Pebble’s first smartwatch with a color display is expected to begin shipping in May following a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign.

The Pebble Time has a color display, support for up to 7 days of battery life, and a water resistant design, among other features. Now an FCC listing for the watch provides a few more details… but just a few.

pebble time fcc_01

The label for the watch shows that it’s water resistant up to 30 meters and that it has a 150 mAh battery.

While the water resistant rating would seem to suggest the watch isn’t really meant for swimming or showering, it’s possible that the final product will be a bit sturdier than the version submitted to the FCC. Pebble says the smartwatch should be safe for swimming, surfing, and showering.

As for the battery, it’s actually a lower capacity battery than you’ll find in many Android Wear smartwatches which get just a day or two of battery life. But Pebble’s watch uses a lower-power display and a simpler operating system than watches that use Google’s software for wearable devices.

There’s one other thing I learned from the FCC listing: the low-power, always-on display is an LCD screen manufactured by Japan Display.

Pebble Time smartwatches are designed to display notifications from Android or iOS devices, run third-party apps or watch faces, and unlike the company’s original black and white watches the new Pebble Time and Pebble Time Steel have microphones for voice input, a new charging connector, and support for Pebble smartstraps which can add new features to the watch.

The Kickstarter campaign for the Pebble Time and Pebble Time Steel smartwatches ends March 27th.

via Notebook Italia and /r/Pebble

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9 replies on “Pebble Time color smartwatch hits the FCC”

  1. It’s an LCD that does not requires backlit, it’s all the time on, and wastes a very little amount of energy so it’s like a e-ink screen and the battery lasts the same as the first Pebble: 7 days. For me, it’s ok: I get color instead of black & white.

    About water, it seems the model certified by FCC is an early production unit, and the production model will have better specs about it; the creators always stated the new Pebble will be ressistant to swim, surf, etc. with it.

    In a few days, we will see!

  2. The pictures on the top of the page are not very accurate… That looks like a normal LCD… But I could be wrong

  3. “While the water resistant rating would seem to suggest the watch isn’t really meant for swimming or showering”

    Brad, do you take showers with a pressure washer, and do you often go freediving? 🙂 30 meters water resistance is pretty good, certainly more than enough for the average user.

    1. If you look at any standards sheet you will see they explicitly call out a 3atm/30m rating as not suitable for showering. You can very easily get small focused sprays that well exceed the pressure of 30m of water.

      1. Most standards sheets you are looking at are based on the old ISO2281 and not the ISO22810 that was used to test the Pebble Time. According to the new standards 30M means any water activity you do in up to 30M of water. The new standards are made to be less misleading to consumers and actually mean what they say.

    1. ePaper doesn’t mean E Ink… and Pebble describes this as an e-paper screen (which means it’s always on and sunlight readable). But you’re right… that sort of confuses the matter so I removed that word from the article.

      1. Remove it all Brad! Just kidding haha. I backed Pebble the first time around and I’m just a bit more than disappointed to see this is their 2nd Gen. Oh well. I’m sure it’ll do well and those who get it will be happy with it!

      2. There’s more to epaper than E-ink. Bridgestone, Fujitsu, and Sipix (to name a few) all had their own unique epaper screen tech. Their tech was bistable, and thus merited the label of epaper.

        JDI makes LCD screens. This isn’t epaper because if you turn off the power the image goes away.

        I’m being pedantic, I know, but sometimes these technical details are important.

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