[HN Gopher] We're bringing Pebble back
___________________________________________________________________
We're bringing Pebble back
Thank you, Google. You didn't have to, but you did. We (the Pebble
team and community) are extraordinarily grateful. I wrote a blog
post about our plans to bring Pebble back, sustainably.
https://ericmigi.com/blog/why-were-bringing-pebble-back We got our
original start on HN
(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3827868), it's a pleasure to
be back.
Author : erohead
Score : 2748 points
Date : 2025-01-27 20:11 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (repebble.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (repebble.com)
| fsflover wrote:
| The announcement from Google:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42845017
| dang wrote:
| That's actually a blog post from rebble.io. I added a link to
| the open-source repo to the top text there. Is there an actual
| announcement from Google?
| nickthegreek wrote:
| google announcement:
| https://opensource.googleblog.com/2025/01/see-code-that-
| powe...
|
| pebbleOS repo: https://github.com/google/pebble
| daemonologist wrote:
| I like the one wrist in the photo with no watch lol. (The
| header photo for the Google announcement is of a bunch of
| people huddled around the camera showing the Pebbles
| they're wearing, but one person is just holding out their
| arm sans Pebble.)
| dang wrote:
| Belated thanks!
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42845337
| tomasreimers wrote:
| The opening animation is so so so good.
| billybuckwheat wrote:
| Excited (cautiously) about this. Loved my Pebble Time and was
| gutted when 1) Pebble bit the dust, and 2) my Pebble vanished
| down that black hole things like small devices and the other sock
| invariably go down. If this happens, I hope they can keep the
| revived Pebbles just smart enough and rebuild the app ecosystem.
| Best of luck, folks. I'm cheering you on from the sidelines!
| bigiain wrote:
| Also cautious. Extremely cautions.
|
| I got rug pulled by "the pebble team" the first time, leaving
| me with 3 watches they effectively bricked.. Not gonna sign up
| for that again.
|
| (I got a refund on my last Pebble order. When the money showed
| up I drunk-ebayed a 2nd hand ~40 year old mechanical watch. I
| now have about 20 wind up or mechanical auto winding watches. I
| do have a few chinese ~$40 "smart watches" that do an OK job of
| notifications on my wrist, and a somewhat questionable job of
| heartrate and blood pressure monitoring, and one that produces
| totally random numbers for blood glucose reading whether it's
| on my wrist or not. I almost never wear any of those. I've got
| a Watchy kit, and open source epaper ESP32 watch, but I've had
| it maybe a year and haven't found the enthusiasm to assemble
| it.)
| billybuckwheat wrote:
| True. I used it after Pebble went away -- Gadgetbridge helped
| extend the watch's life a few more years. I bought a PineTime
| as a sort of replacement for my Pebble Time about 18 months
| ago. An OK watch and, as one blogger I read noted, it's just
| smart enough.
| hoherd wrote:
| I never had a pebble. Also, I was really skeptical of the
| Flipper Zero, but my curiosity finally got the best of me and I
| bought one. I love their app ecosystem and the whole experience
| of using it. If Pebble 2 has that kind of UX, it's going to be
| really awesome.
| ginkgotree wrote:
| HECK YES
| underseacables wrote:
| I have kept my Pebble WAITING for this day! Horayy!
| atYevP wrote:
| Lets goooooooo
| taeric wrote:
| First, let me say it is always fun to see people having fun with
| hobbies like this. Cool to see them making headway and having
| fun!
|
| I'm curious what the specific pitch is on this device? I have, so
| far, avoided Garmin in the watch space, but I'm growing very
| short on justifications for that. Would love to hear what the
| general value add for other options is.
| eab- wrote:
| The notifications aren't great, and the non-e-ink screen is a
| bit annoying. Also the low amount of physical buttons.
|
| But as someone who bought an OG Pebble and now has a Vivoactive
| 3, I think the fitness features are too nice to switch back
| fully to Pebble. Although I'll be very glad to see Pebble back!
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| Which watch has an e-ink(/epaper) display? I can only think
| of Watchy. Pebble was LCD.
| bitdivision wrote:
| No, pebble was definitely e-ink. And I think the most
| recent ones had colour epaper.
|
| Edit: Sorry, looking further down I see that they say
| epaper, which is not the same:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42845508
|
| It looks like they're memory in pixel (MIP) displays, which
| are basically reflective LCDs I think.
| jsheard wrote:
| > It looks like they're memory in pixel (MIP) displays,
| which are basically reflective LCDs I think.
|
| Reflective LCDs with embedded memory, hence the name.
| Normal LCDs need to be refreshed continuously, but MIP
| LCDs remember the last frame and efficiently refresh
| themselves, so the CPU is free to go into deep sleep as
| long as the display is static.
| Avamander wrote:
| I'm pretty sure they were transreflective LCDs with an
| FPGA to handle the low-power refresh.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Not a "normal" one, though...
|
| "black and white memory LCD using an ultra low-power
| "transflective LCD" manufactured by Sharp"
| mikestew wrote:
| "Normal" enough that many of Garmin's watches still use
| MIP LCD...which is what the Pebble used.
| ramses0 wrote:
| Garmin Fenix 7 (and potentially Garmin Fenix 8 Solar) are
| reasonably button-y and kindof work "right" from a pebble fan.
|
| The biggest miss for most smartwatches is "buttons", "battery
| life" and "sunlight-readable screen".
|
| Buttons work without sight, buttons work in the shower (next
| track, volume, scrolling a notification, declining a phone
| call, stopping a timer), buttons can be "memorized", you can
| navigate buttons while riding a bike, and "button-centric"
| means you're focused on _only the essential_ capabilities. Ok.
| Next/Prev. Cancel/Back. Long-Press for shortcuts or
| confirmations. The discipline of designing for small, focused,
| essential interactions is so much better (when done well) than
| attempting to stab react components shifting around on your
| wrist or swiping in random directions on a slow-to-respond
| screen.
|
| Charging "every other week" means I can go on a weeks vacation,
| charge the watch before going, and not need to worry about or
| bring another charger.
|
| Sunlight-readable (non-lighted, non-distracting) screen means I
| can glance down and see the current time [with no wrist
| movement], and I don't have a bright light turning on and off
| (most of the time).
|
| The biggest miss for the Fenix compared to Pebble is/was "The
| Timeline" from Pebble. On the home screen, you could basically
| scroll through your upcoming calendar events to kindof keep you
| on track. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYZoWS0QxI8
|
| The biggest opportunity for "Pebble2.0" is the hybrid
| button/scroll feature from Garmin Fenix. Fenix has an option to
| "pinch" opposing buttons for ~3 seconds to enable/disable the
| touch screen. Additionally, the touch screen can be used for
| (eg) scrolling a map around. To me, this is great as I _very
| rarely_ want to accidentally brush the screen (or have a
| toddler poking at it) and messing with things... but being able
| to "opt-in" to touch-screen under specific apps or
| circumstances is actually a really cool compromise!
|
| Needless to say, I'm an insta-buy for Pebble, and very hopeful
| (especially since the O.S. is open source?!?!) that they'll
| steward us functionality-based watch nerds in the right
| direction!
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| The Garmin Fenix 8 is $1,099
| drawkward wrote:
| And worth every penny. (I say this as a former pebble and
| then rebble user.)
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I moved from Pebble to Casio F-91W. Worth every penny!
| drawkward wrote:
| Different users; different needs!
| camtarn wrote:
| Ha, I actually did the same, albeit after using a
| succession of disappointing Fitbits. In the end I
| realised that what I mainly cared about was having the
| time on my wrist, and I could leave everything else. So I
| ended up with the steel strap, EL-illuminated version of
| the F-91W.
| ramses0 wrote:
| I recently did this band-swap "new" for a total of like
| $70 all-in.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/casio/comments/13yy4nh/world_tim
| e_o...
|
| I can also strongly recommend the Timex Expedition
| (analog) with easy-set alarm, and the Casio WV-58 styles.
|
| The easyset alarm is described here:
| https://youtu.be/v6Fdt5y3p9A ...and it's super useful! I
| have like 4 versions now since supplementing and band-
| replacing my original from actual 1999... unfortunately
| you've got to chase eBay on those nowadays.
|
| The waveceptor isn't that expensive and I use it as my
| "reference watch" when setting my other watches since
| it's atomic.
| ramses0 wrote:
| I finally found a used 7 for $300 on FB marketplace, only
| 2-3 months ago. I still swallowed real hard before buying
| it, but I'm satisfied enough with it that even with the 7,
| I've been nosing around to see if any 8-solar (presumably
| transflective, not OLED) are around in the ~$500 price
| range.
|
| Pebble Time Steel debuted at $250 in 2015, ~$350 in todays
| dollars, and the Fenix is much more capable not just the
| hardware but also health tracking.
|
| That's why a comeback pebble is worth supporting (for me).
| Fenix has decent/"fun" SDK apps, but their core UX is only
| moderately good. I still get confused about which button to
| use to get to apps vs quicklooks vs data widgets vs
| shortcuts, and setting a 15 minute timer is way more
| confusing than it should be.
|
| Apple: max 3 days battery life, and that's in the $800+
| price range
|
| AmazFit: maybe? but never enough to risk over $100-200 and
| no great "has buttons" option
|
| BangleJS: no buttons.
|
| PineTime: no buttons.
|
| YadaYadaYada: no battery, oled screen, no buttons, or no
| customization
|
| Getting another Pebble for $300 retail or $200 used with
| full backwards compat, their SDK and emulator, and a path
| forward? Sign me up!
| seltzered_ wrote:
| I'm not sure you can put it in MBA language like 'specific
| pitch' or 'value add', you had to try it and see if it felt
| right for you.
|
| The watch had a pretty coherent ux flow for a non-touchscreen
| device, and could be easily used with gloves on without even
| looking at the watch in some scenarios (e.g. shortcutting to
| music controls). It later paired some unique animations to make
| things feel friendly and a bit quirky (
| https://www.slashgear.com/pebble-hires-webos-designers-for-u...
| ).
|
| Also there was a pretty decent hobbyist/maker culture around
| the watch with the ideas of add-on accessories, etc.
|
| The challenge from a business standpoint mightve been needing
| to provide vc-backed startup returns without killing the
| culture that loved the product. I think they were trying to
| find a way to do a subscription for extra services.
| taeric wrote:
| Fair that I do seem to be asking for MBA speak. Not my
| intent.
|
| For me, the big mental block is that I can't think of much I
| want to do from my watch. A readable screen is obviously
| nice. So is advanced battery life. But, if I'm going to be
| dipping into health tracking, it seems Garmin is the baseline
| there.
|
| The UX flow is one that has me somewhat intrigued. How often
| are you interacting with the device? And for what reasons?
| ryukafalz wrote:
| The big ones for me were/are media controls and seeing
| what's next on my calendar. Because of the physical buttons
| I can pause my music/skip songs/adjust volume without even
| looking at the screen.
|
| Bluetooth headphones often have media controls but in my
| experience they tend to be hard to use on wireless earbuds
| due to their size. Using my Pebble is much easier. No other
| smartwatch I've used has done this quite as well.
| Timon3 wrote:
| I really enjoyed my Pebble for waking up in the morning
| (vibration feels much softer to me than a loud alarm) and
| media control, e.g. while showering. The display read well
| passively, and I only had to charge it every couple of
| days.
|
| The only experience that came close were hybrid
| smartwatches (analog, but with vibrations, 3 programmable
| buttons and the pointers could move to indicate apps).
| Longer battery life, but very closed off (can't sync alarms
| from external sources) and the phone bridge stopped working
| after some time.
| seltzered_ wrote:
| Same answer as this person.
|
| Snoozing alarms and music controls without even looking
| at the watch (e.g. while in bed, or while
| walking/snowboarding/etc.) were really neat.
|
| And it kinda begs a question of how much should one want
| from a device. What is 'enough' so that one doesn't get
| emotionally attached to it being so expensive it alters
| behavior with it?
|
| I lost my pebble se after jogging one day, and haven't
| purchased another one yet (many were too heavy, big, or
| feature-laden at a much higher price). I sold my original
| pebble to a bus driver who happened to already have one
| and presumably just liked having a cheap simple
| smartwatch for handling notifications and alarms.
| tetromino_ wrote:
| I went through two Garmins. Both failed in under 2 years
| (random freezes, random reboots, eventually leading to
| bricking). Fitness tracking and GPS would activate by
| themselves at random times for no visible reason. Buttons
| sometimes wouldn't register. The proprietary charging cable was
| terribly designed - after a couple months, the springs
| inevitably fail and it starts losing contact with the watch,
| needing fiddling with the exact angle, blowing on the contacts,
| weighing down or attaching with scotch tape when charging for
| an extended time, etc.; basically, one learns to treat Garmin
| charging cables as a short-lived consumable. The software stack
| at least on Android is awful, and it's very hard to get your
| data out of it.
|
| Considering how much these thing are hyped, I gaslit myself
| into thinking my first watch was a rare lemon, which is why I
| replaced it with another Garmin; but I won't be fooled again.
| rconti wrote:
| Their software is pretty bad but the hardware has been pretty
| bulletproof for me and I've certainly never had one randomly
| freeze or reboot in the decade+ I've been using them. These
| are forerunners though. I haven't used their "fancier"
| watches.
| tetromino_ wrote:
| I had the Instinct Solar. Not sure if it counts as "fancy",
| but it certainly was not reliable!
| zem wrote:
| I've had a garmin for ~3 weeks now. amy #2 use for a watch
| (after telling the time, of course) is to read texts without
| pulling out my phone, and so far the garmin ux for that has
| been way worse than the pebble's. (not really used the fitness
| features much other than step tracking, which the pebble also
| did)
| tombert wrote:
| Man, I got rid of my Pebble once they dropped support. I love my
| current smartwatch, but I would have loved the e-ink concept
| continuously iterated.
| jsheard wrote:
| > I would have loved the e-ink concept continuously iterated.
|
| I'm probably gonna sound like a broken record in this thread
| but the Pebble never used e-ink, it used a MIP LCD, and MIP
| never went away. Lots of sports watches use the exact same
| display technology from the exact same supplier (Sharp) to this
| day.
| tombert wrote:
| Fair enough!
|
| I was positive that some of the hype and/or marketing around
| it called e-ink but it looks like either my recollection is
| bad, or the hype was wrong.
| jsheard wrote:
| Pebble were always careful to use the generic term
| "e-paper", which some people assumed to be the same thing
| as e-ink, but it's a different technology. Besides, e-ink
| is actually a trademark so they couldn't call it that
| anyway.
|
| E-inks claim to fame is using zero power when static, but
| it has very sluggish pixel response times, while MIP LCDs
| use very little (but not zero) power when static and have
| fast pixel response times when dynamic.
| tombert wrote:
| Yep, that is probably where my confusion came from.
| culi wrote:
| Which watches currently use MiP LCD?
| jsheard wrote:
| Garmin, Coros, Suunto and Polar all make fitness watches
| with MIP displays. Some of them sell a mixture of MIP and
| OLED models though, so check the specs. If you want
| extremely long battery life above all else then the Coros
| Pace 3 is a good starting point.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| "MIP" ?
|
| I thought it was called transflective : for transmittive +
| reflective ?
| jsheard wrote:
| https://www.sharpsde.com/technologies-for/memory-in-
| pixels/m...
|
| MIP refers to the displays ability to retain the last frame
| indefinitely, unlike typical LCDs which need an external
| controller to refresh them constantly, even if every frame
| is identical to the last one.
| cafed00d wrote:
| Google has become cool again!
| joshstrange wrote:
| By dumping a codebase they aren't using?
| cafed00d wrote:
| It could be much worse: how many projects simply die because
| they're locked away in a corporate basement because some
| corporate attorney decided it's "too risky to leak IP"
|
| Despite all the layoffs & black founding fathers debacles
| Google as an institution has had recently, it still has the
| systems in place to let passionate engineering projects see
| the light of day.
