With the recent news that Pebble shipped their one millionth Pebble smartwatch unit back in December 2014, we couldn’t possibly be any more excited for a hardware update. The original Pebble was one of the first smartwatches on the market before wearables became such a sensation. Since then, Pebble has continued to revamp their product with various software and hardware updates. The most recent of which is the Pebble Steel which modernized the look of the smartwatch. We can’t help but gravitate towards the attractive and slick stainless steel design of the updated models.
During the same interview — where Pebble’s CEO, Eric Migicovsky revealed the recent milestone — he also briefly discussed a hardware update was coming soon from the brand. According to Migicovsky, the company will be providing new hardware and software that’s sure to shake things up.
“We’ve found a new framework to use as an interaction model on the watch. It doesn’t look like what we have today, and it doesn’t look like what’s on your smartphone.”
He never went on to reveal much else about the upcoming updates for the platform or the hardware, but he did tease some pretty interesting and downright promising things. Well, here’s hoping that Migicovsky at least pays attention to what we’re saying, because there are a few features we’d love to see implemented for the next iteration of the Pebble smartwatch.
Five Features We Want to See Added to the Next Pebble Smartwatch
The Pebble smartwatch is arguably one of the best smartwatches on the market at the moment. It rivals even Google’s huge lineup of Android Wear devices from several different manufacturers like Samsung, Motorola and LG. It’s both stylish and practical, with so many different ways to use the device. Of course, the platform is still far from perfect. We’d love for that to change, as best as it can anyway. Naturally, we compiled a list of the top five features we want to see in the next generation of the Pebble smartwatch.
Keep in mind, we don’t want the style and functionality of the existing lineup compromised so if that were to happen making one of these changes, we’d be okay with sacrificing said change. For instance, we mention that we’d like to see a full color display since the modern lineup uses a black and white e-paper style display. If the color display were to severely hamper battery life, functionality or even usability we’d be okay with such a feature being dropped.
At the end of this article, if you have arguments for why some features we discussed may — or may not — be unreasonable feel free to share!
A Full Color Display
To be perfectly honest, we don’t care if touchscreen functionality is implemented or not. We’re fine with the traditional physical buttons used in the original Pebble smartwatch and Pebble steel models. However, we would like some type of color display added.
It might even be a good idea to offer two variants in the next generation, one with a color display and the other with the traditional e-paper style one (which is really just LCD not e-ink). We think the Pebble smartwatch would benefit greatly from a vivid, full color display. Just head over to the MyPebble community and take a peek at some of the amazing watchface designs independent designers and developers have put together for the black and white display. Imagine what they could do if they had a full range of colors to use.
All that aside, we’d hope that the engineers behind the new Pebble could come up with a way to keep the five to seven day battery life even in the full color model. They could opt to use a low-power, lower quality display that still looks great.
Sadly, this might also mean that the price of the newer model would be a little bit higher but we’d be more than willing to pay for the screen update. What about you?
Near Field Communication (NFC) Support
NFC or Near Field Communication allows you to synchronize or connect two devices by bringing the NFC chips within close proximity of one another. In tech demos and devices that use the chip, you can bump or touch two NFC enabled devices to transfer data, pair via Bluetooth and even complete a transaction. It opens a whole world of possibilities in terms of what the active device can be used for. We have absolutely no doubts that the independent developers who support the Pebble community would be able to come up with something truly amazing for an NFC enabled Pebble smartwatch.
To offer a small example of what NFC can do, Motorola sells a small NFC-enabled belt clip called the Skip. With select Motorola devices — like the Moto X — owners can tap their phone to the clip to unlock it instantly. In other words, even if they have a security passcode or pattern lock active, the clip allows them to bypass the security and gain access instantly. It’s great for times when you want to jump in and out of your smartphone real quick. All of this is possible because both the Moto X handsets and the Skip belt clip include NFC chips within them.
Just imagine what could be done with the next generation of the Pebble smartwatch if it included NFC functionality.
A Heart-Rate Monitor
As it stands, the Pebble smartwatch does not include an integrated heart-rate monitor. That means if you want to keep track of your BPM, heart-rate or any similar fitness data while you workout you’re SOL. You can connect a Bluetooth enabled heart-rate monitor to the Pebble smartwatch with a bit of finagling and ingenuity, but doing so is not exactly for the faint of heart.
We’d like to see the next Pebble smartwatch include a heart-rate monitor somewhere on the device. Since the finger-based heart-rate monitors are pretty much a pain to use in the moment, it would be great if the Pebble included said monitor on the rear side of the watch. That way, it can automatically detect your heart-rate while you’re wearing the thing. That said, any type of heart-rate monitor will do because let’s be honest, beggars can’t be choosers.
A Camera
Alright, so maybe including an integrated camera with your smartwatch is a bit gimmicky but it’s different when independent developers are given full control over said hardware. For instance, devices like the Samsung Gear include a camera but use of the hardware is locked down to what Samsung decides when it comes to the OS and software side of things. With the Pebble smartwatch, the community support has always been one of the greatest benefits.
That’s why we’d love to see the next generation Pebble smartwatch include some kind of integrated camera. We’d like for it to be of decent quality (at least 5MP), but anything will do really. It would open up so many possibilities when it comes to using the watch. You could use it to Skype with family on the go — through a connected smartphone connection obviously — or even to take quick photos in the moment. We’re not proposing that you need yet another camera on your person at all times, we’d just really love to see what the community does with such a thing.
Imagine being able to interact with your smartwatch through facial recognition tech. That’s only the beginning.
A Single Touch Sensitive Area
This may be going against what we were saying above, but what we’re requesting is very specific. We’d like the next generation Pebble smartwatch to include a small touch-sensitive area or bezel of some kind. We don’t want a touchscreen display, that’s not what we’re asking. In fact, we much prefer the physical control approach that Pebble has adopted for their smartwatches. However, in its current form, to dismiss notifications or interact with the device you need to press physical buttons. It would be great if we had access to a single, programmable touch-sensitive control on the device.
For instance, let’s say you want to quickly dismiss all notifications in the middle of your company meeting. All you would need to do is simply touch or slide your finger across the touch-sensitive bezel and then wallah, all notifications gone. Of course, if you could program the control to work with any app or function on the device you could personally choose a custom action for it.
What Would You Like to See Added to the Next Pebble Smartwatch?
That’s our list! What kind of features would you like to see added to the next generation Pebble smartwatch? Do you agree with any of the features we listed? Do you hope they don’t implement some — or all — of these ideas, and if so why? Feel free to join the discussion!