My Series 3 watch easily lasts more than 24 hours on a charge. The 18-hour battery life, I think, is being very overly conservative.

> still doesn't come close to replacing my Pebble

Does Pebble have a sim? The biggest benefit of apple watch for me is that I can take it anywhere without my phone, play sports, shopping, running, the sim card in the phone is the best thing that keeps me away from staring at my phone screen while I am going out.

It doesn't have a sim. The Pebble's purpose-in-life was to be a good watch first. It complements your phone with smart features like notifications, automatically setting the time on your watch based on your phone, and syncing your calendar to Pebble's timeline. It's not a phone replacement like you're looking for, so Apple Watch is a good fit for you.

Still, I found my Pebble greatly reduced the time I spent looking at my phone because I didn't need to take my phone out of my pocket upon receiving a notification or to check the next item on my calendar.

Why did Pebble go under, anyway? They had a solid product that people enojoyed

I don't have insider knowledge of their financials, but my impression is if they stayed lean and focused on their core product they'd have been a sustainable small company. Instead, they grew too big in typical VC-backed fashion and it wasn't sustainable.

They spent a lot on R&D and bet the company on kickstarters. Their direction also constrained them to Garmin-like products rather than heading off Android Wear or Apple watch (even fitbit can't compete after buying their guts)

Probably a lack of good marketing.

I would imagine that not enough people enjoyed it for the price they asked for.

I miss my old Pebble watch