I'm glad they went with ePaper, but I think I'll hold off until the battery life has developed to be quite a bit better (lasts a few months on a single charge?). The biggest value prop to having information on a watch to me is that I never have to think about charging my watch so I can always rely on it having the information I need. I don't recall ever replacing a watch battery and I'm looking forward to when smartwatches reach that kind of longevity.
Considering my Kindle lasts over a month on a single charge, I'd be thrilled to have an e-ink watch that showed me a listing of notifications and the time that lasts just as long.
> I think I'll hold off until the battery life ... (lasts a few months on a single charge?)
You'll be waiting a very long time.
> Considering my Kindle lasts over a month on a single charge
Your Kindle isn't maintaining a bluetooth connection to your phone or updating the screen frequently, and has a much larger battery than a watch.
> I never have to think about charging my watch so I can always rely on it having the information I need.
With the Pebble you don't have to worry about it either. It notifies you when it's getting low (has a day or two of battery life remaining) and you charge it when you get the chance. And if you don't have time to give it a full charge, in my experience with just 10-15 minutes charging time you'll get a few more days of use.
I agree with your sentiment about battery life though. It's why I don't understand why anyone would even consider any smartwatch besides Pebble. Fall asleep without charging your watch one night and you can't wear it the next day? That's crazy. It also means you can't really use your watch as an alarm if you need to charge it each night.
http://www.withings.com/us/withings-activite.html seems to be able to track and synchronize physical activity with my phone, runs on CR-2025 for 8 months. Don't know how they pull it off, but an inventive UI/watch interface to show me notification information like this one might be the ticket.
That is pretty impressive if it can really get 8 months on a battery while maintaining a bluetooth connection! Of course, this is quite a different category of product as it doesn't have a screen and just has normal watch hands.
Still, you're asking for an order of magnitude improvement in battery life, so I'll assert again that you'll be waiting a while :) I think you should relax your position, since imo there's really not much difference in having to charge a battery for 30 mins to an hour once a week vs once a month. You still rarely need to worry about your battery, which is qualitatively different than Apple or Android watches that you need to charge once a day or they die on you.
If its like my brothers older sony reader (b/w ePaper), the refresh rate was slow but the battery lasted a long long time. If I remember correctly it only uses power when the display changes.
I guess the minus would be its harder to read in the dark. If the refresh rate is too slow it might be annoying but I for a watch I don't think its going to be a problem.
Considering my Kindle lasts over a month on a single charge, I'd be thrilled to have an e-ink watch that showed me a listing of notifications and the time that lasts just as long.