|
| That's really cool!
| girvo wrote:
| My Pebble Time Round is still the single best piece of tech I
| have ever owned and used, and I miss it every day.
|
| If it can be brought back, I'd pay whatever is necessary, and I'd
| love to contribute now that I've spent many years doing embedded
| firmware development professionally!
| eiiot wrote:
| I still use my PTR daily! See https://rebble.io/ :)
| INTPenis wrote:
| I'm glad. For a decade I felt like an outsider because all I want
| is a very simple wearable device that doesn't require charging
| more than once a month and can display simple notifications from
| my phone, and the time.
|
| I loved the Pebble Time. After that I went over to Fossil Hybrid,
| which is pretty decent actually. I'm sure the app steals
| everything it can but at least the device works.
| jampekka wrote:
| Amazfit watches have done this for since 2016 or so. And
| cheaply.
| culi wrote:
| watch(es)? As in you've had to replace them regularly?
| Hopefully Pebble takes seriously the "sustainbly" part of
| their relaunch. What you're describing sounds like everything
| I wanna avoid
| mikestew wrote:
| WTF? No, as in "Amazfit makes more than one model of
| watch". It's a hard left into the weeds to come away with
| your interpretation.
| normalaccess wrote:
| I had an amazfit watch, didn't quite scratch the pebble itch
| and it has been relegated to the IT junk drawer. The thing I
| miss the most is the pebble display. I don't need heart rate,
| I don't need GPS, I don't need sleep tracking, I just want a
| watch that shows my notifications and has a great battery
| life.
|
| I am pleased they are coming back!
| INTPenis wrote:
| Ok maybe I should say it's not only the charge time, but also
| the e-ink (like?) display that captivates me. The fact that I
| can always look at my watch and see the time, other people
| can look at my watch and see the time. No flicks of the wrist
| required, no always on OLED display.
|
| I honestly enjoy the Fossil Hybrid more than the Pebble Time,
| because it has an actual watch with a screen behind the
| hands.
| jampekka wrote:
| Early models had a transreflective displays, newer models
| sadly don't.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| Does this mean things have worked out with Beeper? What will
| happen with that? I noticed development seemed to have stopped.
| It's nothing like it was before.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| Wasn't that bought by Automattic?
| erohead wrote:
| Things worked out! We got acquired. Heads down on merging -
| https://ericmigi.com/blog/why-were-bringing-pebble-back
| bullen wrote:
| Hi, please support vanilla linux phones this time?
| 5- wrote:
| you probably meant to link
| https://blog.beeper.com/2024/04/09/beeper-is-joining-
| automat...
|
| between this new/old enterprise of yours and the other stuff
| going on with automattic i am worried about beeper. sadly as
| i'm not allowed to pay for it i don't have a tangible stake
| in the product, so i can only ask nicely for a more explicit
| statement of future plans.
|
| it'd be a shame to see beeper (+texts) collapse.
| KishanBagaria wrote:
| beeper + texts are very much under active development.
| we're working on the next-gen merged apps which is why you
| haven't seen many updates to the old desktop/ios apps.
|
| we're also actively testing the new apps w a small group of
| beta testers, hmu if you want to try.
| joshstrange wrote:
| I loved my Pebble al the way up to when the first Apple Watch
| came out. Yes, the battery life is nowhere near as good but the
| integration into the OS was way better and they have steadily
| added health features that I appreciate (fall detection, afib,
| etc). Maybe the Pebble could match some/all of that but I have my
| doubts. It was a great little device but longer battery life is
| just not that compelling to me.
|
| I mean sure, if you offer me hours/days more of battery I'm not
| going to turn it down but for me (and my lifestyle, which is not
| yours, I get that) I don't need more than ~16hrs. Anything longer
| than that just helps "catch" me if I forget to charge. And that
| right there gets to the crux of why >24hr batteries rarely matter
| to me. The only battery charging processes that work for me are
| either:
|
| * Every day
|
| * Only when it's dead or I know I'm about to use it
|
| With my Pebble I would regularly find it dead because I lost
| track of how many days it had been since I charged it and I'd
| have to charge it at an inconvenient time. I fixed this by just
| charging every night. So since I'm already in that habit, a
| longer battery doesn't do much for me. And in case you were
| wondering what types of things fall in the second category for
| me, it's things like USB battery packs, flashlights, smart house
| sensors that aren't wired, Airtags, etc.
| Avamander wrote:
| Apple watch feels soulless and corporate, the app (and feature)
| selection is still practically abysmal compared to what Pebble
| had to offer. The walls Apple has built have not helped at all.
| I haven't even found an actually fun small game to play on the
| loo on it. It's sad.
| ashirviskas wrote:
| Your strategy might work for you, but for me using a smartwatch
| that only had 30h of battery life was super painful. One of the
| reasons I use a smartwatch is for sleep tracking
| (+alarms/timers/flashlight/notifications), which means I can't
| charge it overnight and every day is too dynamic to always
| charge it at the same time. Plus I miss out on notifications
| and access to other features I use hourly when I put it on
| charge.
|
| With my Garmin and 2 week+ battery life, the first <15% battery
| warning still gives me 3 days to put it on charge or turn on
| battery saving and turn that into 5+ days which is plenty of
| time to find a convenient time for charging. I don't think it
| ever died on me due to low battery, unlike my previous smart
| watches. Ok, I lied, it died once on a month long trip, but a
| split USB cable and a hair tie let me charge it right back up.
|
| The low battery life might be ok if you do not use your watch
| for sleep tracking or alarms. Or flashlight. Gosh, I love my
| flashlight on wrist.
| joshstrange wrote:
| I sleep in my watch every night. I charge it while
| showering/getting ready in the morning and/or for an hour
| while I'm sitting at my desk. We have very different needs
| and I get that an AW doesn't work for everyone.
| vermarish wrote:
| I love the animation when you click "No" on "Do you want a new
| Pebble?". So extra.
| soxocx wrote:
| On the iPhone I get redirected to the Apple Store page for the
| Apple Watch. Nice humor.
| benbristow wrote:
| Same on Mac (Firefox)
| pohuing wrote:
| Same on android Firefox& Chrome
| jacobgkau wrote:
| I think it's just a static redirect, it sent me to the Apple
| Watch page in Firefox on Linux. But I also wondered if it
| would shuffle between a few different brands or something (I
| guess not).
| cjonas wrote:
| I got redirected to pixel
| HaZeust wrote:
| It looks like:
|
| - Chromium browsers (tested in Edge, Chrome, Brave) go to
| Pixel Watch,
|
| - Android devices go to Pixel Watch,
|
| - Apple devices go to Apple Watch,
|
| - Firefox brings you to Apple Watch.
|
| It might also be randomized, but that's what my tests got
| me, and only the Firefox one doesn't make humorous sense.
| forty wrote:
| I got pixel with Firefox for Android
| HaZeust wrote:
| >- Android devices go to Pixel Watch,
| forty wrote:
| >- Firefox brings you to Apple Watch.
|
| I had read your post correctly. I just provided more
| information for a cases that matched two of your
| conditions
| splonk wrote:
| Looks it tries to identify Apple devices and goes to Pixel
| for everything else. const
| platform = navigator.platform || ''; const
| userAgent = navigator.userAgent || '';
| const isAppleDevice = /iPhone|iPad|MacIntel/.test(platform)
| || /iPhone|iPad|Mac
| OS/.test(userAgent); //
| Set redirect URL and message based on device
| const redirectUrl = isAppleDevice ?
| 'https://www.apple.com/watch' :
| 'https://store.google.com/product/pixel_watch_3?hl=en-US';
|
| Edit: per erohead, that change was made after your comment.
| Findecanor wrote:
| I got a tiny bit offended by the assumption that I'd rather
| have an Apple Watch.
|
| I'd think the ideal for me would instead be something in-
| between a Pebble and a Sensor Watch. Something hackable with
| _more_ battery life, that is a watch first (and a smartphone
| notification screen _never_ ). I wonder how far I could go
| towards that goal with the upcoming Pebble hardware and
| rewriting the OS kernel to sleep more.
| bean-weevil wrote:
| I interpreted it as an intentional insult :)
| hbn wrote:
| What if you clicked no because you already own a Pebble?
| pinoy420 wrote:
| Upgrade option
| ctkhn wrote:
| Gotta be honest I feel like Garmin is the perfect balance of
| pebble vs apple watch
| WD-42 wrote:
| I like my instinct, but Garmin is so locked down, less
| hackable than even an Apple Watch.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| You can download the SDK and side load applications. No
| annual developer fee. Not sure how it's _more_ locked down.
| abcd_f wrote:
| Don't know about Apple Watch development, but the scope
| of what you can do with Garmin's SDK is limited, apps run
| in a VM, ie no native code with respective performance
| issues and, as important, their developer support is a
| complete and utter garbage.
|
| It's a lucky day when someone from Garmin graces Forums
| with their presence and bestows few sentences they think
| could pass for an answer.
|
| In other words, yeah, the SDK is free, you can side-load
| and it's not hard to write for, but you just can't write
| _much_.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| You run native code on the Watch itself and most of the
| limitations are around not doing anything that will kill
| the small battery.
| abcd_f wrote:
| Nope, not native code.
|
| > _Monkey C compiles into byte code that is interpreted
| by a virtual machine, similar to Java._
|
| https://developer.garmin.com/connect-iq/reference-
| guides/mon..., 2nd paragraph.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I meant the Apple Watch, I should have quoted the
| relevant bit I was replying to
|
| > _Don't know about Apple Watch development_
| askvictor wrote:
| One example: I would like to program a (dumb/ID-only)
| RFID card into it to unlock a door. I can't as the NFC
| off limits to apps.
| jrockway wrote:
| Apparently there is some transit system in China that
| uses this format for payments. So you can get one of
| those cards, add it to your watch, and program the RFID
| system to accept the ID of the card you got. There was an
| HN article about it this weekend.
| bean-weevil wrote:
| My Garmin watch will only allow me to add emv cards.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| You can also use Garmin watches for transit in Japan, if
| it's a Japanese model.
| notpushkin wrote:
| I think that was NFC. The problem was, iPhone generated a
| random UID for all other cards, while this one was fixed.
| knifie_spoonie wrote:
| I'm curious why you're saying it's less hackable?
|
| I've written my own little app for my Garmin watch, and I
| didn't need to get permission from them or pay them
| anything.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Less hackable in what way? I've found it's tremendously
| easier to write a watch face for the Garmin than the Apple
| Watch. I know, I've done it (and if you, like me, don't
| want to share your watch face, leave it in Beta all the
| time).
| Levitating wrote:
| The Instinct 2 has an SDK and a sort of app store. I must
| admit that adding real new functionality is hard, but it's
| something at least.
| abraxas wrote:
| I just gave away a very expensive Garmin to my son. Its
| feature set is to dream of. Its user interface is hot
| garbage. When I'm out on a hike or in the pool trying to just
| measure my fsking laps I need a single click option or
| something. Their paradigm of "button 1, button 3, button 5,
| long press button 4, button 1 again to confirm. Now you can
| push off the wall in 3... 2... 1" is beyond fucking stupid.
|
| Does anyone at Garmin actually practice sports? For a company
| with such great hardware they really need someone competent
| on the UX team. Throwing everything into more and more menus
| and submenus is not working.
|
| The specific watch I'm criticizing is Garmin Instinct 2x
| solar. The name is very ironic because there is nothing
| intuitive about using that watch. Like, at all.
| hparadiz wrote:
| All this plus not being able to see any data while offline.
| Super useful when you're 13,000 feet up on a mountain
| somewhere.
| elric wrote:
| Which data are you unable to view while offline? I never
| sync my Garmin watch to my phone, and I'm able to view
| all the data that interests me on the watch.
| abcd_f wrote:
| Any data in the app. It just doesn't work offline, at
| all. Like they looked at a book chapter on basics of data
| caching and went "nah, not doing that, that's too f#cking
| advanced".
| hobos_delight wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand. I have had an Instinct, Tactix
| Delta, and Tactix 7 Pro and have always been able to see
| the data without a phone or any network present.
|
| I love these watches after moving from an Apple watch,
| primarily for two reasons:
|
| 1) the battery life - I cant stand having to charge my
| watch every day or so - my (current) Tactix 7 will go
| ~3-4 weeks depending on how much GPS I use.
|
| 2) (this may be out of date) when I would use the Strava
| or Run app on the Apple watch, it would not signal when
| it had a GPS fix, which resulted in a number of runs that
| had a "teleport" at the start, resulting in messed up
| metrics. Only a small thing, but it really frustrated me.
| KiwiJohnno wrote:
| I'm assuming the parent poster is talking about using the
| Garmin Connect app, which does require connectivity. You
| are correct, the data is visible directly on the watch.
| KiwiJohnno wrote:
| Its worth clarifying you are talking about the data on
| the phone app, which does require connectivity as nothing
| is stored on the phone app, its all on Garmin's servers.
|
| However, most if not all of the data (recorded activities
| or health data) can be viewed directly on your watch,
| without any connectivity.
| hparadiz wrote:
| I have a lot of experience working with the Garmin API.
| The data you can see on the recording device (watch) is
| limited and basically worthless. Akin to looking at a raw
| csv full of data rather than nicely plotted over a map.
| notpushkin wrote:
| Why can't it be also cached on the phone though?
| netsroht wrote:
| Gadgetbridge added support for Garmin watches recently
| [1]. All data is stored on your Android phone with no
| internet connectivity required and you can even export
| the sqlite DB so you own your sensor data. The UI isn't
| as nice as Garmin's but it does its job.
|
| [1] https://gadgetbridge.org/basics/topics/garmin/
| foobarchu wrote:
| On the positive side, I adore that they sell (sold?) the
| forerunner series with all physical buttons and no
| touchscreen. Garbage software, but being able to click
| through by muscle memory instead of dealing with a touch
| interface in sunny conditions is essential to me. Fitbits
| and apple watches have just always been too reliant on the
| touch method for my liking.
|
| The software is pretty crap though, and forerunner in
| particular is way too locked down towards running
| activities.
| DwnVoteHoneyPot wrote:
| You have trouble with touch interface in sunny
| conditions??? Try cold conditions with gloves on, then
| you'll have real problems with the Apple Watch. Or wet
| conditions. Or fast conditions like on a bike where you
| rather not look to turn off the alarm. Sunny conditions
| is the only time my watch works fine.
| jrockway wrote:
| My gloves work well on my Apple watch.
|
| Wet is always a disaster, though. If it's going to be
| moist outside (like hiking with a rain jacket), you have
| to remember to apply water lock immediately, or you're
| done for. In that case, the watch is pretty much useless
| until you get back inside, which is in fact very
| annoying.
| maxerickson wrote:
| The 265 and 975 both have touch screen on top of the
| buttons.
| jorvi wrote:
| To be honest, that is not a problem unique to.. well.. any
| domain-specific company's tech stack.
|
| Raymarine their marine GPS navigation units are supposed to
| be very intuitive, but they lack so many "that would have
| been nice" features, and their UX has stuff where various
| buttons have click / double-click / hold / hold 2s / hold
| 10s, all to access different functions. Some of it isn't
| even written down in the manual.
| grogenaut wrote:
| I mean honestly I have this issue with every level of
| compute device. Smart phones are much more limited than
| computers and so much stuff is buried. But then think
| about the absolutes gigantic amount of undocumented
| buried stuff that exists on Windows and Linux and macOS.
| You have a keyboard and internets and a mouse and it's
| still literally millions of people's jobs to deal with UI
| issues on these devices professionaly.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| It's hard to decide if I prefer Android not having a
| setting I want or Windows having 9 settings panels where
| that setting might live.
| llimllib wrote:
| I don't swim, but I have done thousands of runs with my
| series of garmin watches and I can say that the UX for them
| is spectacular, everything is in a sensible place for me to
| do without thinking.
