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.

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Angie McBrayer, ex-wife of James Aaron McBrayer, leans her head on her son Sam McBrayer as she and her three children and two grandchildren (from left) Jackson McBrayer, 3, Piper Jae McBrayer, 7, Katy Isaza, and Jordan McBrayer, visit the grave of James McBrayer, Thursday, November 20, 2025, in Tifton. He died after being restrained by Tift County sheriff's deputies on April 24, 2019. His ex-wife witnessed the arrest and said she thought the deputies were being rough but did not imagine that McBrayer would die. (Hyosub Shin/AJC)

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC