[silencio]

I've been watching my fiancé use his Pebble for a few months now and I think it's useful. It's basically the convenience in knowing the time, except you also get more information on everything (his face shows time, weather, phone battery, and calendar info) with reliable one-touch actions (touchid on our iPhone 5s's became moot while we had gloves on in Boston a few days ago so there goes any "one touch" actions on a phone in one common case). For a lot of people a watch is pointless or purely a status item in the first place.

Although... it may be that I want one because my phone lives in my purse/bag since girl pants tend to avoid pockets like the plague, whereas men tend to have pants pockets where they can put their phone. It would take one second to look at a pebble vs a few seconds or more to look for my phone and a lot of the time, it's some trivial message that could have waited but there's only so much sound/notification customization I can do. I could be shaving a couple minutes and a bunch of effort and annoyance every single day with a Pebble.

Unfortunately, as you mention, design has never been their strong point. I don't think I can walk around with one and not have it look like a bulky mens watch.