Pebble Round 2 starts shipping as battery life lands at 8 days

Pebble Round 2 is finally leaving the warehouse, although only 200 watches have been built so far and the full preorder queue is now expected to stretch into December.

So yes, it is finally happening. But this is very much the beginning of shipping rather than the point where thousands of Round 2 watches suddenly start landing on doorsteps.

Pebble says the first batch of watches have arrived at its warehouse and it is now contacting the earliest customers to confirm their orders. That is a genuine production milestone after months of delays.

The case is still holding things up

The problem remains the stainless steel case. Pebble says some production samples had such noticeable cosmetic issues that, during certain rounds of inspection, only around 15% passed its incoming quality checks.

That fits with what we have been hearing for months. Back in June, we covered the case manufacturing problem that prevented Pebble from getting mass production underway. By July, things appeared to be moving again and the company expected roughly 14,000 preorders to be shipped by the end of September.

Clearly, that timetable did not survive contact with the factory floor. Pebble now says the next batch of 1,000 watches will enter production after the October 1 to 7 holiday period in China and should ship around the end of October.

Production of the remaining orders is then scheduled to start at the beginning of November, with shipping beginning toward the end of that month. The current goal is to have all preorders out by the end of December.

Eight-day battery life is the other surprise

The more unexpected part of the update is battery life. When Pebble announced Round 2 in January, the company estimated roughly two weeks between charges. Its current specifications still list around 10 to 14 days.

Right now, though, Pebble says the average with the current version of PebbleOS is closer to eight days. Turning off the touchscreen, disabling shake-to-backlight and using a watchface that refreshes less frequently can apparently push that into the 10 to 14-day range.

That eight-day figure is a long way from daily charging. But there is a fairly large difference between getting around eight days during normal use and reaching two weeks only after switching off some features.

There is some precedent for this improving through software. As we noted in our July Pebble update, Pebble 2 Duo climbed from a median of 17 days to more than 30 days after optimisation, while Pebble Time 2 had reached around 21 days. Round 2 may follow the same path.

Elsewhere, the hardware is essentially ready. Pebble says the display, battery, buttons, software, certification and environmental testing are complete, leaving production of acceptable metal cases as the main bottleneck.

There is plenty of software waiting for the hardware as well. Developers have already produced around 1,400 apps and watchfaces specifically for Round 2, while another 3,000 originally made for Pebble Time Round can automatically scale to the new display.

For buyers, the important bit is that Round 2 has finally crossed the line from beta hardware into actual production. Just don’t interpret that as meaning the wait is over for everyone.