Yes it is. If you could put it on an inductive charging pad that would be fine, but I'm not going to fish around for a micro USB plug that probably has fallen behind my nightstand for the 500th time every few days.
There has been a big uptick in the last 12 years on rechargeable gadgets. We used to put double AA batteries in everything. The only thing that needed a charger was the gigantic Motorola MicroTAC cell phone. Nowadays, it's the opposite. I count seven of them in my house alone. The only thing I need a battery for is my television remote.
Inductive charging pads are a great idea, but you need a big vendor to make a standard one. Apple is probably the only company with large enough marketshare. If they came up with an inductive charger for their iPhones/iPads, their product would quickly become _the_ standard. Eventually Amazon would install the technology in the Kindle, Android handset makers would do it just to keep in the game. 3rd-Parties would make inductive power stations for cars, bedside tables, dressers, desks, you name it.
The pain of charging something regularly aside, solve the cable problem by getting a binder clip (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binder_clip - I wasn't sure what they were actually called).
Clip it to your bedside table, desk - wherever - running cables through it. Voila, no more cables vanishing: they're held close by the clip, and most should have heads too big to fall through the gap between the clip and the desk :).
They announced yesterday that as a result of water-proofing it will have a special plug.
"Pebble's USB cable is custom cable because the watch will be waterproof and can't have a big hole for the regular USB socket. We will be selling extra cables as well."
USB is also a crappy way to recharge things. It takes ages for the paltry USB power to recharge my smartphone, particularly if I don't turn the screen off (phone stays awake with USB attached)
USB doesn't really have anything to do with it, it's about the devices (both the phone and the charger). The specs say an USB charger can provide up to 5A, which is more than enough to reach the battery charging limits, AFAIK.
I only take off my watch when I shower. I even go swimming with my watch. Something like this is really slick, but I have trouble as it is remembering to charge my phone...
Obvious solution is to make a charger for the shower, similar to the ones electric toothbrushes use. Since it lasts 7 days, we can surely hope you take a shower within that time period =)
Its true that this part seems like not a big deal. But I think with the growing number of devices in everyones arsenal, it's becoming more of a burden. I charge 2 laptops, a cell phone, and a tablet every night. A kindle every once in awhile. I'm on the fence on this one too. The product looks awesome, just wish that number(7 days) was bigger. Part of this may be just getting used to the whole concept. I'd imagine you'd get pretty reliable battery life out of this, not like a cell phone where apps consistently have the potential to suck the life out of your phone. But I definitely would of liked to see some features mentioned on this to conserve more battery when you're using it as a watch and not a smartphone buddy. Solar cells, and being able to disable bluetooth etc.
That would be incredible... Even if the concept of inductive chargers were taken further.
But a central power unit that worked across all devices has some major issues. If you look at something like the "Duracell Instant USB Charger", there's a few batteries like it with usb now. Looking at something like that though, I question if it's possible to make a central, charge-one-unit, device that is actually convenient/functional and makes life easier. Even though the size is down, their annoying to use. Plugging devices into it during the day on a regular basis would be suck. Unless you make some sort of inductive pants lol.
It's significantly more trouble than what you would do with most other wristwatches: change the battery once every year or three (or if you have a self winding analog watch, never do anything).
The fact that it's a smart watch doesn't make charging it any more convenient. Of course, based on the kickstarter results, it's clear many people disagree with my p.o.v. ... =)
