Pebble Time beats Google Android Wear

This might come as a surprise, but the best smartwatch for Android users wasn’t developed by Google.

Pebble's third smartwatch, the Pebble Time, comes in three different colours on crowd-funding site Kickstarter.

This might come as a surprise, but the best smartwatch for Android users wasn’t developed by Google. For now, that honour goes to the Pebble Time, the latest from the company that pioneered the idea of a wristwatch for smartphone notifications.

While the Pebble Time smartwatch is a bit more pleasant than watches running Google’s own Android Wear, it joins those devices in a class below the Apple Watch. But Apple’s shiny new object only works with the iPhone, and costs far more than the $US200 Time.

Toy? Not a Toy?

The first thing I noticed when I put on the bright red Pebble Time is how jarringly featherweight it is. It’s made largely of plastic — everything but the glass watch face and the grey stainless-steel bezel. This makes the watch feel a bit like a toy. And it’s not just the feel. “Is that a Lego watch?” “Nice Dick Tracy watch.” “Red? Are you in grade school?” Friends and co-workers spotted its chintziness a mile away.

Personally, I really like the way the Pebble Time looks. The rounded, rectangular face might not be as shiny as the Apple Watch or LG’s Urbane, but it’s handsome. And I’m into red, but Pebble sells the Time in black or white, too. No matter what colour you choose, you can swap out the silicone band with the standard 22mm leather and nylon watch bands sold all over.

Every Pebble Time — including the upcoming $US300 Time Steel watches, which swap the plastic body for stainless steel — features the same 1.25-inch colour e-paper display. This LED backlit display is where all the action happens. It’s not a touchscreen, however. You control everything with buttons, three on the right, one on the left.

New, Simpler Experience

For the Time, Pebble redesigned its watch interface using the analogy of a timeline: Press the top right button to go back in time (recent alerts, news items, past calendar events), and press the bottom right button to go into the future (upcoming events, games, etc.). The lone left button always takes you back a step, while the middle right button serves as an OK or Enter key.

It’s an almost laughably simple way to organise what you see on screen, but it’s effective and the main reason I prefer the Time over any Android Wear watch I’ve tried so far.

Android Wear is chaotic. It often feels like your watch is buzzing out of control and you’re drowning in phone notifications that keep showing up no matter how often you swipe to dismiss them. Pebble’s new timeline approach, on the other hand, makes sense as soon as you start clicking buttons. Order is calming. Without having to peep at a user manual, you know where your stuff is.

Apps and Faces

Speaking of stuff, apps are vital to the Pebble Time experience, but don’t think of them as smartphone apps. These are simple bits of dynamic information with little interactivity. I use ESPN for quick sports scores. (I programmed it to appear when I long-press the lower right button.) I like Leaf for controlling my Nest thermostat and Misfit for tracking steps. One of my favourites came from Domino’s Pizza, which lets you know whether your pizza is in the oven or on the road. Pandora, Evernote, PayPal, RunKeeper and others also have Pebble apps.

App development is certainly held back by the hardware. There are a few games, but I’ve found none that I’ve enjoyed so far, mostly due to the small screen and its pale, no-pop colours. (Blacks are never inky, and even the whitest whites on the Time’s display have a tinge of grey to them.)

Apps growth also suffers without touch interfaces, GPS or heart-rate monitors. There isn’t even contextual awareness of the kind that Android Wear and Apple Watch already exhibits: The Time doesn’t know what messages or notifications I’ve already seen on my phone.

Despite this, Pebble may be too dependent on third-party apps. There is no built-in way to monitor battery life or email or messaging. Having to sift through the watch’s app store for the basics gets irritating.

I do like the downloadable watch faces, though. My favourite is called Weather Land. It uses a simple hillside scene to tell you what the weather is like at a glance: yellow sun and clear skies; rain against a purple backdrop; grey and billowy clouds. There’s also a vintage Mickey Mouse face, but the Apple Watch’s animated one, with tapping toes and blinking eyes, puts Pebble’s to shame.

Narrow Vision

Pebble has a narrower vision of what a smartwatch should be. The focus is less on powerful apps offering never-before-seen experiences, less on awareness of what you’re doing — and where. Pebble’s watches are about delivering a steady drip of info to your wrist so you don’t have to pull out your phone as much. It’s hardware built for efficiency. Just witness the battery life, which lasts a week rather than a day. If the Apple Watch is a Tesla, the Pebble Time is a Toyota.

The question is: Can people be happy with a simple smartwatch when there are more advanced, albeit complicated, ones? Right now, Android owners looking for a watch should focus on Pebble, but if Google ever gets its act together and streamlines the Android Wear user experience, Pebble’s days could be numbered.