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The folks behind the Pebble smartwatch have been providing detailed, regular updates on their progress on Kickstarter every few weeks. The latest reveals that the color option which will be available to backers who joined at the $125 level will be a glossy orange finish. That positive (for some, anyway) detail was leavened with a slightly disappointing one: the company won't make its original September shipping estimate.
While we won't be able to start shipping Pebbles in September, our current schedule has us on track to go from manufacturing zero to 15,000 Pebbles per week as soon as possible.
The reasoning seems fairly reasonable: the first shipping estimate was based on the original plan to create only 1,000 Pebble smartwatches. The project's success led to a decision to go much bigger, to 85,000, and the larger run of watches means it will take a bit longer to get them into full production. We spoke briefly with Pebble Technology and it seems that it's still a little too early for the company to provide a more specific estimate for when shipping will begin, though in his post on Kickstarter, CEO Eric Migicovsky characterized the watch's progress as "sticking pretty closely to an aggressive timetable we put together at the end of May." Hopefully developers will use the extra time to delve into the Android SDK preview.
Currently, the Pebble is in the "Engineering Verification" phase, which means that individual components are getting tested as you read this. You can see images of the various pieces that will make up the final watches on Pebble's Kickstarter page.