|
| Not sure what problems you've had with it specifically
| abraxas wrote:
| Getting into the swim app itself takes a couple of
| different buttons presses. But then it tries to be both
| too smart and too stupid at the same time. All I wanted
| to begin with was lap counting with a big number on the
| centre of the display. Can't configure it and can't even
| start to get it to count laps without some ceremony of
| setting up interval training and it only gets more
| convoluted from there. It's useless for an amateur like
| me who is not a peak performance athlete who needs to
| track every minutiae of their swim stats. How many people
| are they targeting with these this UX? Just people
| getting ready for the Olympics? There are hundreds of
| them. Hundreds!
| nradov wrote:
| I don't think you're being serious. I have had several
| Garmin watches and this is not an actual problem. I do
| both pool swim and open water activities and it's very
| easy to count laps. Sometimes I set up structured
| workouts but that's completely optional.
| grogenaut wrote:
| My vivoactive 5 swimming is top right button short press
| (activities) scroll tap swim. Top right to start. Screen
| shows only interval time and distance or laps
| (configurable). Bottom goes to interval rest. Lots more
| data and a rest timer. Bottom starts swimming again. Top
| stops the activity. Long press top to save, bottom to
| discard.
|
| All operations are buttons because the touch doesn't work
| well with water on basically every device.
|
| Literally 3 clicks to a large lap counter.
| abraxas wrote:
| > scroll tap swim
|
| this watch has no touch interface. any scrolling and
| selecting has to be done via the five buttons which I
| ALWAYS somehow get wrong. Who on this beautiful earth
| thought it was sane to make the bottom right button be
| the "Back" button in a L2R (English) locale?
| grogenaut wrote:
| you replied to a thread talking about garmin watches...
| not the pebble
| nradov wrote:
| I really can't understand what you're complaining about.
| There's nothing about the English locale which implies an
| optimal placement for the Back button. The same devices
| are also sold in other locales.
|
| These devices have to work in all conditions with some
| complex functionality available through only five buttons
| so some level of overlap is unavoidable. Do you also
| complain that your computer keyboard lacks separate
| buttons for "4" and "$"?
| _thisdot wrote:
| Ideally, in LTR locales, we move from left to right. This
| means that objects appear from the right side of the
| screen (as going forward would mean going right), and a
| back button is more intuitively perceived on the left
| side.
| nradov wrote:
| No, that's not how it works. Especially not on a wrist
| device.
| dqv wrote:
| ?
|
| https://crossvine.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/2025012
| 8_0...
|
| But I'd have to try actually swimming with it I guess. It
| always counts my reps in strength training pretty
| accurately.
|
| Edit: But then again, if you want to manually track laps,
| the swimming app doesn't matter. It's only there for the
| convenience of not having to press a button to increment
| the counter. You can just copy the "other" activity, name
| it something like "manual swim" with the lap button
| enabled. The only thing that differentiates the swim
| activity from a regular activity is setting the pool
| length, stroke detection, and automatic lap incrementing.
| The data is still getting logged the same way as far as I
| can tell, so using the "other" activity would give you
| all the data you need to track the swim.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Sounds like you might need to turn off a few defaults to
| make it easier.
|
| It should just be a case of pressing the start button,
| navigating to the pool swim activity and pressing start.
|
| Use the lap button to record rest intervals at the wall,
| everything else is automatic
| michaelt wrote:
| Garmin is certainly better than some previous
| smartwatches I've had. You get a sunlight-readable,
| always-on display and a week-long battery life.
|
| But with my Forerunner, they've packed a lot of options
| into the five buttons. Leads to a lot of "these buttons
| are for up and down, except at the start run screen where
| the up button opens the menu, which you can then navigate
| with up and down to choose between the six types of run,
| or exit with the back button"
|
| If you're the type of person who doesn't like to read the
| manual, you're going to have a bad time.
| Fnoord wrote:
| My Fossil HR Collider lasted 4 weeks. It could do much
| (but not all) of the stuff my Pebble Classic/Pebble 2
| could do. Both could control music during workout, pick
| up calls, put radios off. What I liked most about it is
| it could disguise as a non-smartwatch. On top of that,
| Pebble 2 HRM was bad.
|
| A Pebble successor has to be better than a Pebble 2. The
| only reason my Pebble 2 isn't used anymore (and why I
| swapped to Fossil which is discontinued, too) is hardware
| buttons died. I tried to donor from a Pebble Classic, but
| sadly failed.
|
| On top of all this, I get skin rashes from watches, so I
| cannot wear them 24/7.
| jeffbee wrote:
| My Garmin has a dedicated hardware button that says "LAP"
| alex-korr wrote:
| What are you even talking about? Garmin has an auto
| start/stop feature for lap swimming. All you need to do is
| single press top right button once to start the session and
| press the same button to stop and then another button to
| save it. It will literally do everything else for you
| automatically.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| Don't some Garmin watches support long press app launch?
| rafaelmn wrote:
| I really like vivomove looks but after buying lux as a gift
| for my wife I think I will steer clear. App was bad, syncing
| issues, she wore it for a while because she liked how it
| looks but I think she has not charged it in over a year
| because of how much the experience sucks compared to apple
| watch or even withings.
|
| I have a withings scanwatch right now, the app is nice,
| ecosystem is nice - but accuracy is very underwhelming.
|
| I would pay 1k for a watch that
|
| - is hybrid with subtle watch aesthetic and minimal
| display/vibration for notifications
|
| - has Apple watch level metric accuracy
|
| - has week long battery life
|
| - ideally would have replaceable battery but not a deal
| breaker if warranty is 3 years
| synecdoche wrote:
| 2 short taps on the top button on Garmin Venu Sq 2 when
| swimming is the default activity. It counts laps
| automatically. It can be setup to display 2--4 statistics
| during the swim. Now if someone could explain what the
| other thing is that appears for a few seconds when changing
| direction at the wall in the pool is, and how to disable
| it, that would be useful. Two counters, one in large font
| and below one in small font. Typically they start at, or
| are, 0.
| seanhunter wrote:
| Probably SWOLF? Which is a measure of your stroke
| efficiency
| https://thirdcoasttraining.com/2024/11/22/understanding-
| swol...
| Steltek wrote:
| My Pebble Time Steel finally bit the dust so I turned to a
| Garmin Instinct. I can't stand it. The button placement is
| totally random and legitimately painful to use. The Garmin
| software focuses on fitness activities to the exclusion of
| everything else.
|
| I recoil at having been tempted by the more expensive Garmin
| watches. What a waste of money that would have been!
| m_kos wrote:
| You could always sell it. <hint hint>
| asdff wrote:
| I can't get over garmins predatory business model. The way
| they bin their products by activity is terrible if you have
| multiple hobbies. All of these devices are just a gps
| reciever, screen, battery, yet they sell it to you a dozen
| different ways for $500+ a pop usually because why unify the
| software and make it easy for the consumer?
| wingerlang wrote:
| > why unify the software and make it easy for the consumer
|
| I honestly believe that selling them as separate products
| is easier. Both for the company who can focus in on the
| advertising, and for 99% of the customers who can go
| straight to their hobby.
|
| That being said, it does look like the very first watch on
| their website is specifically in its own multi-sport
| category.
| asdff wrote:
| They only offer that for watches and often certain
| features are cribbed within that watch vs the dedicated
| sport one (I know this is the case for the golf line
| where the multi sport watch have limited featureset).
| Really I want the head unit. Thats what people want on
| their bikes. Thats what people use hiking. Thats what I
| like for golf just something smaller than my wallet to
| slip into my pocket (incidentally I carry a simple
| bushnell gps that goes for a fraction of the price). But
| Garmin doesn't offer that. If I want all of that I need
| three units, one for the bike, the garmin approach, and
| one of their hiking units. Really therre is nothing
| stopping any of these devices from offering the same
| functions but an insistence of binning these into
| different skus in the hopes of selling multiples to
| someone who already shells out on multiple personal
| hobbies. No advantage to the consumer with how it is
| lined up, only pain.
| bdavbdav wrote:
| That's just marketing surely? Is there any activity that
| you'd want, apart from diving, missing from a fenix/epix?
| asdff wrote:
| The watches are terrible replacements for the dedicated
| unit for activities like cycling, hiking, even golfing
| imo (don't like anything like that on my wrist).
| david422 wrote:
| There are some models that basically do them all - fenix,
| epix etc.
| asdff wrote:
| Watches, not gps units. Why is the garmin approach unit
| and garmin bike gps different products? why cant I get a
| unit that can do both of these things and also abrogate
| hiking trail maps? Storage is dirt cheap in 2025 is it
| not? So I don't think its a matter of cramming a limited
| number of functions on a few kb internal storage like the
| old days.
| seanhunter wrote:
| Garmin is the perfect solution if you want a smart watch with
| a gps that takes 5mins to possibly sync 50% of the time and a
| touchscreen-only interface that doesn't work if it gets wet
| or say sweaty. Ie during most of the activities it's
| supposedly designed for.
|
| When I got a garmin smartwatch I was astounded by how poor
| the basic ux is in almost every single way. If I'm swimming,
| how do I stop my work out? The touchscreen doesn't work
| because it's wet. I have to do some sort of double click of
| the button. No that's pause. Maybe triple click - no that
| didn't do anything. Maybe hold the button? Now it wants to
| delete my whole workout.
|
| And the GPS sync thing amazes me. I put up with this problem
| when I was using garmin GPSs for accurate time sync for
| servers back in the 1990s, but 25+ years later for them not
| to have figured it out when literally every other GPS device
| does it just fine completely blows my mind. Apple watch? I
| want to go for a walk/run/whatever I hit go. If I move during
| the 3-2-1 countdown nbd it figures it out. Garmin I want to
| do it I hit go, it tries to sync the sattelites. If I move
| during this process it starts from scratch. Sometimes the
| sync takes 30 seconds or so. Annoying but not impossible to
| live with. Most of the time however the sync takes 30seconds
| or so and just fails. Also annoying but whatever. Some of the
| time however the sync takes a few minutes and then fails. And
| if I move at all during this, it gives me a message saying
| it's going to have to start again and starts from scratch.
|
| And to add insult to injury the thing has a custom charging
| plug with the socket on the back of the watch. It has a ridge
| and two spikes that physically press into my wrist making it
| actually painful to wear. So bad.
| primozk wrote:
| Which Garmin to you have? This isn't my experience. And you
| have option to buy Garmin watches with actual buttons, I
| agree the touch-screen only are useless.
| khasan222 wrote:
| Im not OP, but this sounds like the garmin instinct.
| Levitating wrote:
| I own both the original Insticnt and the Instinct 2. OP
| is not talking about the Instinct.
|
| The Instinct does not have touchscreen, instead it has a
| monocolor LCD that's always on. It also has an intuitive
| UI with just 5 buttons on the side.
| seanhunter wrote:
| Garmin vivoactive 5 I think. It's in the bottom of a
| drawer of shame somewhere. Possibly the worst consumer
| gadget purchase I have ever made which is quite some
| achievement.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I've received a basic Garmin watch for my 5 years
| anniversary with the company I work for and I don't use as:
|
| -The app has dark patterns like: you need to put a weight
| and height before you proceed with the setup, even though
| you can remove those later.
|
| -Step counter quite simply doesn't work, as it grossly
| overestimates the count.
|
| -5 day battery life. Not terrible, but also not practical.
|
| -Notifications. All. The. Time. And about some "fitness
| goals" I don't remember setting. I have enough distractions
| from my phone thank you very much.
|
| Who is the target audience for this?
| lloeki wrote:
| Height and weight are key metrics to compute e.g BMI and
| VO2max.
|
| The only notifications I get are when an activity gets
| synced, and I did not set up anything particular, it's
| all default in that regard.
| Levitating wrote:
| > The app has dark patterns like: you need to put a
| weight and height before you proceed with the setup, even
| though you can remove those later.
|
| That's not a dark pattern. A fitness watch has to know
| your weight and height for basically all of its fitness
| related functions...
| Tade0 wrote:
| What if I'm not interested in those and just want the
| text notifications and maybe my pulse?
| lloeki wrote:
| This may be model/generation dependent.
|
| I've had such issues with my Forerunner 735xt (from the
| very start), but ever since I upgraded - or seen friends
| using - newer hardware, these issues have entirely
| disappeared.
|
| e.g I've traced sync issues to some problem in the BT
| stack: forcing a disconnect/reconnect made it sync without
| fail. GPS was slow to lock because of low storage thus no
| AGPS data.
|
| The situation with "new" hardware is completely different.
|
| GPS lock is ~instant, by the time I get out of my RF bunker
| of a home I have a lock by the time I have moved the arm to
| press the start activity button.
|
| Sync is subsecond usually, and takes mere seconds when it
| "catches up" due to phone being away from watch for a
| while.
|
| Touchscreen is handy sometimes but a mere occasional bonus
| convenience in specific occasions: the main input mechanism
| is squarely buttons. I mean touch for watches is kinda
| braindead as an input mechanism since a finger covers so
| much of an area, obscuring a quarter of the screen.
|
| UI and menu organisation felt very odd at the beginning,
| but after a while I started understanding how and why it's
| laid out this way.
|
| It is a very alien interface at first but it absolutely
| makes sense, and the amount of things one can do straight
| from the watch is insane. I mean you can never ever sync
| the watch to Garmin Connect and still have a massive amount
| of features. It's essentially completely autonomous,
| something I used to great effect when their system was
| brought down because of IIRC a malware attack.
| timanderson wrote:
| Opposite experience here. Went from Apple Watch to Garmin,
| couldn't be happier. Never had an issue with the charging
| point chafing, it is recessed and no problem. Buttons to
| start/stop/pause/resume activity work as expected, so much
| better than trying to swipe and tap the Apple Watch screen
| especially in wet conditions. GPS sync never been an issue
| for me, you can start an activity before it syncs and it
| figures it out.
| hk__2 wrote:
| > GPS sync never been an issue for me, you can start an
| activity before it syncs and it figures it out.
|
| I've had a lot of issues with this, like going running 15
| km and it registers only the last 10 km. My workflow now
| is to put the watch on the balcony while it finds the
| satellites, and then go out when it's done.
| selykg wrote:
| Never had this happen to me. Admittedly I am in a very
| rural area, and while I do sometimes get some gps points
| that are "off" it's generally very fast and accurate.
| Basically all the errors I've personally run into fall
| into what I'd consider acceptable margin of error.
|
| Even in heavy tree cover on a remote island for a hike
| last year. It (Garmin Instinct 2X) was incredibly
| accurate.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| The metal in the charging point can cause some allergic
| reactions, nothing a small silicone cap doesn't fix
| though
| haltcatchfire wrote:
| I've been using Fenix 5 and then Fenix 7 for many years now
| and I don't recognize any of the points you're making. I
| might agree on the awful charging port, but that's fixed by
| getting one of the cheap charging "pads" from Amazon.
| tallanvor wrote:
| I had a Fenix 3 for over 5 years and I've had an Epix 2 for
| close to 3 years now and I don't have any of those
| problems. GPS normally takes about 30 seconds, and
| certainly under a minute. It has 5 buttons and for the
| first year I kept the touchscreen off completely until my
| bank started supporting Garmin Pay.
|
| Yeah, it does use a custom charging cable, but the one for
| the Fenix 3 was solid and since I only charged it once a
| week (more than I really needed to) it wasn't a problem.
| The Epix 2 gets charged twice a week since it has the
| AMOLED screen and I keep it always on and I record workouts
| at least 6 times a week unless I'm on vacation. But still,
| the charge points are inset so they're not noticeable.
| eps wrote:
| > And the GPS sync thing amazes me.
|
| If the watch was recently synced with the app to get
| current GPS ephemrides, it gets the lock within seconds.
| Otherwise, it may take much longer _just like any other GPS
| device with outdated ephemerides_.
| seanhunter wrote:
| Neither of your two statements coincides with my
| experience at all.
