasis in 2014 will be very much centered around the pebble appstore so anywhere from sort of utility weather notifications traffic sort of the business of everyday life right on your wrist to sports and fitness to a Philips hue app where you can actually control internet-connected lights around your house right from your wrist this is pedal it runs a lot of cool and useful apps did you have any thought that it would possibly go as high as it did become the world's largest most successful Kickstarter no I mean when it did I felt it was felt amazing and felt like we had we had really captured the imagination of sixty nine thousand people around the world but we also knew we had a we had a lot of work to do and we had to deliver on the promise and deliver on the design that we had that we had put out into the crowd any advice for budding entrepreneurs who are hoping to launch their own hardware products that one of the best things I ever read was this blog post by Paul Buchheit who's one of our investors and also the creator of gmail he he recommended when you're creating a new product to always have three three things that the product does very well don't worry about everything the entire sort of like universe of things that your product can help with focus on three things that make your users life's better or easier or more more useful in some way we talked about notifications sports and fitness and customizability that was it that was kind of like the entire pitch on the launch of the original pebble there was a lot of controversy and a lot of hurt feelings win that was available in best buy before some of the early backward still hadn't received their devices the way that manufacturing works is we actually had to order batches of each color kind of at the same at the same time so we had a lot of stock of blacks and we actually started shipping those two people who had pre-ordered on our website those are the first people to get blacks right up our Kickstarter through our Kickstarter backers so we controlled the spread of it but we also decided to enter into a retail agreement with best buy and around june or july 20 2013 and I wouldn't say that yeah and i think that the process was a little bit sooner than a lot of people had expected but it was very important to us to spread to spread pebble out there you can feel incoming calls when your hands are full we're glance down at text messages when your phone is away I kind of subscribe to the school of thought that if you keep working on what you love and what you want to build will be successful