PEBBLE SMARTWATCH GAINS ADDITIONAL FUNCTIONS

The Pebble smartwatch ignited interest in watches that put the functions of your phone — texts, calls, emails, calendar and even apps — on your wrist. The second version of the Pebble, called Pebble Steel, is more grownup and less useful

TMOLLY WOOD he Pebble smartwatch ignited interest in watches that put the functions of your phone — texts, calls, emails, calendar and even apps — on your wrist. The second version of the Pebble, called Pebble Steel, is at once more grown-up and less useful than it should be.

The Pebble Steel is meant to be the more sophisticated upgrade to the original Pebble, which had a plastic face and came in bright but not altogether adult-looking colours like hunter’s orange. In that the new smartwatch partly succeeds, with attractive stainless steel and an elegant, brushed-metal bezel.

The band options are simple black leather or silver metal, and both are included in the $250 purchase price. The whole package feels premium, especially compared with the previous model.

The Steel, however, is still quite big and decidedly masculine. The shape and thick strap made me feel as if I were wearing my (extremely geeky) father’s watch. The watch is a big rectangle with sharp corners, so the style seems dated, and its navigation buttons are a bulbous add-on to either side.

Setting up the Steel is pleasingly simple once the free app for either iPhone or Android is downloaded. Navigating is also straightforward: A button on the left side acts as a “home” and “back” button; on the right side, the middle of three buttons selects menu options, while the top and bottom buttons navigate up and down. All this navigation reveals a disappointing screen. The grayscale display, termed “epaper,” was a big selling point for readability in bright light and for preserving battery life. But I find it hard to see in sunlight and shockingly low quality compared to every other screen in my life.

If you are looking for a reason to have a smartwatch, though, notifications are that reason. It’s addictive to read incoming texts while your phone is stashed in a pocket or purse. Similarly, my friends appreciated that I did not miss as many calls because my watch let me know about them. But it only gives notifications; you cannot tap out or dictate a response to a text or an email, or answer an incoming call. In contrast, the Martian Passport watch uses iOS or Android voice control features to interact, which is fun and useful once you get over talking to your watch in public.

Pebble devotees like to cite its abundant apps as its main selling point. Those apps currently range from useful to extremely silly, and in practice they’re a little rocky.

The process for loading apps is not immediately obvious and cannot be done from the watch. The watch itself can hold only eight apps at a time. Frustratingly, many apps re- quire a companion app to function, and those companions usually cost money. It feels like a bait and switch to download a free app, then be sent to the app store for a paid app.

Yelp, a Starbucks app, and an app for tracking United Parcel Service and FedEx packages are some of the highlights, but a surprising number (like many of the camera control apps) are Android-only.

The Starbucks app quickly became my favourite. You must already have a preloaded card and a Starbucks account.

But if you have both of those, the app will pull up your Starbucks bar code for payment and show your card balance as well as any reward drinks you might have available. Paying for coffee with my watch was definitely a futuristic moment.

I was less enamored of an app called the Ramen Timer, which is just what it sounds like — an app for timing how long to cook your ramen.

The world is still working hard to find a use for smartwatches.

The biggest drawback to the Pebble Steel — indeed, all smartwatches — is charging. The Pebble requires charging every few days, and annoyingly uses a proprietary charging cable rather than standard Micro USB. It also gives little indication of charging status, either on the watch or on the app, until it is close to death. It is easy to forget to charge, since that is not normal watch procedure, and several times I picked up the Pebble to put it on, only to discover it was dead.

As smartwatches proliferate and mature, the Pebble is in danger of being lapped by more feature-rich watches like the Samsung Galaxy Gear 2, which includes fitnesstracking capabilities and a camera (as long as you are using one of the Samsung phones it supports). The next Pebble should focus as much on features as on looks, and there is room for improvement with both.