|
| My garmin watch needed to be synced every time and it was
| always slow, and my garmin GPS on my motorcycle was the
| same. For example I once remember it trying and failing
| and eventually succeeding to sync during my walk from the
| tube through the parks to work one morning and then
| trying and failing and staying failed during my walk from
| work to the tube that evening. I was wearing the watch
| the entire day, so there was no possibility of it losing
| lock or whatever other than the obvious, which is it is
| just a really terrible device. Before I ditched it
| entirely I totally gave up on any gps functionality - it
| just was too high friction for too little payoff.
|
| Secondly literally no other GPS device that I own has a
| noticeable "sync" or "lock" at all. They all use
| reasonable heuristics to get started and then improve
| their resolution as they go. If they ever lose GPS lock I
| don't know about it except maybe a "map glitch" where I
| seem temporarily to be in the middle of a building
| instead of the street outside or whatever. The garmin
| takes ages, frequently fails to sync and sometimes also
| loses GPS lock while I'm doing an activity, and when it
| does that it ditches progress and pukes in the most
| inconvenient way possible.
|
| I'm not in the middle of nowhere and there are no tall
| buildings near me. I am in London in zone 2 so there is
| exceptional coverage as you would expect.
| bool3max wrote:
| I recently picked up the entry-level Forerunner 55 as my
| first ever "smart watch" and its lack of touch-screen
| controls and the 5 tactile buttons are my favorite things
| about it.
| bdavbdav wrote:
| What garmin is this? My Epix (just a Fenix 7 with a fancy
| screen) seems to hit GPS near instantly, and you can
| disable the touchscreen. AFAIK it's only the very basic
| ones / fashion smartwatches that are touch only (or touch
| and one or two buttons)
| sneeze-slayer wrote:
| Garmin instinct fixes this. Rugged, physical buttons with a
| battery life that last weeks. It's true about the special
| charger, but there are also usb-c adapters.
| Levitating wrote:
| I don't know what model you have, but this isn't my
| experience at all.
|
| I own both the Instinct and Instinct 2, which have no
| touchscreen but an always-on monocolor LCD. I also have
| absolutely none of your GPS issues.
|
| My dad was so impressed with my Instinct he bought a
| second-hand Fenix which also has none of your issues.
|
| And all the Garmins I know have a charging port which is
| flush with the back of the watch.
| Gasp0de wrote:
| You must have gotten a weird Garmin that doesn't suit your
| needs then. Why did you get a Garmin with a touch screen,
| when you really wanted buttons and Garmin offers watches
| with buttons?
|
| And I believe the GPS sync is necessary when you don't have
| an internet connection on the watch.
| Levitating wrote:
| I absolutely love my Garmin instict. It has an always-on
| display and a battery that lasts for nearly a month.
|
| I mostly use it for reading my calendar, weather,
| notifications and time. Occasionally I use it for exercise.
|
| But what it also excels at is GPS. I use it as a backup
| navigational tool when sailing. It has also prevented me from
| getting lost when running in the woods a number of times.
| echelon wrote:
| Feels a little bit salty to send customers to Google's
| competitor given the fact that Google provided the exit and
| also liberated the code. They didn't have to do that.
|
| A better "thank you" to Google would be to direct people to
| Fitbit.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| It's just a joke I think. But yeah linking to the pixel watch
| would have been nicer.
| erohead wrote:
| Good call, I just changed it to send to pixel watch if opened
| on Android or Windows!
| alex_young wrote:
| I think it's perfect actually.
|
| Google used to (still?) have a page internally where if you
| clicked on "I don't care about security" it sent you to the
| jobs page of a competitor that had suffered a notable breach.
|
| Very on point.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| I thought they killed FitBit and are doing Pixel Watch again
| instead
|
| https://store.google.com/product/pixel_watch_3
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" A better "thank you" to Google would be to direct people
| to Fitbit."_
|
| Fitbit has already gone off to the great Google graveyard,
| unfortunately.
| shaklee3 wrote:
| no. they just released the Fitbit ace
| imp0cat wrote:
| Cue Monty Python's Dead Parrot sketch. :)
|
| Fitbit isn't dead yet, but it's not doing great either.
| And the alternatives kinda suck (tldr; the best choice is
| probably a Garmin for 3x as much money and with less
| features ).
| eloisant wrote:
| The feature I use the most on my smartwatch is paying.
|
| So if they can bring contactless payments to their new Pebble
| they have my attention, otherwise it's useless to me.
| jsheard wrote:
| I wouldn't count on that, getting every bank on board is a
| massive undertaking. Even Garmin Pay and Fitbit Pay (before
| it was folded into Google Wallet) have/had huge gaps in their
| coverage, especially outside of the US.
| ZeWaka wrote:
| There exists 'smart bands', which can be applied to any
| (generally non-smart, obviously) watch that uses normal pin-
| style watchbands. They have a contactless chip in them that
| can store one card. My traditional watches use them, though I
| had to custom-make one of the bands to be in a style I
| wanted.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| That is awesome... Any links? Any risk vectors I may be
| missing?
| ryukafalz wrote:
| From what I've seen these aren't available in the US,
| unless I've missed one. (I would be very interested if so!)
| miki123211 wrote:
| How do those handle user authentication and card
| installation?
|
| I assume you need support from your bank for the former and
| PINs for the latter?
| gvurrdon wrote:
| It's a major use of the watch for me also, but something
| like a Pebble 2 HR would tempt me to abandon payments. Do
| you have any links to examples of these bands you've found
| useful?
| urbandw311er wrote:
| You could cut out the chip from a debit card and glue it to
| the back of the pebble?
| jsheard wrote:
| It's not quite that easy since the NFC antenna extends
| beyond the chip.
|
| Still doable though, as demonstrated by Bobby Fingers:
| https://youtu.be/NF4VJJKTjy8?t=825
| 4k93n2 wrote:
| haha thats too funny. i wonder if his eye starts to heat
| if he buys too many drinks
| edarchis wrote:
| The amount of us who clicked no is amazing. I loved my Pebble
| Time but I'm going to give money to yet another Kickstarter and
| have it be killed shortly after.
| cryptozeus wrote:
| why not redirect to google watches specially if the team is
| from goodle !
| ratg13 wrote:
| Will you have nice looking ones? or will they all be
| "sporty/plastic" types?
| jaapz wrote:
| Pebble time round was very pretty IMHO, let's hope they go more
| that way this time
| donjoe0 wrote:
| Huge bezel though. Would've got it if not for the bezel, I
| really wanted to make a custom 24h watchface for a Round.
| Went for the Time Steel instead. Hope in this new leg of the
| journey they can get a Round to have bezel coverage more on
| par with the rectangular models.
| jaapz wrote:
| Agreed, the bezel was too big! I had a time steel as well,
| but it had a huge bezel too. I'm partial to the round
| designs anyway and let's hope the technology has improved
| so much that the bezel can be removed completely
| donjoe0 wrote:
| Ehh, I don't even think super-miniaturized components are
| needed to improve that ratio - it was already the
| thinnest smartwatch ever, I imagine some clever component
| rearranging and accepting a bit more thickness could get
| us some visible bezel reduction.
| mrinterweb wrote:
| I noticed my mouth had been hanging agape for a while while
| reading this. This is huge news. I feel like Pebble is the
| smartwatch that got it right the first time. So many smartwatches
| try to replace the phone instead of being an extension of the
| phone. Pebble seemed to better understand what is important than
| most smartwatches by being the extension of the phone, a focus on
| battery life and always on displays.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| You should have a look at he Garmin instinct 2x. They've nailed
| it.
| abraxas wrote:
| Bah! They nailed what exactly? It's so mofing complex to use
| I hurled it at a wall (literally) and then gave it away to my
| son. A $600 CAD watch that I could not stand to use without
| seething.
| brian-armstrong wrote:
| You might want to invest some of that money in anger
| management classes
| abraxas wrote:
| Ha! It's a testament to their great hardware though! I
| did not even scratch the watch by throwing it full force
| again a hard surface.
| taneq wrote:
| If a smartwatch requires anger management classes in
| order to use successfully, that might indicate something
| about the watch. :P
| eps wrote:
| ... or expectations.
| Steltek wrote:
| I have a Garmin Instinct 2. They definitely did not nail it.
| It's horrible in all respects. It's HUGE, physically painful
| to use, and the UI must have been written by 10 different
| teams who weren't talking to each other.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| The Withings ScanWatch was the right fit for me. Unfortunately
| the HR sensor stopped working recently and the water resistant
| seal broke, and it's out of warranty, so it's in a drawer. But
| IMO that was the right idea: analog time, discrete
| notifications, ppg/ekg sensors, 2-week battery life.
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| I loved my scanwatch, but it lacked the feature set of any
| smart watch for fitness tracking. I hope daily for them to
| release an improved version.
| morsch wrote:
| I like my Fossil watch. Similar to Withings, less health
| features, marginally smarter. Analog watchface in front of an
| eink display, 3-4 weeks battery life. Of course they got
| discontinued as well.
| teetertater wrote:
| These are truly the best! And I've done a lot of research.
| Nowadays there are some smaller luxury brands that are
| closer with feature parity but not quite. The original
| Fossil team spun off to develop some kind of general watch
| platform, so I'm hopeful we'll see a remake by the time my
| fossil kicks out.
| martin_a wrote:
| Mine broke down but I got it repaired by Fossil after some
| time for 60 Euro. Meanwhile I bought a Garmin, now the
| repaired Fossil sits in a drawer. Not sure what to do with
| it. Maybe gift it to someone, but softwarer support is
| probably getting worse.
| lopis wrote:
| I don't like analog watches. I wish there was a watch like
| the basic casio I use but smart, but not huge and rugged like
| a G-Shock. If pebble releases a modern version of their
| watch, I might finally buy a smartwatch.
| Cadwhisker wrote:
| I released a free watch face for the FitBit Versa (pre-
| Google) which emulated a Casio-style LCD. I can't remember
| the name, but you can get paid ones which look decent:
|
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.azya.fitb
| i...
| filoleg wrote:
| What are you looking for in a smartwatch?
|
| Casio has smaller G-Shock smartwatches (not just the giant
| circular ones) that track your activity, heartrate, etc.
| But if you want smartphone notifications, then yeah, sadly
| you are out of luck.
|
| I am totally with you overall, though. I feel that if
| someone were to nail it, it would be Casio.
| pestaa wrote:
| The GBD-200 I have can receive notifications.
| bartvk wrote:
| What I encountered with smartwatches like the Xiaomi Mi
| Band, is that they display notifications but their font
| has a tiny subset of emoji.
|
| So when friend send a simple "thumbs up", it displays the
| Unicode replacement character.
|
| How does the Casio do it?
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| Sounds like a Garmin Forerunner (255? 265?) with a custom
| watch face might fit the bill.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Amazfit watches.
| Y_Y wrote:
| https://www.sensorwatch.net/
|
| I haven't made one myself because last I checked it was a
| hassle to ship, but this might be what you're looking for,
| F91-W exterior with minimally smart replacement innards.
| abcd_f wrote:
| The _idea_ is nice. The implementation is a bit gaudy design-
| wise (subjective, granted) and flakey on the hardware side,
| with the HR sensor accuracy being the main issue.
| Cadwhisker wrote:
| I prefer technology that hides from view, so the Withings
| watches suit me as well.
|
| The biggest downside is that the battery does not seem to be
| user-replaceable, so the 1 month of run-time I used to get
| slowly fades down to about a week or two after a couple of
| years of use. I can't go away for more than a week now
| without bringing the charger.
| Peanuts99 wrote:
| Mines 8 years old at this point (so old it's a Nokia
| branded one) and it still lasts 3-4 weeks. I wonder why
| it's held up better?
| Y-bar wrote:
| I agree (a ScanWatch 2 owner here) that batteries should be
| user-replaceable. And that the fact that it is missing from
| my watch is a negative thing.
|
| However, it is a very minor thing when the battery lasts as
| long as it does. If it holds 80% capacity like most other
| batteries today at 300, or more, cycles it would take over
| 10 years for the battery to degrade significantly
| considering each cycle is up to 30 days.
| ost-ing wrote:
| I have one, I use it nearly every day, battery can last
| upward of a whole month. They stopped updating the original
| model though which is frustrating because newer models have
| more features, but im almost certain the hardware is
| virtually identical.
|
| I would like more transparency on how long each device gets
| updates for, similar to how Apple handles their products.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| I really like the Withings, but I've killed two of them in
| about a year each (shattered the face on one, failed seal
| leading to water ingress on the other). Meanwhile I have a
| draw full of older watches/smartwatches that are all in
| perfect working order, so this feels like build/QC problems
| specifically on their end.
| sureglymop wrote:
| I love my Withings watch but I wish I didn't have to use
| their app and could instead get the data directly. I tried to
| reverse engineer their bluetooth based protocol in the past
| but didn't get far because I don't have much experience with
| bluetooth.
|
| I then looked at what http requests their app makes which was
| more straightforward and actually interesting but still not
| what I wanted... I hope I will find the time to try again
| soon.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Their app syncs with the Apple Health app (which is
| better), so that's what I use (and one reason why I like
| Withings)
| andrewblossom wrote:
| Have you reached out to them? I've found their customer
| support even for out-of-warranty items to be fantastic.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I hadn't; I should try.
| Vampiero wrote:
| I literally just bought a LTE watch because I hate phones, I
| never use mine, and I keep forgetting it anyway. I'd rather
| have a watch with an eSIM
| nejsjsjsbsb wrote:
| Would you wear a Pebble too?
| amelius wrote:
| I would do this too, but in some venues you have to pay by
| scanning QR codes, which makes it impossible without camera.
|
| And I don't want this:
|
| https://wristcam.com/blogs/learn/do-apple-watches-have-
| camer...
| weberer wrote:
| They have QR payments, but no NFT? That doesn't seem right.
| pbmonster wrote:
| Outside the US, third party payment apps are popular,
| since they often don't require a credit card. But since
| Apple refuses third parties access to the NFT hardware,
| those apps almost universally have to use QR payments. It
| works OK, because most payment terminals have a display
| with sufficient resolution for a QR code anyway.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Outside the US, modern banking is available, and credit
| cards are unnecessary.
| pbmonster wrote:
| How do you use "modern banking" to pay contact-less for a
| coffee using an iPhone, and can you use the same method
| to send a friend $5?
| berkes wrote:
| NFC payments with cards. Payments based on proximity.
| Payment requests over chat etc etc.
|
| Please. By all means, get out there. And look around and
| be amazed by how inventive people are.
|
| How cultural differences form technological preferences.
| How people in one country send eachother billions a year
| via Tikkie, in another country pay at all shops via their
| chat app. How unbanked in many places pay with SMS
| credit. Or how many people pay fast and easy with QR.
|
| Your bubble isn't "the best for everyone" it's just one
| of many options. One that you and your peers probably
| prefer.
| pbmonster wrote:
| But this is exactly my point. Those apps exist, and are
| popular. But they can't use NFC because of Apple's
| limitations on hardware APIs. So, QR payments are
| popular.
|
| All those apps would use NFC for many of those use cases
| if they could. Which brings us back to the start of this
| discussion: which use case has QR payment, but not NFC
| (and thus requiring a camera in addition to a NFC chip in
| a smart watch)? Answer: the huge (international) market
| of non-NFC payment/ticketing apps.
| berkes wrote:
| A trust box, for example. Or a simple donation option.
| The ticket (pay what you want) at my favorite punk gig in
| town. Etc.
|
| In e.g. the Netherlands, the majority of payments go via
| a payment system iDeal1. Its easy to start an ideal
| payment with a QR code. It's, by my knowledge, impossible
| to do so via NFC - other than via Apple Pay or Google
| Wallet.
|
| Then, there are vast fleets of phones out there that
| don't even have NFC. I wouldn't be suprised if a majority
| of phones in use today don't have nfc chips on board.
|
| And, a large section of the population won't switch on
| NFC even. For battery. For privacy, for fear etc. If not
| for scanning my glucose meter, I would've switched off
| NFC by default. I'm no tinfoil hat, but 30+ years of
| software development and hackery has kept me weary of
| such stuff.
|
| 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDEAL, which, as former
| developer in dutch fintech, is far from what the name
| suggests ;).
