Pros:

• Easily viewable in bright sunlight. I was worried about this at first, hoping this would be the watch that could do it.
• My first week I played around with it quite a bit, but I got 5 days out of  the battery. Now that I’m done with playing I expect to get 6.

Cons:

• You can only load one watchface at a time. The Pebble Time and the Asus smartwatch 3 let you load more. Switching between watchfaces was quick and easy. To switch on the versa you need to find the face you want on the app and then load it. Every time…and this leads me to…
• Loading watchfaces and apps takes way longer than it should.

I keep an LCARS watchface. I will check for new ones that very now and then. I’m happy with the versa. I’ve uninstalled the Pebble app from my phone. Still going to miss it.

title is a bit unfair because there is no comparison. the pebble was probably the best smartwatch on the market.

ok, ok. you couldn’t send your hearbeat to another pebble user but i was able to live with that. <snrk>

and just a reminder the CEO of the failed pebble company is now a consultant for startups. blink. blink. how does that work?

i  am on my third fitbit device so i’m not anti-fitbit. i think they missed a great opportunity by not buying the hardware portion of pebble.

i originally got a fitbit flex to track my sleep patterns. and to have colour coordination with various colour bands matching my wardrobe. dolphin laugh for at least one person reading this 🙂

i will admit i liked the look of fitbit’s ionic watch very high tech looking but a little too pricey for me.

i got an email the other day about the fitbit versa. first thing i thought when i saw it was that it looked a lot like the pebble time. and after further research i found among other things, that it had watchfaces, apps, and a cloud based development platform… just like the pebble had.

ok i’m on board 🙂

an edited repost from another blog. i removed the stuff not relevant to the blog i post after this one.  i  originally wrote this on oct 14/2017

 

i said the Pebble was dead to me. i like to think it was just a result of my disappointment with the company. i’ve only had this particular feeling once before.

let me digress.

my favourite band is T.REX. fandom/obsession does’t even come close 🙂 i once spent $90 on 3 album set (vinyl) and the friend i was with (dave m. where the heck are you?) told me to put it back.

anyway. when i was still in highschool i had a dream. one of my my favorite T.REX albums is called “Tanx”. it’s probably my favourite for a few reasons. i’ll do a T.REX related blog later.

so, in this dream, another friend had a taken a hand held can opener (the pointy ones with a bottle opener on the other side. and scratched my only copy of the album.

i was wearing those old style rolling sakes (4 wheels, all metal, and you needed a skate key to tighten them up over your sneakers). you young people who don’t know anything will have to google it.

i was so angry (in the dream) i kicked him in the face with these rolling skates. more of a stomp.

as soon as i did it (in the dream) i realized that this wasn’t going to unscratch the vinyl. made me angrier. stomped him in the head again (in the dream). same reaction. another stomp.

pretty much pulped his head (in the dream). i was angry at the futility of the action (ie. it didn’t fix anything, and it didn’t make me feel any better.

this how i feel about Pebble (and fitbit who bought most of the intellectual property. it was a great product and i can do absolutely nothing about fixing the problem.

the more i think about it. the more i realized it’s an exercise in futility.

i coud go online (well i guess i did) and complain about it, but it’s never gonna fix it. just gonna have to brood about it for a few years.

i went out and bought what i thought was an Asus smartwatch 2. which i would have been happy with even though it’s square (i had a square Pebble Time). turns out i bought an Asus smartwatch 3, the round one. great resolution, great watchfaces. does pretty much what the pebble will do.

over six months later:

i’ve had to reboot it 3 or 4 times. not really a big deal. android wear is a larger more complex os than the pebble is. i’m ok with that.

aside: “why don’t you buy an apple iwatch”

let me applesplain it to you: first you need an iphone. not gonna happen. been there done that. i feel a little sorry for iphone users. steve said they can’t have an android phone and they believed him. you can’ really fight ideology.

and…don’t need to send my heartbeat to another iphone user <snrk>.

while i was working through the asus smartwatch 3/samsung/bluetooh problems i went back to the Pebble. after i re-installed/updated it worked great.

by great i mean almost instantaneous notifications. 100% of the time. not 33% of the time. 100% readability for time and notifications in sunlight/bright sunlight/outside for reference this is compared to the 0% readability of the 33% notifications.

ok, so the smartwatch problem:

i’ll type this slow for all the smartwatch manufacturers that are not Pebble.

your…smartwatches..are…pretty…much…useless..outside.

fitbit? you bought the os but not the hardware? ie. the readable colour e-paper display? ok, your perogative. but don’t be surprised if your new smartwatch using Pebble tech “tanx”.

dolphin laugh. get it?