Pebble had like a week long battery life. Apple’s pitch wasn’t better battery life, it was just “that thing for nerds? This is the same, but for everyone else.” I.e. it came with seamless integration with your phone, rings to close, a more expensive look, and more polished fitness tracking.

The breakthru that made touchscreen phones works wasn’t an app ecosystem. That came after people were already crazy about iPhones. It was capacitive touch screens. Basically everything before was resistive touch, which is why they usually had styluses. Getting touch, and really multi-touch, working well was the game changer that redefined cell phones.