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| There's an account number on the register, you send money
| to it by app or web. For others a debit card will work.
| Apple is not required.
|
| You can send a friend 25 cents for half a cookie or ten
| thousand for a deposit on an apartment, all free.
| Smithalicious wrote:
| If your world is limited to the US and western Europe,
| sure.
| mopenstein wrote:
| In my home country of Smugistan, greatest country in
| world, banks unnecessary. Check-outs take money directly
| from brain waves using technology invented by
| Smugistanian super computers. Money is crypto backed
| generated from farts released by citizens of Smugistan.
| Also, farts smell like roses.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > you have to pay by scanning QR codes
|
| I've never encountered that, but that sounds like a venue
| that doesn't want my money anyway.
| amelius wrote:
| It happens a lot in societies where people know and trust
| each other.
|
| Often you can even buy drinks by scanning a QR code,
| paying, and then grabbing a drink from the fridge. With
| nobody else involved.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| While not disagreeing with what you said, such "grab a
| drink from the fridge" things are always in a monitored
| environment. There are no unlocked public fridges even
| hyper-high trust societies like Japan or Dubai.
| amatecha wrote:
| Pretty sure I yelled something like "yoooo no way!!" :D too
| awesome.
| xyst wrote:
| The Apple Watch Ultra has worked wonders for me in terms of
| battery life and "always on display".
|
| My only wish is for an easily serviceable battery.
| shinycode wrote:
| And not that expensive :(
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > The Apple Watch Ultra has worked wonders for me in terms of
| battery life
|
| It's not really playing in the same ballpark, though, is it?
|
| 48 hours of battery life is indeed very good for an Apple
| Watch, but I used to charge my Pebble maybe once a week, and
| my Withings Scanwatch about once every 3 weeks...
| maccard wrote:
| They don't have to be the same to allow for the same
| freedom. Personally a 36 hour battery is just not a problem
| for me - I charge my watch when I shower and occasionally
| for 15-30m before bed. I'd be taking a real watch off
| during those times anyway.
|
| I'd much much much rather have a device with a 2-3 day
| battery life that's more powerful than one than runs for 2
| weeks. 2 weeks gets into the "will I have to charge my
| watch randomly today" category of use, which is exactly the
| same problem a lot of people have with EV's
| djur wrote:
| The Fitbit watches are the closest thing I've gotten to a
| Pebble (and I'd be wearing a fitness tracker anyway), but
| they're way more locked down.
| dariosalvi78 wrote:
| BangleJs is totally hackable
| rossng wrote:
| So cool that you were able to make this happen. I backed Pebble
| on Kickstarter in 2012 and no smartwatch has ever really appealed
| to me since then.
|
| The screen on my original Pebble died a long time ago and I've
| always wondered whether I should try to bring it back to life.
| Perhaps now is the time!
| Daneel_ wrote:
| I had two (an OG kickstarter pebble, and the steel), and also
| suffered screen death. The battery life was incredible, but I
| don't know that I could give up the standalone features that
| the apple watch ultra 2 has. On-device Siri, tap to pay,
| calling without the phone nearby.. I hate the digital crown
| though, and it could use a proper torch like the Garmin watches
| have, so it's far from perfect.
| amatecha wrote:
| There was a hack "solution" to fix the display by putting a
| piece of cardboard or paper behind it to keep the connection
| good. I was able to get my OG pebble working again until it was
| finally replaced by an Apple Watch I was gifted quite some time
| later (like a year or two!) :)
| solarkraft wrote:
| I'm wearing my Pebble Time Steel right now and the biggest issue
| I have with it (maintaining the app) is arguably mostly Apple's
| fault.
|
| I was originally pissed that Pebble never sold replacement parts
| (actually I still am), but at least this hardware has been
| holding up extremely well.
| blackdisk wrote:
| Ifixit had some pieces and I got a Pebble 2 screen and bezel
| from Ali Express. Your point is still valid.
| ggm wrote:
| Australia and Nea Zealand are "other" ?? Ok, I guess. If it's
| about economy scale, makes sense.
| AiAi wrote:
| This guy is now behind two of the products that I wish the most:
| the Small Android Phone and the Pebble watch. I hope they
| succeed! :)
| edwintorok wrote:
| Do you have a link to the 'Small Android Phone'?
| SweetLlamaMyth wrote:
| Looks like it's https://smallandroidphone.com/
| screaminghawk wrote:
| Which phone is this? I recently got a Unihertz Jelly Star 2 as
| it was the only decent "small Android" option I found while
| researching.
| infotainment wrote:
| I like the idea of their products, but I just wish Unihertz
| wasn't so sketchy -- they refuse to release any kernel
| sources. (Which is in direct violation of the GPL!)
| follower wrote:
| Thank you for mentioning this detail again.
|
| I generally remember that there's _some_ problematic issue
| with Unihertz but often seem to manage to forget exactly
| _which_ issue it is.
|
| Non-compliance with the GPL is frustratingly common (over a
| huge range of company sizes too).
|
| Not at helped by the fact that the community managed to
| (stupidly) burn bridges with the one person who seemed to
| be effecting actual change within Chinese companies with
| regard to GPL compliance.
| david422 wrote:
| I signed up for updates from https://smallandroidphone.com/
| back in 2022 and have seen nothing since :( I think it's dead.
| minimalengineer wrote:
| Great device -- lasted 4 years, woke me at 5 AM without
| disturbing my kids, and handled notifications well. Battery life
| was about a week, and it was swim-proof. That said, it was
| cheap... I hope this new version isn't part of the "dumb" device
| trend where people spend $500 just to detox, thinking the price
| will force commitment.
| OccamsMirror wrote:
| At the same time, I hope it's priced high enough so that the
| company can thrive without taking external funding. PE and VC
| fuck everything up.
| xnx wrote:
| Pebble and Basis Peak (https://www.engadget.com/2016-08-09-basis-
| peak-obituary.html) are the two biggest smartwatch losses, and
| probably top 10 gadget losses of all time. Glad to see one of
| them might have a future.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Never heard of Basis Peak, but I've heard of Pebble for over 10
| years.
| trescenzi wrote:
| The Basis was incredible. It had heath monitoring features
| Apple is just getting to. I get why it died though. Their V2
| exploded on people's wrists...
| xnx wrote:
| I've had at least two watch purchases fully refunded because
| of similar issues (or lawsuits related to claims of issues at
| least): https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/05/lawsuit-
| claims-more-...
| xattt wrote:
| In an alternate timeline, we are all wearing Pebbles synced to
| our Palm Pres.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| This is amazing and I'm so glad this is happening. Please
| consider keeping the version of the Pebble OS running on the new
| watches open source to preserve access to it going forward, and
| if you can keep the hardware designs OSHW as well that would be
| even better.
|
| I love my Pebble and want them to stay available for as long as
| possible!
| addcn wrote:
| Congrats Eric!
| jai_ wrote:
| I'm somewhat confused to why Google needed to open source the
| original Pebble source code for this project to exist?
|
| Was it not possible to already create a comparible e-ink screen,
| long life battery, smart watch without the source code? Is it the
| pebble branding itself that is important somehow?
| marcel_hecko wrote:
| As per blog post:
|
| "PebbleOS took dozens of engineers working over 4 years to
| build..."
| lazerwalker wrote:
| Just basing things off of Android won't get you the "measured
| in days to weeks" battery life people appreciated about the
| Pebble, and building your own watch OS from scratch optimized
| for battery life but still supporting BLE connection to a phone
| sounds like a great way to spend several years.
| Avamander wrote:
| It's really really difficult to make a full smartwatch OS
| that's nice to use. The closest OSS one I've seen (and also
| worked on) is InfiniTime for PineTime, it's great but it still
| needs tons of work. Now imagine you have an ecosyste people
| have built for years. It's such a massive difference.
| brk wrote:
| Looking forward to checking it out!
|
| I still have this email in my inbox from 2011, after a posting
| here on HN about your launch:
|
| Subject: You bought the first one! BODY: Congratulations...
|
| Great to see this happening again, best of luck!
| xanderlewis wrote:
| That's really cool.
| erohead wrote:
| Thanks for being there at the beginning!
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Hell yeah!
| pedrocr wrote:
| I get a week of battery time out of my Fitbit Charge 5 with
| really good sleep tracking as well as reasonable tracking of
| exercise including swimming and GPS tracked runs. The screen is
| really nice but not always on e-paper and I can't really program
| it, so I guess there's some space to improve but was the pebble
| really that much better?
| drawkward wrote:
| The pebble battery life was >1 week, over a decade ago, so,
| yes?
| jetrink wrote:
| Don't underestimate an always on display. It's very nice to be
| able glance down to see the time or other info without making
| an exaggerated gesture first. It was what I appreciated most
| after I switched from Fitbit.
|
| As to the Fitbit in particular, they just aren't well made
| anymore and have a habit of dying just out of warranty. My last
| one got stuck in a reboot loop 14 months after purchase. I
| tried everything with support from factory reset to letting the
| battery fully die, but nothing helped. Google told me to throw
| it out and buy another. My previous one had battery issues
| after 2.5 years, despite never letting it go below 20%. They
| are considered disposable devices now and aren't built to last.
| ilvez wrote:
| I have to same issues with Fitbit. I'm thinking about
| switching soon when this one dies. Wondering whether Pebble
| would be for good for sleep tracking? Don't care about fancy
| exercise tracking, just steps, heart and sleep.
| bbor wrote:
| Literally the best news I've ever seen in my entire life. Great
| job, looking forward to making some apps this time around!!
| boredtofears wrote:
| I love my Apple watch because it does so well with tracking
| fitness stuff (particularly swimming) but it's a few years old
| now and is starting to get that laggy feeling interface that
| seems to be a hallmark of older Apple devices after they've gone
| through enough OS upgrades. I'm dreading the idea of spending a
| couple hundred bucks on another watch.
|
| Are the sensors/fitness programs on Pebble on-par with apple
| watches?
|
| I wonder if there's a way to migrate over my years of recorded
| data over.
| mikenew wrote:
| lol image creating a beloved tech product, growing the company to
| the point where it gets acquired by a tech giant, and then
| waiting until they spit it back out so you can start it all
| again.
|
| Congrats to Eric. This whole thing is so funny to me and I can't
| wait for my new Pebble.
| tomaskafka wrote:
| Patience is a virtue :)
| nejsjsjsbsb wrote:
| STL please!
| cliff_badger wrote:
| Fool me once...
| normalaccess wrote:
| OH HAPPY DAY! I loved my pebble. It was the perfect balance of
| features and battery-life.
|
| My favorite watch face inspired me to get into may e-ink
| projects. Horizon by JR Mobley
| https://store-beta.rebble.io/app/5616d36a6ddd7fea8800001f
| 2dvisio wrote:
| My pebble (my wife's pebble that she never wore) has lost some of
| its plastic cover a while ago (wear and tear) and won't turn on
| anymore. Truly looking forward to this project succeeding in its
| intent!
| cyanydeez wrote:
| I've got one. But I never got used to the idea of having a watch.
| orkj wrote:
| Tangentially related: I have been having a ton of fun programming
| for the sensor watch lately: https://www.sensorwatch.net/
|
| Granted it's far from as smart as pebble, but that battery
| life...
| tibbon wrote:
| I'm curious why they stopped in the first place. It seemed
| fantastic when it was out, and everyone loved them. Apple and
| Android watches are battery hungry and over-fluffed with features
| I don't want or need.
|
| I'd like to think that this time, it won't go away again?
| rekoil wrote:
| A parts manufacturer went bust at exactly the wrong time IIRC.
| mazambazz wrote:
| Even though I haven't used one in a really long time, the Pebble
| Time still stands out to me as something I wish I still had.
|
| It's an absolutely shame that Pebble was so innovative and
| functional, but couldn't reach mass market. But, I am extremely
| excited and happy that the Pebble team can start it again. I
| don't like Google for many things, but, I am grateful that the
| open-sourced PebbleOS. What a joyous day!
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| I'm still using it, in fact to the point that it's probably the
| biggest factor why I have been procrastinating on still staying
| on Android rather than trying alternatives like PinePhone.
|
| That the OS has been open sourced is great news (though it's
| sad it was on GitHub... and hopefully other communities around
| Pebble will spring up outside of platforms (article only
| mentions Discord and Reddit)).
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _It 's an absolutely shame that Pebble was so innovative and
| functional, but couldn't reach mass market._
|
| I think trying to reach "mass market" - or specifically, the
| market of people who are into fitness and sportsball - is
| largely what killed them. I'd like to believe that they
| could've catered to existing userbase a bit longer, grew a
| little more slowly but sustainably by doubling down on an idea
| of an ergonomic, battery-efficient, programmable smartwatch
| extension - a _tool_ , not a toy.
|
| Alas, maybe the whole thing was over once Apple, and Samsung
| got their marketing wheels spinning.
| Avamander wrote:
| > Alas, maybe the whole thing was over once Apple, and
| Samsung got their marketing wheels spinning.
|
| Totally possible, like Nokia vs the iPhone. Difficult to say
| for sure though, seeing vendors like Fitbit and Garmin still
| operate in the same space.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Not as ergonomic, no e-paper, and _not hackable_. They 're
| fitness gadgets, not tools.
| Avamander wrote:
| Certainly.
|
| I think openness is vital for such a (new) platform or
| ecosystem in general. The ecosystem has certainly gotten
| older by now, especially compared to when Pebble first
| started, but in my opinion a lot of the organic growth
| has been stunted. It's too difficult to try new things,
| find new useful applications and to innovate with all
| these walled _wearable_ gardens.
|
| I still miss a few things the Pebble had but my Apple
| Watch doesn't. Which in turn makes it feel less like a
| tool and more like a gadget.
| Rapzid wrote:
| Is a diving watch a tool or fitness gadget?
|
| I have the opposite opinion on what's a tool and what's a
| toy.
| nradov wrote:
| Garmin devices are hackable to an extent. There is an SDK
| so you can write custom apps, although some of the
| hardware functionality isn't accessible.
| bdavbdav wrote:
| I'd strongly disagree with tool vs fitness gadget here.
| Compare a Garmin to an Apple Watch or pebble, and it
| absolutely is a tool. Arguably the MIP display beats out
| the ePaper, ergonomics are great (I can use the buttons
| even while swimming), and it's built like a brick. Not
| knocking the pebble too hard, but it certainly seems like
| an enthusiasts toy. I'm not sure what else would last me
| a week while tracking exercising for an hour or two each
| day.
| blackdisk wrote:
| I think the ethos if the tech world is "grow as fast as
| possible or die" but there should be more companies that
| create good products and make a profit catering to a small
| demographic. 2 million customers is nothing to sneeze at.
| zokier wrote:
| Pebble Time (Steel) Kickstarter is the only crowdfunding I
| truly regret missing out on. I remember seeing it at the time,
| but I think the reward levels I wanted were sold out or
| something.
|
| Even in retrospect it seems weird that it failed the way it
| did.
| lclc wrote:
| On the GitHub it says: > Proprietary source code has been
| removed from this repository and it will not compile as-is.
| This is for information only.
|
| Not sure how much use it is?
| agloe_dreams wrote:
| They list out what the proprietary bits are. All of it is
| third party gernical hardware interface libraries that they
| do not own. Bluetooth stack, etc. All stuff you can rewrite
| easier today.
|
| The Magic of pebble was the UX of the OS and it's extensive
| hackability. All that magic is OSS now.
| bullen wrote:
| I hope they will support vanilla linux phones!
| Almondsetat wrote:
| What about who has the original one? What will be new for us?
