Hearing Impaired users review of the Pebble. (My EDC; Part 2)

Pebble Time and hearing aid users guide

Before I dive into my review of the Pebble smart watch, allow me to set a bit of a back story. Soon after transferring into the Systems Engineering department for my company in 2013 it became clear that I would be in a 24x7 on-call role periodically. This meant text messages or phone calls at any time during that period. This presents a bit of a challenge for me as I'm hearing impaired, when my hearing aids come out at night, I have blissful silence, which can be both welcoming and an annoyance. Honestly I thought setting the LED camera flash to blink when a message or call was received would be sufficient since i'm a very light sleeper. This worked during my first few on-call rotations. But then disaster struck, One night I slept through several alerts for a major outage at 1am on a Monday morning. I finally woke up around 4am when I happened to check the phone, I absolutely died when I saw the missed notifications. Lucky my company understood, (they were able to contact a coworker for assistance) but I felt it was a failure on my part. So I began a quest to find a device that would wake me in my sleep I didn't want to rely on my wife either as I hate disturbing her when she's sleeping.

When I began researching such a device the Pebble quickly came to mind, I known of it already, mainly because of it's Kickstart success. Unfortunately it wasn't clear what sort of alerting came with various notifications. Basically, did it vibrate when you received a notification and was the vibration powerful enough that I would wake up. So I kept this device in my notes and continued searching. I found several band type devices as well but again it wasn't clear if they would wake me either. Plus I wanted something with a few more features and as a power wheelchair user a step/fitness tracker is useless. The Apple Watch was announced, but so too was the battery life, and that was instantly a no go for me as I needed something that lasted many days, not just one. One afternoon in the office I ran into a co-worker who had an original Pebble, we got to talking about it and he let me try it on and show me how powerful the vibration notifications were.  I took the plunge and purchased an Original Pebble on my way home that evening from a local retailer, even though the Time series was already available.

I will admit, the original Pebble face was a bit large for my wrist, but I adapted quickly and purchased a new band that fit me better. I bought the device about a week before going on-call and linked it to my personal smart phone to get a feel for the interface and how the device itself worked. I will say, I have not missed an on-call notification since purchasing the Pebble. I did end up having a few display issues about 3 months after I bought it but Pebble Support was fantastic and had a replacement device in my mailbox in less than a week.

About a year after purchasing the Pebble I upgraded to the Pebble Time after coming across an amazing deal for a new device. To be honest, I feel like the Pebble Time is the first 'true' Pebble device. The Original Pebble was more of a proof of concept and the design, although I wore it for a year, just didn't appeal to me. I used it because I had too, and I'm not sure I would have purchased it for any other reason. But the Pebble Time is simply gorgeous! I am so happy I upgraded, not that the Original was bad in any way but the Time is so much more refined even before you talk about it's functionality. From the sleek bezel around the color e-ink display to the new watch band material that's nicer on my skin! Even the magnetic charger is better, moving the charging port from side of the device to the underneath significantly improves how easily it charges. To me, it's what the original Pebble should have been.

I gave my wife my Original Pebble and she uses it daily, but she's not as much of a power user as I am. That said, we both get about a week of battery life from our devices. The Timeline interface took a bit to get used to coming form the original Pebble to the Time. I upgraded around the same timeframe that the Time firmware update hit the original Pebble so now the work almost identically.

As someone with a hearing impairment, this device is simply fantastic, as I stated above I cannot hear any of my phones audible alerts when I remove my hearing aids at night. And sleeping with even just one hearing aid in is insanely uncomfortable, so that is not really an option. At first I would sync the Pebble to my work on-call phone (iPhone 5s) and forward all alerting to the watch. The vibrations are strong enough that it's never failed to wake me up during a work emergency no matter how deep my sleep is. After I gained full confidence in the device it slowly gained more duties. The second responsibility it took on was as my morning alarm clock.

Prior to the Pebble I had a standard clock radio, it was set between two FM stations so that it would turn on to VERY VERY loud static. I could barely hear that but it was just enough to wake me. I decided to try using the watch as an alarm clock, I used the watch and alarm clock radio in tandem for about a week. Now the alarm clock radio is tucked away in our closet and the watch has truly earned it's place on my wrist. I love that I can customize alarms, for instance a weekday alarm vs a weekend only alarm. I set my weekday alarm and  don't even think about it as I know my Pebble's got my back! I also use the alarm for a quick afternoon power nap. I've also started using an application called Morpheuz which tracks my sleeping patterns. I'm not sure how accurate it is, but it's an interesting over view of how well I sleep. I haven't added any other applications up to this point.

In my previous post entitled Read Me Stories I discussed my love of music and audiobooks. The Pebble includes a built in Music application to perform basic functions when listing to Audible or iTunes Music such as play, pause, fast forward, reverse and volume control. I heavily use these features when driving my van, the ability to control my smartphone and car stereo from my wrist is very handy when you have short arms! I can also accept phone calls as well as see notifications on my wrist with as much ease as looking down at my speedometer.  When i'm not driving my van i'm essentially one handed (keeping one hand on the control stick of my power wheelchair when moving) it's nice to be able to simply tap a button on my wrist to control music or phone interactions without having to stop my chair, grab my phone, etc, etc. The Pebble works very well as a quick way to interface with your smart phone.

You might be wonder when I charge it if i'm using it as an alarm clock. I work from home so in the morning when I get up I usually take off the watch and let it charge until about lunch time. It never drops below 90% when i'm not using it for on-call duties. When I'm on-call, I keep the charger at my desk and top it off during the day. But I have in the past gone the full 7 day on-call rotation without charging it and had about 20% battery life left. It's good to know in a pinch I wouldn't need to charge it so often.

On a final note, just last week a new firmware update was released which added my new favorite feature; selectable vibrations. Basically you can change the vibration patterns for certain alerts. For instance; an SMS message can have a different vibration pattern than say a phone call. I've since set my alarm clock pattern to the longest pattern available. I do hope that Pebble builds on this feature and allows you to create your own pattern like I can on iOS, currently your limited to a handful of predefined patterns. These longer patterns give me even more piece of mind that the device will work great for me and I can quickly dismiss certain alerts without even checking the watch.

Thats about all I can think to say about the Pebble at this time, i've been working on this post for almost a week now, i'm thinking it's time to publish it.

Is there anything I missed that you might be curious about? I'm interested in what functionality you enjoy most about your Pebble, are there any features you find useful that I didn't cover I'd love to see your comments and suggestions..

Thanks for reading!