Pebble smartwatch sequel set to break Kickstarter record

With Apple’s first foray into smartwatches still on the horizon, a competitor is generating big buzz online for a similar product. The Pebble Time, a smartwatch from the makers of the e-ink Pebble watch, was introduced last week in a Kickstarter campaign. Within a day, the campaign raised more than $9 million with weeks to go. The record for a Kickstarter campaign is $13.2 million and the Pebble Time at the time of this writing looked set to easily surpass it.

What is the Pebble Time? Like the original watch, it connects to a smartphone to offer notifications, text from emails and info from more than 6,500 apps. But the new watch has a color face instead of black and white only, a microphone to respond to messages and, unlike the Apple Watch, about seven days worth of battery life.

Pebble says the new watch will ship to Kickstarter backers (who are paying $179 for the Time watch) in May. It will be offered at retail for $199 sometime after all those are shipped.