| dom96 wrote:
| I still have an old Pebble 2 Flame edition that I Kickstarted
| somewhere. Unfortunately the rubber/plastic on it has started to
| degrade rapidly a year or so after I bought it so that was a
| shame.
|
| I'll definitely be watching this, but it will take a lot to make
| me replace my Apple Watch.
| abraxas wrote:
| Please for the love of all that's holy pay attention to us,
| swimmers. We may not be nearly as large a group as runners but we
| are very underserved by the tracker watch market. The world needs
| only so many glorified pedometers.
|
| I know that tracking strokes, laps and swim distance is much
| harder than steps. But it's doable because Apple mostly gets it
| right. Yet nobody beside Apple seems to have nailed the simple
| pool lap count algorithm (remember some prefer to flip turn while
| others prefer to turn above water especially at the shallow end)
| but the iWatch is so crap in so many other ways that the world
| really needs a competent swim tracker that doesn't need to be on
| a charger every 20 minutes.
|
| EDIT: Better yet, make it fully open with access to gyro/accel
| data so I can develop my own perfect, swimmer's app and maybe
| make some money as an added benefit.
| tomaskafka wrote:
| In my experience, Garmin counts pool lengths just fine, with
| maybe 1 out of 20 being miscounted?
| abraxas wrote:
| I tried it on 100m, 400m and 1km swims. In each case it
| miscounted my turns and distance which I kept in my head to
| verify its accuracy. In one 100m it missed two turns claiming
| I did 50m and not 100m. That's patently wrong since I know
| the pool I go to is 25m and I can count to 4. All my turns
| were flip turns under water with relatively good technique
| (think advanced amateur who almost made it to swim team in
| college)
| dtj1123 wrote:
| I was really hoping the Flipper team would champion something
| like this after they came out with that weird desktop busy panel.
| I've never understood the value proposition of a high pixel
| density, power hungry display on a watch. Can't wait to see what
| these guys can achieve with modern tech!
| cantsingh wrote:
| I loved the idea of Pebble watches, but I found them too bulky
| for what they offered. I hope the relaunch focuses on the same
| core functionality in a much much sleeker design.
| ge96 wrote:
| Watches are cool, I wish I was a watch person but I am not.
| Pinetime for example seemed neat.
|
| edit: there is one use case I'm considering it's for sleep
| tracking since my ideal life I sleep whenever and it seems my
| ideal operating mode is to be slightly sleep deprived (about 5
| hours each night) so it knows when I fell asleep and sets a 5hr
| timer from there.
| zem wrote:
| try getting or borrowing a cheap watch and wearing it while you
| sleep first. I definitely don't find it comfortable enough to
| bother with that feature.
| ge96 wrote:
| good point, I also can just sleep/wake whenever so it doesn't
| matter. I don't like being locked into 9-5 despite the world
| operating on that schedule I get why
| wilg wrote:
| The Apple Watch is just okay but sells like 25x per year Pebble's
| entire lifetime sales. I guess people love their Pebbles but this
| seems like a lot of effort for something most people probably
| don't want.
| tonymet wrote:
| capitalism serves all niches , not just "most people"
| MostlyStable wrote:
| That's what we are usually taught, but it doesn't actually
| seem to be the case. In the smartphone market in particular,
| as the market itself has grown, the offerings have all seemed
| to converge on a relatively uniform feature set. Niche phones
| for niche markets have slowly been weeded out. I don't
| understand _why_ this is the case, but empirically it seems
| to be so. That 's not to say that there are no weird, niche
| phones anymore, but it does seem to be the case that there
| are _fewer_ of them than in the past, when it seems to me
| that we should expect the opposite: as the market grows, the
| absolute size of proportionally tiny "niche" markets should
| also grow, which seems like it should support a greater
| diversity of weird phones.
| zem wrote:
| third party apps (particularly stuff like messaging,
| banking and government services) only supporting the main
| two operating systems is a big barrier to a new one getting
| any traction.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| On android at least, it's entirely possible to have
| weird, niche, hardware options. Why do no android phones
| have IR blasters anymore? Or FM Radio support? Why has
| the headphone jack almost entirely disappeared? (as far
| as I can tell, Sony is the only manufacturer with phones
| that will work on American networks). These are options
| that the mainstream consumer has decided they don't want,
| but I don't buy that there aren't niche markets for them
| (I know I'm not a typical consumer, but I can't be _that_
| far out on the tail, and I want all of those things)
|
| Yes, weird, niche, OSs are much harder because of network
| effects, but weird, niche, _hardware_ should be getting
| more diverse, not less so.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > These are options that the mainstream consumer has
| decided they don't want...
|
| I don't even think it's that. I think companies are so
| blinded by copying Apple that they have lost sight of the
| fact that they can have a competitive edge if they don't.
| Like, if people wanted what Apple was offering they would
| just buy Apple in the first place! And companies _used_
| to try to differentiate themselves (I remember marketing
| specifically making fun of the lack of headphone jacks on
| the iPhone), but they seem to have just given up.
| suddenclarity wrote:
| > Why do no android phones have IR blasters anymore?
|
| Both Xiaomi and OnePlus have it on their phones.
| Personally I never used mine and didn't see the point. It
| was quicker and more effortless to just click the button
| on the physical remote next to me than having to navigate
| through the apps on my phone.
|
| > Or FM Radio support?
|
| You can listen to almost any radio station online
| nowadays and plenty of countries (EU) have roaming
| agreements so the benefit of having FM radio must be
| extremely niche. I know you mentioned it being niche, but
| I'm talking niche niche.
|
| I assume you have some kind of use case that goes beyond
| regular consumers.
| zem wrote:
| well, more compellingly, why can't I get a phone with a
| physical notification light any more?! amazingly useful
| feature on my galaxy nexus from back in like 2012, but
| I've never been able to find another phone with it. not
| to mention a 5.5" phone with a flagship chip in it. I'll
| even forgo the camera quality.
| suddenclarity wrote:
| I'm not very knowledgeable about current models but isn't
| that the whole USP for Nothing Phone? There are multiple
| lights so you can customize unique patterns for both
| contacts and apps.
| zem wrote:
| nice, hadn't heard about that one!
| tonymet wrote:
| smart watch category has plenty of players. google,
| samsung, garmin, Whoop, Withings, Oura are all doing well.
|
| It's funny with capitalism how for every purported failure
| there are 10 successes.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Who cares? As tonymet said, something doesn't need to be a huge
| market to be a viable business. Truthfully I would say that
| many problems in modern American business culture can be traced
| back to the false belief that one has to turn their business
| into a huge affair selling to masses of people constantly.
| wilg wrote:
| Of course it doesn't have to be huge, I just think the Pebble
| probably isn't worth resurrecting compared to trying
| something new and more interesting.
| unshavedyak wrote:
| I just wish integrations were better across the board. I'd buy
| a Pebble because i love eInk, but my apple watch is just going
| to be nicely integrated into my apps, ios, etc. Hell even my
| car as a Key.
|
| Lockin sucks as a user :/
|
| _(though there are of course differences between the target
| features between Apple Watch and Pebble, i 'm ignoring that)_
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Soooo.. I loved my pebble. And I still have my Kickstarter one.
|
| I don't think I'd _still_ want one now though. My Samsung
| smartwatch does a lot more. Heartrate, ECG, payments, GPS. And
| with an acceptable battery life too.
|
| Ps so Eric Migikovsky works for Google now? I thought he was
| working on beeper.
| follower wrote:
| > Ps so Eric Migikovsky works for Google now? I thought he was
| working on beeper.
|
| AIUI the connection to Google here is that Google acquired the
| rights to Pebble OS (when Google acquired FitBit (after FitBit
| had previously purchased the rights to Pebble OS from Pebble
| Technology before it closed)).
|
| As Google has now released the code under an Open Source
| license, Eric (with no connection to Google) is now seemingly
| planning to build something utilizing the newly opened source.
|
| (Further context is that some _other_ people who formerly
| worked for Pebble do now work for Google and were involved in
| the process of getting Google to release the Pebble OS source
| under an Open Source license.)
|
| Eric commented re: Beeper here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42845776
| LorenDB wrote:
| I looked at this page on my Quest 3. For some reason, that banner
| image looks 3D!
| xor-eax-eax wrote:
| Allerta inPulse too? ;-B
| tonymet wrote:
| I'd love a fully offline smartwatch with an offline GPS,
| calculator, wikipedia and other utilities.
|
| Knowing you have a map on your wrist that covers your local area
| with 2 weeks battery is a huge value. The two big reasons I don't
| trust my apps are (1) all of them can lock you out at any time
| (gaia, alltrails do this) and (2) half day battery is a liability
| for any map.
| chiengineer wrote:
| If there are any devices in the future I would like a surface
| competitor. Not surface laptop. Just a tablet thingy.
| davesmylie wrote:
| Cool. I wrote a few watch faces for this back in the day. One of
| them - ruler watch face was moderately popular.
|
| Not sure what it is about the subsequent breed of smart watches
| (android, apple etc), but none of them seemed to scratch quite
| the same itch.
| afavour wrote:
| I still have my Pebble Time Round in a drawer somewhere. I've
| long since switched to an Apple Watch but despite all the extra
| features I still consider it to be an inferior complete product
| to the Time Round. I really hope this works out.
| Aaronstotle wrote:
| I can't wait, I never got a Pebble but it was the most
| interesting smart watch style to me.
| rcarmo wrote:
| Oh man. I own an Apple Watch, but I made it a point years ago to
| buy an OG Pebble off eBay to be my first smartwatch, and the
| sheer elegance of the UX is still something I pine for. I very
| dearly miss the daily timeline, which was sheer UX brilliance.
|
| Only niggle: Portugal isn't on the list, but yeah, right... Other
| it is.
| theodric wrote:
| Neither is Ireland. Things like this make it clear that one
| lives in a Tier 3 country...
| ata_aman wrote:
| I lost mine somewhere in SF while visiting years ago but I
| absolutely loved it. I won it at a hackathon after making a tiny
| Pebble app where you could keep score during a soccer game as a
| referee by pressing the side buttons. App development and
| publishing was extremely easy on their app store.
| xavdid wrote:
| Whoa, I loved that app! I used to track scores for intramural
| games in college. the UI was so clean and simple!
| ata_aman wrote:
| No way! hahaha that's amazing. I love the internet. I
| remember waking up the next morning to like 120 downloads,
| totally unexpected.
| thoop wrote:
| Love this!
|
| After my Pebble I tried an e-ink "Watchy" from SQFMI
| (https://watchy.sqfmi.com/) thinking that the battery life would
| be great but the battery only lasted a few days.
|
| I've been wearing a Bangle 2
| (https://www.espruino.com/Bangle.js2) which feels closest to
| recreating my Pebble. It has super long battery life and feels a
| lot like my Pebble did, but doesn't have the polish of the pebble
| UI and animations.
|
| Can't wait to get a new Pebble!
| dev_snd wrote:
| I've never worn a pebble, but I also have a banglejs 2 and I
| really love the watch for it's hackability.
|
| I've written my own watchface and a couple of other apps and
| made changes to a number of existing apps, it's really simple
| because you can always test your code changes live on the watch
| while keeping it on your wrist. There's an IDE that connects to
| it using Bluetooth and the code can be modified during runtime
|
| Lthere's also a great community of hackers and tinkerers that
| steadily improve the watch.
|
| It might not have the same polish as the pebble had, but it
| makes it up in hackability. I can only recommend getting a
| banglejs2 (battery life is also pretty great, I get about 10
| days with regular use)
| dowager_dan99 wrote:
| Even if you're on the fence, it's worth the small investment
| for some fun and to support a project that's been going for a
| while now.
| donjoe0 wrote:
| Huh. I appreciate what they did with the tech there, but
| looking at this Bangle.js the first thing that comes to mind
| is I hope NuPebble(?) doesn't adopt that excessively-curvy-
| rectangle shape that screams Apple Watch, I've learned to
| recoil in disgust even seeing that shape.
| Pfhortune wrote:
| So excited for this! No other smartwatch comes close to the UX of
| pebble OS. Tiny touchscreens are demonstrably a bad idea.
|
| Garmin and Casio have plenty of button-only devices, but they
| seem to not really understand how to make a UI flow well. They
| all feel kludgy and arcane to use. Whereas pebble was a very
| simple layered menu system without any over-complication.
| zem wrote:
| oh wow, I just bought a garmin a couple of weeks ago after it
| seemed like the rebble app was going to be increasingly
| unsupported on new android versions, but if this takes off I'll
| switch back without a second thought
| maxglute wrote:
| More buttons please.
| TechPlasma wrote:
| Yeas! I moved over to the Garmin 265 since it felt like the most
| pebble-like watch. But the controls aren't nearly as immediately
| intuitive. Pebble nailed the OS and nothing has ever matched it.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I'm on my second and last Fitbit-- both have had wretched build
| quality and ultimately failed on the screens. I had resigned
| myself to holding my nose and eventually getting an Apple Watch,
| but maybe I'll instead hang on for the new Pebble, whenever it
| arrives.
|
| This is great news, Eric.
| hooverd wrote:
| Yay. The Pebble was my favorite smart watch by a long shot.
| fny wrote:
| Please consider making an e-ink bank. I have a Sony FES with that
| feature, and it would be a dream to have a watch with a hackable
| band.
| elric wrote:
| Will it have a decent heart rate sensor? I have a very expensive
| Garmin smartwatch, and the heart rate sensor is absolute shite. I
| mean it's pretty accurate on average during steady-state
| anything. But if you're doing any kind of interval training or
| weight lifting, the readings are often utter gibberish and
| completely inactionable.
|
| Looking forward to seeing your progress.
| alok-g wrote:
| +1.
|
| Not only the heart rate sensors for most watches and fitness
| trackers bad, but these products have also made it so hard to
| find a good sensor as the search results are all dominated by
| the crappy ones.
| egeres wrote:
| I still keep around my pebble time (which I mostly use as a timer
| because I love the UX experience) and I'm surprised about how
| well the battery still works. Seeing devices such as the mi band
| 9 having a battery that lasts around 20 days, I can't help but
| wonder how much longer could last a new pebble
| lawki wrote:
| I'm still disappointed that the pebble core was pulled. A pebble
| like watch with connectivity might get me interested again.
| Molitor5901 wrote:
| I bought a Pebble watch long after support stopped because I
| wanted to have something I considered a piece of technology
| history. Never thought it would come back and I could change the
| faces, update it, and make it last. This is wonderful news.
| amazingamazing wrote:
| ironically when I had a pebble time, the battery life was so good
| I'd get used to not charging and would have days where the
| battery would die due to forgetting. now that I have an apple
| watch I've never had that happen, and ironically it's because the
| battery doesn't last a long time.
| pulkitpulkit wrote:
| please add a button to start a GPT voice mode conversation or
| start dictating / recording an audio note -- too things I'd love
| to be able to do more on-the-go without having to dive into my
| phone!
| whyenot wrote:
| I am super excited about this! Thank you Google + Eric +
| everyone! My old Pebble is long gone, so the possibility of maybe
| buying a new one is awesome.
| ghilston wrote:
| I loved my pebble and ended up backing the original product and
| buying a second. Both broke and when I reached out to support
| they said there was nothing they could do...
|
| I loved the devices but that put a pretty bad taste in my mouth
| for longevity
| xavdid wrote:
| It's great to see them coming back! I adored my Pebble(s). 2 fun
| stories:
|
| 1. Pebble supported 3rd party watch faces based on a file. There
| was a great little site that let you use a visual UI to build the
| file and, if done from your phone, upload it right to the watch.
| Once, when out at midnight beer launch, I made a custom face for
| the beer and won a little keychain from the brewery. My Apple
| watch could never.
|
| 2. Once time in 2014, I ran into some Pebble engineers at an ice
| cream shop in Palo Alto, they spotted my watch, they bought my
| scoop! Fun, weird little Silicon Valley moment.
