If you follow me on any social network you might have seen that I participated in the Pebble Time Kickstarter campaign. Maybe you also saw that I recently received this wonderful gadget:

Pebble Time unboxing on the left and thickness comparison with Suunto Ambit 2 on the right.

First impression when I put it around my wrist was how thin and light it is. Just like a regular watch or probably even thinner. Its strap is also of much higher quality than I imagined. I thought it’ll be of cheap-ish plastic and that I’ll sweat under it but I barely do - even when running. It’s awesome.

Using it has also been much easier than I imagined. Its UX is intuitive to the point where you don’t need any manual. Oh, there is none. But that’s OK. Left side has only one button - back. Right side has 3 buttons: up, down, confirm. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

When I was backing the project on Kickstarter I was most looking forward to Runkeeper integration. They were exposed as a major partner so I thought they’ll provide an awesome app. But they only provide a basic integration with Pebble Sports API. While running you can pause the run and see the duration, distance, and average pace of your run. There’s a support ticket for customization with 101 upvotes but without any response from Runkeeper.

Runkeeper, Weatherland watchface, and Emojis on Pebble Time.

So I looked at my favorite alternative when Runkeeper doesn’t work properly - Strava. They don’t even have support for Pebble on iOS. Because reasons. Again there is a support ticket with 77 likes and again without any official response.

Reading those support requests and comments I stumbled upon a running app of which I haven’t heard before - iSmoothRun. It doesn’t have a subscription model or a social network build around it and it’s a paid app upfront. But what it has is an awesome Pebble app. And features. Tons of features. Just to name a few:

customizable Pebble display - choose from myriad of possible data points and display them on pages of 3

automatic metronome - only active when your cadence drops below a threshold

support of all the possible heart rate sensors

automatic weather conditions logging

master switch for all audio cues

custom interval training with heart rate coaching

ghost runs

amazing and detailed graphs and statistics after the run

export to all the other services - it’ll even share your run live to Runkeeper

I could go on for days. It’s so amazing. And you can tell why by their tagline:

Programmed by runners, iSmoothRun is the app that we all wished for.

It’s as if all the other running apps were created by aliens imagining how people run and why/how would they use their apps. This one is the only one that just works. And makes perfect sense. Kudos, developers. And keep up the good work!