About a year ago I backed the latest kickstarter project from Pebble. The battery life, the timeline and the support for my running app justified the purchase. But as we all know the device never made it to my wrist.
With some money to spare and my birthday coming up I decided to go for the Garmin Forerunner 235. It was favoured over the Apple Watch (yes I’m an Apple fan) because of the battery life and the fact that it is a running watch first and smart watch second. Both have build-in GPS but only the Garmin shows the status.
The smart features of the watch are limited to displaying the weather and your appointments, music control including volume and showing notifications. Everything is synced from the (i)Phone to the watch. No reply to messages or snooze of alerts. Pretty limited for a smart watch, but it works for me.
Looking at a message on my watch made me think of the pebble notifications I saw on youtube review, minus the animations. The screen looks like the same e-paper technology is used.
** But wait there is more **
Garmin has it’s own app platform called Connect IQ. There are over 1000 apps in the store you can download and install. The SDK is free and everybody is encouraged to develop something great.
In the end I’m very happy with my watch. Still sad Pebble is no more.
.NET Development by Eric 