| erohead wrote:
| We actually had a company tab at that ice cream shop - anyone
| who had a Pebble on ate for free :)
| eythian wrote:
| It's a pity that you didn't have a tab at the bar I bumped
| into you in in Amsterdam last year, while wearing my PTS,
| then ;)
|
| I remember you mentioning that there was hope of the firmware
| being open sourced. Very glad to see that it's happened, and
| that I might well have a chance to upgrade this 10-year-old
| but still going strong watch.
| follower wrote:
| > There was a great little site that let you use a visual UI to
| build the file
|
| Was the site you used "Watchface Generator" (.de -- domain was
| poached at some point) :
| https://developer.rebble.io/developer.pebble.com/community/t...
|
| I seem to recall there were a couple of graphic + watch-face
| only generator sites but think the .de hosted one was most
| common?
|
| Of particular note in the current context:
|
| There was _also_ the ground-breaking "CloudPebble IDE" by
| Katharine Berry (subsequently employed by Pebble), who
| "coincidentally" :) happens to be one of the three authors of
| the Google blog post about the Pebble OS release:
| https://opensource.googleblog.com/2025/01/see-code-that-powe...
|
| (And who is apparently _also_ part of the Rebble team.)
|
| For anyone interested here's a couple of related links I
| encountered while trying to recall what CloudPebble was called
| :) :
|
| * Write-up of a person's experience of using CloudPebble to
| write their first Pebble watch face (with no previous C or
| Linux experience): https://thomasstoeckert.us/project/pebble-
| sse-classic
|
| * Write-up about Rebble project by iFixIt in 2019:
| https://www.ifixit.com/News/33398/rebble-with-a-cause-how-pe...
|
| * Source code for CloudPebble:
| https://github.com/pebble/cloudpebble
| nojvek wrote:
| I have a Withings watch which has about 30 days battery life.
| Granted the display is tiny but I love that it looks like a
| normal watch and gets out of the way.
|
| I'd buy a Pebble if it hit 14d+ battery life with health tracking
| features.
| hellomiakoda wrote:
| Please, for the love of privacy, make this new Pebble work with
| Linux phones.
| hellomiakoda wrote:
| Please, for the love of all things privacy, make this new Pebble
| work on Linux Phone
| tomaskafka wrote:
| Awesome! The first Pebble absolutely fascinated me by having a
| hackable, C-running watch on my wrist.
|
| I vividly remember spending days fine tuning the heuristics of a
| simple step detection algorithm in the first watchface where I
| thought "seeing your daily step count next to time sure is
| awesome". And later, tens of thousands of people thought so as
| well - this was one of the signs what the health-tracking wrist
| device is about to become.
|
| It was incredible that even the first model allowed you to run a
| 30 samples per second accelerometer sampling and classifying the
| movement, 24/7, and still lasted days. No other watch offers a
| similar level of hackability.
|
| And as the time progressed, Pebble became the first platform to
| get Weathergraph - my graphical weather watchface.
|
| Weathergraph was then ported to Garmin (as Pebble shut down), and
| then to Apple Watch widget (as it became a capable platform with
| the introduction of standalone watch-apps in watchOS 6), and then
| to iOS app & widget, where it now lets me live a life of indie
| developer, after a serie of corporate design/PM/dev jobs.
|
| Thank you for that, Eric & Pebble team.
|
| I still keep the developer edition Pebble with my name printed on
| the back (great touch!) in my shelf and heart, and will always
| remember Jon Barlow, one of the best and most helpful developer
| advocates I ever encountered.
|
| And kudos to the whole dev team. The watch and companion app was
| rock stable, always staying connected, the calendar always being
| in sync, watch apps installed quickly and reliably - the things
| that 10x larger companies struggled with for years were nailed
| here almost from day one.
|
| Godspeed!
|
| PS: What a mishap to shut the company down shortly after a
| release of Pebble 2. It nailed the experience of a lightweight
| watch, with the most contrasty BW reflective screen I have seen,
| and buttery smooth animations (while Garmin still renders menus
| in like 8-10 fps on their MIP screens 10 years later). So small
| and lightweight, I'd love everyone to try it on, and compare with
| 2024 smartwatches.
| jakecopp wrote:
| > Weathergraph was then ported to Garmin (as Pebble shut down),
| and then to Apple Watch widget
|
| I don't think I was a particularly early user of Weathergraph -
| but when I finally had to retire my Pebble Time I only
| considered platforms that had your watchface.
|
| Thanks very much for the attention to detail!
| tomaskafka wrote:
| Thank you!
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Indeed, I forgive Google about 40 of their killed projects for
| giving us pebble in return.
| akho wrote:
| not the reader though
| chr15m wrote:
| Never forget.
| szundi wrote:
| not the reader indeed
| dingaling wrote:
| It's strange to see the naivety around Reader.
|
| If Facebook had created it, people would recognise the
| initiative to gate-keep, regulate and curate the Wild West
| of RSS. "They're trying to keep you inside their walled
| garden!"
| mattmanser wrote:
| It was from a time where Google's ethos was still "Don't
| be evil" and generally speaking the naked greed triggered
| by AdSense hadn't infected the rest of the company yet.
|
| So I think a lot of nostalgia is not just for the reader
| but also for the company Google used to be.
|
| I wonder if in 20 years time there will be the next
| generation of programmers sneering over vapour-ware
| Google products while middle managers still buy them
| products because "no-one ever got fired for buying
| Google".
| akho wrote:
| Reader made tons of people use RSS who otherwise
| wouldn't, and who now don't.
|
| It did not live long enough to become a villain (though
| it certainly would have -- there is no reason why G
| wouldn't have added recommendations, an algo feed, and
| all it brings). Therefore it's remembered well.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| Reader died because people were switching to social
| media.
|
| Reader also had no vendor lock in at all. There's no
| network effect like Facebook. There's no massive
| infrastructure demands like Google. No corporate sales
| process like Oracle, Microsoft, etc.
|
| You could very easily create a competitor and after it
| died, few even tried to replace it. I miss it but not
| enough to find another RSS reader.
|
| You're never really the villain if there are viable
| alternatives and next to no switching cost. It would have
| been hard to make that product evil.
| starkparker wrote:
| > Reader died because people were switching to social
| media.
|
| Which especially sucks, because its friend-of-a-friend
| model for making comments visible on shared items was
| better for discovering interesting people, constructively
| limiting the social impact of popular posts, reducing the
| dangers of unintentionally poor posts, and
| disincentivizing trolling than any social network has
| implemented since.
|
| For the few people who even knew Reader had a social
| network--a group which certainly didn't include Google--
| it was a better social network than any of the ones
| credited with killing it.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| I think it was just as much that the people who wrote
| blogs were switching to writing in the walled gardens of
| social media as it was the consumers. But yeah, I greatly
| prefer the days of blogs and RSS readers.
|
| Now you have Substack and Medium and such, which are
| pretty decent.
| immibis wrote:
| The Fediverse is a bit like that. Anyone can post replies
| on things, but they don't spread through the whole
| network, only to people who are following the replier,
| and people on the replier's server, and the person who
| posted the thing being replied to.
| stephen_g wrote:
| It doesn't seem to work quite like that. I don't know the
| technical details, but I definitely see replies from
| people I don't follow, from other instances, on posts of
| people I don't follow on different (again) instances from
| mine and the replies.
|
| Perhaps it could be that I'm seeing replies from people
| that others on my instance follow? Or perhaps there's
| some other mechanism to fetch replies.
| akho wrote:
| Reader died because _Google_ was switching to social
| media, not because _people_ did.
|
| > It would have been hard to make that product evil.
|
| You can just treat RSS data as content to bring in new
| users, while building your lock through other means.
| Sharing, recommendations, algo feeds, commenting, and,
| eventually, posting. Then apply demands to RSS feeds,
| leveraging your audience, and lock out new ones.
|
| This is all very easy and the playbook is well understood
| at this point.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| > Reader also had no vendor lock in at all. There's no
| network effect like Facebook.
|
| Reader had a massive social graph and strong network
| effects. There were social feeds that only existed in
| Reader and vanished when Reader shut down. I know I had
| friends that didn't blog but curated fascinating social
| feeds in Reader based on how widely they read. There were
| shared comments that only existed in Reader and entire
| discussions that happened in the margins of feeds that
| were lost.
|
| Those social feeds were a discoverability joy. You'd find
| new feeds for yourself. You'd encourage friends to follow
| feeds you most recommended. None of the replacements have
| ever quite felt the same. (I love Newsblur, and it has
| versions of most of those social features, but it has
| never had the network effect, and probably never will.)
|
| At one point too, the feeds in Reader included full
| histories up until the date someone first added the feed
| to Reader. You could scroll back through time "forever"
| on some feeds all the way to their first posts, sometimes
| posts that even the site itself had deleted since (and
| still read Reader-only comments on them). RSS feeds
| generally only provide the most recent dozen or so posts.
| Reader was tracking everything. That _was_ a massive
| infrastructure demand in the Google scale that just about
| only Google could have done. None of the replacements
| try, and generally only keep about 45-90 days of feed
| activity.
|
| Sure, it wasn't a completely walled garden, like
| Facebook, but it's still a case of Google killing the
| largest social network it had with the most beloved
| network effects for a marginal increase in vendor lock-
| in. They had good vendor lock-in that few could have
| competed with, and the replacements today are still
| scored on how much they can't compete with it, despite
| matching features.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| These were different times, people hadn't burned
| themselves on _Embrace, extend, and extinguish_ that much
| yet.
| samastur wrote:
| Because we miss what Reader was and not what it could
| have become.
|
| As a more prolific blog writer at the time I also liked
| that their bot would include number of people who were
| subscribed to my blog in their User Agent.
| mrmanner wrote:
| > As a more prolific blog writer at the time I also liked
| that their bot would include number of people who were
| subscribed to my blog in their User Agent.
|
| Something I generally appreciate with Google: The level
| of craftsmanship and the amount of elegant designs like
| this they come up with. (There are also... other things,
| but their standards are high compared to many
| competitors.)
| hinkley wrote:
| 40 down, 400 to go.
| thebruce87m wrote:
| What happens when they kill it again?
| ksenzee wrote:
| Open source licenses are irrevocable. You can quit
| providing the source, but you can't sue someone for using a
| copy they already took.
| eitland wrote:
| Forgiven, yes, but I still cannot trust them.
|
| A decade of messing with my search results (they only cannot
| do that anymore since I switched to Kagi) and the killing of
| Google+ (still interested if anyone have alternatives.
| Despite its problematic start it became the only social
| network I ever enjoyed).
| angristan wrote:
| Weathergraph is the best weather app I've ever used, thank you
| so much for it!
| tomaskafka wrote:
| Thank you! I hope to keep it that way :).
| brokenengineer wrote:
| > And as the time progressed, Pebble became the first platform
| to get Weathergraph - my graphical weather watchface.
|
| > Weathergraph was then ported to Garmin (as Pebble shut down),
| and then to Apple Watch widget
|
| Thanks for bringing Weathergraph to life. I found it on the
| Pebble and used it religiously until I experienced enough
| challenges with Rebble to switch to a Garmin watch. I was
| thoroughly chuffed when I saw that you had brought Weathergraph
| along with you.
|
| Are you saying I'd have to get an Apple Watch to get the third-
| generation Weathergraph? ;-)
| hinkley wrote:
| There was a post here a couple weeks ago about smart phones
| with a very fancy reflective display and I immediately thought
| how good that would be on something like a pebble.
| smvanbru wrote:
| I loved weathergraph. Was my favourite watch face on my pebble
| and garmin, until my eyes got too old and I couldn't read the
| smaller text anymore. Now I use a watch face for older guys
| like me, but miss the graph.
| tomaskafka wrote:
| Thank you! I'm sorry - it's tricky to put in all the data,
| plus the Garmin app is now hard to maintain as it ran into a
| memory limit on older watches (they are very tight + a need
| to cache a large chart), and much of code simplicity has been
| sacrificed to make it run. I should probably try a re-do as
| newer watches and language features remove a lot of
| constraints.
| iglio wrote:
| Hi Tom, I just tried to donate on
| https://weathergraph.app/garmin, but was met with an error in
| your paypal integration. I've sent you a support email.
| tomaskafka wrote:
| Thank you, replying!
| Warns wrote:
| I'm so happy and excited about this. Garmin has been serving well
| but I want Pebble, now!
| wessex wrote:
| I don't understand the excitement. It's just a watch.
|
| Whatever you get at the end of this is probably going to be
| overpriced and underwhelming.
| Timon3 wrote:
| It's a watch many people already used and very much enjoyed, so
| it should be understandable that people are excited about it
| making a return.
|
| I'm not aware of any other watch that fills the same niche
| (open & extendable, e-ink, long battery life, usable
| standalone).
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| You can't go back though.
| theodric wrote:
| Always-on screen, 7 days of battery life, notifications on
| wrist, optional custom watchfaces and apps, $149. We had it in
| 2013 and we want it back.
| dktoao wrote:
| Ooof, no hardware schematics? Also missing datasheets? This
| projects seems like a very tall task to me without these
| fundamental missing pieces. Will Google release them soon or am I
| looking the the wrong place?
| sethherr wrote:
| This project is started by a pebble founder, doesn't seem like
| too tall of a task to me
| dktoao wrote:
| I didn't say too tall, I just said tall.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| IIUC, the plan is to manufacture something completely new that
| runs Pebble OS. It seems likely that at least one chip they
| used in the original pebble is no longer available in large
| quantities.
| dktoao wrote:
| Interesting. It would be great if they could open source that
| too. I would love me some fully hackable smartwatch hardware!
| TechPlasma wrote:
| If I remember correctly (and I could be wrong) Fitbit only ever
| bought the software side of Pebble (and the developers
| effectively), gutting the company and leaving Eric with the
| Hardware side of things...
| mongol wrote:
| What is new since last time is AI. Can Pebble act as interface
| here? Or would that be the wrong fit and its niche should remain
| the same?
| theodric wrote:
| As long as I can turn it off. Simplicity and battery life is
| what appeals to me with the Pebble.
| eythian wrote:
| You can do this already if you have a Pebble, someone made an
| app for it.
| BadCat13 wrote:
| Could you add social media links that aren't on X (preferably
| Bluesky or Mastodon)? I'd love to follow the project, but not
| enough to use X.
| purpleidea wrote:
| Are all the keys for the bootloaders for all past devices
| available? Is all the firmware and boot code available?
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| Please make a model with mechanical dials over the Pebble screen!
| MortyWaves wrote:
| I haven't used a Pebble, but I wanted to mention something I have
| seen praised a lot on HN and elsewhere. Apparently, the Bluetooth
| stack on a Pebble is absolutely legendary: reliable, dependable,
| robust, you name it. It still works reliably today seemingly
| thanks to their very diligent software design.
|
| I hope that element of it will continue to exist as-is on these
| new ones? I mention this because Bluetooth is still generally
| speaking very _meh_.
| modeless wrote:
| I am convinced that there must be Pebble fans on the Android
| team that keep a Pebble in CI and ensure it keeps working with
| each new release. Otherwise its continued extended working
| lifespan is inexplicable given the amount of churn in Android
| in general and the Bluetooth stack in particular.
