Pebble's latest line of smartwatches may replace the need for phones

It hasn't escaped even the most ardent of technophiles that smartwatches aren't exactly the next big thing that a lot of companies were hoping. Even Apple is seemingly struggling, the lustre of the brand sucking in users -but the lack of sales figures seems rather telling.

So when the founder of Pebble, the company that arguably started the smartwatch trend, says “our vision is not of building watches,“ it's not as surprising as one might initially think.

The company just launched its latest set of gadgetry: the Pebble 2, an update to original Classic model, Pebble Time 2 which has a more `fashion conscious' element and the Pebble Core, a clip on wearable that's new territory for the brand.


(Pebble2, Image Courtesy: Official website)

But in many ways Pebble is a barometre for the smartwatch industry: a huge flame of interest and furore around the brand to start, but recently it let go 25% of its workforce and has been criticised for its retail techniques of constantly plumbing the Kickstarter well, selling three rounds of new products through the crowd-funded platform where some see it as place for startups only.

So what's next? If the smartwatch was born out of our desire not to be locked to our phone screen, then the logical evolution for wearables is to become even more focused on a set of tasks.

(Pebble Time 2, Image Courtesy: Official website)
The Core is a fitness-focussed device, one that Pebble claims strips the need for a phone by carrying its own GPS and 3G Wi-Fi connection.

It has a single button that will connect to a variety of apps -a single push could call an Uber or order a pizza, and will use Amazon's Alexa voice recognition to let you talk to get feedback and updates -as well as having a lot of decent technology to help track your runs.

There's also something that no other company has managed before: bringing offline Spotify integration to something other than a phone, tablet or computer.

Read More: Pebble Time Steel, a different breed of smartwatch