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by 542458 3926 days ago
EDIT: My post is wrong, see replies.

IMHO it has one killer feature the Moto 360 doesn't - e-ink (which brings with it always-on display, bright-light readability and power savings benefits). For that reason alone I'd be way more likely to pick up one of these than a 360. I also like the design a lot more (huge bezel and all), but that's even more subjective.

2 comments

It doesn't use e-ink. It uses a Sharp Memory LCD (http://www.sharpmemorylcd.com). I think Pebble calls it e-paper because they promised e-ink in their first kickstarter but were unable to deliver on that. No one else calls it that. I assume a custom e-ink display was too expensive. The first Pebble used the same display as one of the early Nike watches, which made it a lot cheaper.
The original Pebble uses a Sharp LCD. The Pebble Time uses JDI display. I have no idea what display the Time Round uses: do you know for sure it's a Sharp unit?
I'm not positive they still use the Sharp brand, but I'm pretty sure the display technology is the same: LCD backed by SRAM in the display. You don't need to continuously update the display. Once you write a frame or part of a frame, the processor can go to sleep.
Well, TIL. My bad! And I just checked the battery life - only two days? Ugh. Guess I'll be holding off on smartwatches for a while yet still.
FWIW, I have the Pebble Time Steel from Kickstarter earlier this year and I get a good 4-6 days of battery life on a single charge.
Given that they claim 10 days of battery life for the Steel, maybe we should expect the Round, which has a claimed two-day battery life, to only get one.
The "2 days" battery life makes me reconsider. The Moto 360v2 can get nearly the same (not in ambient mode), but it has a better screen that you can even see in the dark... The only reason I would want to get a pebble vs the moto is that it has a longer battery life (a week or so?), but this thing gets only slightly better battery life, yet costs nearly the same, eh, to me it's just not worth it.