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| Actually kinda to the contrary BT is extremely back-
| supporting. It adds/removes features so slow that it's too
| boring. That's why I left my BT expertise at the start of my
| career and moved to app development (it was a mistake in the
| hindsight but that's another story).
| modeless wrote:
| Sure, it's backwards compatible in theory. In practice I
| haven't had any device that kept working reliably with zero
| issues through every Android update and every phone
| upgrade. Including very important ones like Tesla's phone
| key. Even Pebble wasn't flawless at the very beginning, but
| it got good fast and hasn't stopped working since the
| company went under.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| My speculation is that they used very low level software
| design to achieve such reliability. This could be harder to
| maintain but who knows...
| xd1936 wrote:
| Not as crazy of a theory as you might imagine. Years after
| death and acquisition after acquisition, a mystery Googler
| recompiled the long-discontinued Pebble app with the original
| signing keys so that it would work with new 64-bit app
| requirements.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/10/pebble-a-2013-smartw.
| ..
| follower wrote:
| Unfortunately, as mentioned in another comment, the Bluetooth
| stack is apparently one of the items that is not included in
| the source release[0]: Some parts of the
| firmware have been removed for licensing reasons,
|
| including: [...] - The
| Bluetooth stack, except for a stub that will function in an
| emulator [...]
|
| Which suggests that the Bluetooth stack wasn't entirely of
| their own making, so perhaps any of Pebble's own additions were
| too intertwined (e.g. gave away too much Bluetooth stack vendor
| proprietary API info) to be easily separated?
|
| [0]
| https://github.com/google/pebble/blob/3b927684809fba173ee540...
| tvbusy wrote:
| I still remember how sad I was when my third Pebble died. It's
| great to hear that Pebble is back again but the market has
| certainly changed. There was nothing like Pebble last time. Now,
| while not as good as Pebble, there are still alternatives. I'm
| using Amaze Bip, for example.
|
| I hope the new Pebble will open up more hacking opportunities.
| Zigbee devices have been getting really tiny nowadays, so having
| a watch that can send a Zigbee signal when tapped on an NFC tag
| will be so much more convenient than pulling out my phone. LTE
| presence detection is another.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| I am extremely excited for this. It would be amazing if it had
| wireless charging so it was completely sealed. The battery life
| on my Pebble was amazing, the customization was great, and I
| really hope this new iteration works well with iOS to deliver
| notifications. NFC for unlocking things would be a bonus too of
| course. But no matter what, I am very excited especially since
| the OS will be open source.
| amatecha wrote:
| You can also have waterproof with magnetic pin charging like
| "magsafe" style (doesn't have to be wireless per se) :)
| IgorPartola wrote:
| True but that means a proprietary charger standard too.
| happyopossum wrote:
| I don't believe that there are any wireless charging
| standards small enough for a watch (qi/qi2 is far too big),
| so it'd be proprietary anyway.
| scottydelta wrote:
| This is great news. In the last few years, I have upgraded my
| apple watch couple of times hoping to accept even marginal
| improvements to battery life and hackability but every time I
| stop using it seeing how it's still not what I am looking for.
|
| I tried keeping my pebble alive for so long even after it's
| demise, I bought 2 Pebble Time when a few were still available on
| ebay.
|
| I remember writing my first integration from scratch to control
| room lamp using my Pebble watch. I hacked it together by getting
| a wifi socket and programming a web-server hosted on my
| raspberry-pi.
|
| Here is the DEMO video I made 8 years ago:
| https://vikashbajaj.com/pebble.mp4
|
| My pebble watch would call an app on my phone, in turn the app
| would make a request to the webserver and the webserver would
| then make a query to the wifi socket to toggle it.
|
| It lagged a bit but it got the job done. I could connect anything
| to these wifi sockets and control any appliance with my Pebble
| time. This was before hackable smart hubs were a thing.
| oli-g wrote:
| > My pebble watch would call an app on my phone, in turn the
| app would make a request to the webserver and the webserver
| would then make a query to the wifi socket to toggle it
|
| When you ask your programmer husband to turn on the light
| rtpg wrote:
| Eric going for the Steve Jobs speedrun. Risky but interesting to
| see how it plays out!
| amatecha wrote:
| Whoa, amazing! I still have my OG Pebble and its RMA'ed
| replacement in the shelf behind me! I've always hoped for a
| smartwatch that comes close to it, but nothing has. This is the
| most awesome news! <3
| xyst wrote:
| > PebbleOS is now open source
|
| > Proprietary source code has been removed from this repository
| and it will not compile as-is.
|
| So much for "open source". Must have been some nasty telemetry in
| this OS.
| tesseract wrote:
| Telemetry was included in what was open sourced, e.g. <https://
| github.com/google/pebble/blob/3b927684809fba173ee540...>
|
| My read of that caveat from Google is that the code that was
| removed was third party code that Pebble had a proprietary
| license to use, thus it was not Google's to release.
| follower wrote:
| > So much for "open source"
|
| In the given context "Proprietary source code" seems to
| potentially primarily mean _third-party_ proprietary source
| code which Google doesn 't have the rights to re-license.
|
| There's further discussion about what was removed & potentially
| why here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42845102
|
| TL;DR: Hardware support library source/blobs from CPU/MCU
| hardware vendor(s) with restrictive license/distribution
| constraints.
|
| (Some of which may no longer apply to more recent versions of
| the vendor code in question.)
| wvenable wrote:
| Developing the for the Pebble was a lot of fun. There was a
| Pebble hack-a-thon recently (recent being 2 years ago) and I
| finally got around to finishing a project that I started _a
| decade_ earlier:
|
| https://github.com/codaris/pebble-cpp
|
| It might even become relevant again!
|
| Pebble had an ingenious design for its watch apps. Despite the
| watch having a limited processor and even more limited RAM, it
| could accommodate several apps, each boasting a lot of
| capability.
|
| Each Pebble app was comprised of two components: one that resided
| on the watch and another on the phone. Users could install these
| apps from Pebble's dedicated app store, and the same app was
| compatible with both iOS and Android. Pebble brilliantly bypassed
| Apple's app install restrictions and cross-platform compatibility
| challenges by executing the on-phone portion within the
| platform's JavaScript engine.
|
| If you wanted to create a weather application, the phone
| component of the app would be written in JavaScript and retrieve
| weather updates from the Internet, which would then be conveyed
| to the watch's C-based app for display. Watch apps could also
| have a settings page that was implemented in HTML.
|
| I have always been impressed by of the cleverness and simplicity
| of this design.
| tomaskafka wrote:
| Oh, my memory is hazy here, but if I remember right, at the
| beginning Apple didn't let them download executable code
| (companion js) to the app, so they just took a javascript code
| from _every app in the pebble store_ , bundled it into Pebble
| iOS app, and updated it every few days with a fresh code.
|
| Can anyone confirm?
| KatharineBerry wrote:
| That is exactly what we did.
|
| Bonus fact: we didn't actually _read_ the bundled code - we
| downloaded it from the internet and ran it as usual. But a
| server-side check ensured you could only get the JavaScript
| we'd bundled.
|
| Or at least it did until we eventually quietly turned off the
| check, when Apple stopped paying attention.
| tomaskafka wrote:
| Oooh, clever :). Just dash quickly when the Sauron's eye
| looks in another direction :)).
| keepingscore wrote:
| I went on a long journey trying to find a pebble replacement. If
| you are looking for the closet smart watch to the pebble
| experience then https://a.co/d/6hEwdmc check out the Garmin
| instinct 2. 28 day battery life. Gets notifications from phone.
| Eink like screen. Its my daily wear
| The-Ludwig wrote:
| This is awesome. Also weird to be exited about replacing my
| Apple-Watch with my next Pebble.
|
| Goodspeed!
| Erazal wrote:
| Been waiting for this day for too long! Welcome back
| dowager_dan99 wrote:
| Obviously not the same sort of rock-solid, daily driver but if
| it's the hackable aspect that's got you jazzed, The BangleJS is a
| fun & cheap experiment
|
| https://banglejs.com/
| 0xEF wrote:
| Wearing my OG Pebble on my wrist as I read this, having just
| dropped a fresh battery in it about a month ago. It has been a
| faithful companion for many years (thanks in part to the
| Rebble.io community) and will continue to be. This is pretty
| happy news, to me and I am looking forward to the next
| generation!
| modeless wrote:
| My PTRs didn't last long after my battery replacements. I
| couldn't restore the waterproof seal well enough to withstand
| bathtime with the kids. I am so excited about the prospect of
| new Pebble hardware!
| pornel wrote:
| Sleep (and nap!) tracking precision in Pebble is still waaaay
| ahead of Apple Watch.
|
| Apple Watch is packed with sensors that Pebble never had, but it
| can't reliably detect when I'm sleeping. It even woke me up once
| with a _go-to-bed_ reminder! (only once because I turned that off
| immediately).
|
| Apple's tracking naively uses my configured "Downtime" start time
| as a reference for when I'm "in bed". That's not a measurement,
| that's made up data!
| diego_moita wrote:
| I already have 5 Pebbles and still use one of them every day.
|
| And yes, I want more. :-D
| sizzle wrote:
| I miss PalmOS anyone else?
| _emacsomancer_ wrote:
| (could you make an account on the Fedi/Mastodon and/or Bluesky?)
| red369 wrote:
| Just my Pebble lament:
|
| I caught onto Pebble too late, and bought a used Pebble Time
| Round after Pebble had already been shutdown. The app was still
| in the App Store, and Rebble.io worked perfectly to replicate the
| missing services. Everything was perfect (1), and I was so happy
| every time I looked at my wrist. It was thinner than anyone
| else's ugly smart watches, and longer battery life, and more soul
| in the OS. Nothing else was close, and it was old when I got it!
| There was a looming fear of the battery dying, but with such a
| long battery life, I could do my best to balance it as close to
| 50-60% as I could, and still have longer battery life than most
| smart watches.
|
| But then I bought a newer phone (another iPhone) and everything
| clouded over. I couldn't install the Pebble app again, or even
| restore it from backup. After much messing around with side-
| loading, I bought a Nokia Steel HR (same as Withings, but with
| Nokia branding), and got by for a year or two. But with it
| occasionally missed notifying me of calls, the whole point for me
| was really defeated, and I recently finally give in to buying an
| Apple Watch. LTE is nice, but this whole time, I still miss my
| Pebble! I dream of a newer, slightly updated Pebble Time Round!
|
| 1) To be honest, with the possible exception of the dated, large
| bezel.
| mrtransient wrote:
| The features I need on a smartwatch:
|
| - eink or lcd display, for always-on and long battery life.
|
| - brightness adjustable LED, for night usage of the watch and as
| flashlight at night.
|
| - physical buttons, for controls including music volume, skip to
| next or previous song.
|
| - bluetooth calls and notifications.
|
| - nfc payments.
|
| - functionality allowing to COMPLETELY DISABLE all those fitness
| functions, such as step counting or heart rate measuring. FU
| Garmin, I hate you.
|
| - app for plotting tides and moon phases.
|
| - app for voice memos, then transfer to Android/iOS for
| converting voice-to-text and further editing.
|
| - if the display is touch-enabled, make sure to make it LOCKABLE,
| otherwise it does self-activates in the shower if the message is
| received. FU Amazfit, I hate u2.
|
| - solar panel on the sides or even maybe behind eink/lcd display.
|
| At the moment I am using Tissot T-Touch Solar Connect: No nfc
| payments, no bluetooth calling, no flashlight at night, no
| tides/moons, no music control But, I never need to charge it!!!!!
| And I dont need to use my second hand to press the led button to
| check the time at night, because its a hybrid watch with
| luminescent arrows.
| modeless wrote:
| Reposting the comment I made when Fitbit acquired the hollowed-
| out shell of Pebble, which still applies today:
|
| I liked Pebble as a company because they knew how to make just
| the right engineering compromises to make their product work. The
| smartwatch everyone wants has a battery that lasts for weeks, a
| high contrast always-on color screen visible in daylight and
| total darkness, no bezel, and a round case only a few mm thick.
| That perfect watch is impossible to build, but Pebble found
| compromises that worked. They chose different compromises than
| those of Apple and Google, and IMHO better ones. The Pebble Time
| Round is a tiny little triumph of smart engineering compared with
| any other product on the market, including the Apple Watch.
|
| In particular it's incredible what the Pebble firmware team was
| able to accomplish. They built a bespoke OS that's extremely
| reliable (certainly more reliable than Android Wear), with an app
| SDK and store, _plus_ a well thought out user interface with a
| striking visual design and even fun little animated flourishes,
| despite running in a fraction of the power budget of Apple or
| Android smartwatches. The Pebble has 256 _kilo_ bytes of RAM! How
| many companies could have done all that in 256 KB?
| cbogie wrote:
| pebble the company reminds me of teenage engineering
| modeless wrote:
| Except reasonably priced :)
| surajrmal wrote:
| But not financially solvent either. Maybe at higher volumes
| their pricing model would have worked but that wasn't the
| reality of the market.
| Avamander wrote:
| They weren't that far off though. They basically just
| didn't have any funds to use in case of (strategic)
| emergencies, couldn't outmaneuver a few mistakes they
| made.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| > " _The smartwatch everyone wants has a battery that lasts for
| weeks, a high contrast always-on color screen visible in
| daylight and total darkness, no bezel, and a round case only a
| few mm thick._ "
|
| The Garmin watches that have a MIP (Memory In Pixel) display
| already cover most of that, provided you avoid using some of
| the more power hungry features that the Pebbles never had
| anyway. What is the Pebble Watch's value proposition in 2025?
| modeless wrote:
| I gave up trying new smartwatches after three or four bad
| ones. I haven't tried the recent Garmins. But looking at the
| current products, they seem like giant ugly bricks compared
| to the Pebble Time Round, which I believe still wears the
| crown of thinnest smartwatch ever made (and not by a little
| bit either). I very much doubt the software compares either
| (either on the watch side or the phone side).
| Steltek wrote:
| Compared to _Garmin_? The Pebble UI and OS will run circles
| around it. Intuitive, fast, and amazing.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Do you think Garmin watches are displaying the seconds late
| or something?
|
| The aesthetics are different enough that a comparison
| doesn't seem that interesting.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| I use Linux daily; the Garmin interface is painless by
| comparison, dohohoho.
|
| More seriously, yeah it could be more intuitive and
| consistent. But I sat down, read through the manual end to
| end, and now I'm fine with it.
| suddenclarity wrote:
| I use a Fenix 6X Pro and it's a great exercise tracker with
| notifications. I don't see it as a smartwatch though. You
| can't reply to messages beyond stock replies or visit an url.
| I'm yet to find an interesting app and I find the UI
| cumbersome whenever you want to do something.
|
| I still think it's a great watch and I love the battery life.
| I just believe it's possible to make something so much
| better. I don't know if Pebble is the answer but I welcome
| them trying.
| gerdesj wrote:
| I bought a watch in 2003 or so and it cost about PS120.
|
| I have never worried about powering it - the face is a solar
| power trickle charger. I can barely generate enough vitamin D
| for myself but my watch can power itself from the sun here!
|
| My watch's time is accurate to within my perception. I run a
| little fleet of stratum 1 NTP devices and I set my watch
| roughly bi-annually, whether it needs it or not! The day of
| week and day of month indicators have gone a big shag. I think
| a tooth might have been sheared off but I simply ignore them.
|
| My eyes are a bit 50 something on top of short sighted and
| astigmatism, yet I can still read the time at any time of the
| day or night.
|
| I get that I can't read my email on it, nor can it take my
| pulse but I'm not too sure I'm missing anything.
| sen wrote:
| It wouldn't be HN without a comment like this.
|
| "Why even use the internet? You can live just fine without
| it. Pen and paper doesn't crash like a computer does.
| Electric lights? Candles are fine."
| gerdesj wrote:
| I own an IT company. Why not read my comment for what it
| was and not assume what you think I am or are or whatevs?
| modeless wrote:
| For me the #1 feature of a smartwatch is it allows me to take
| out my phone a lot less and keep it entirely silent without
| missing important calls or texts. I can filter down my
| notifications to just the essentials and when one comes in I
| feel the vibration on my wrist and can tell at a glance if it
| is important or not. My phone never makes a sound, not even
| vibration.
|
| Other things I enjoy are having weather/stock prices on the
| watch face, using Android's "Extend Unlock" feature to reduce
| the overhead of unlocking my phone, turn-by-turn directions
| displayed during navigation.
|
| The fitness sensors/features are just toys IMO. I'm convinced
| people spend money on fitness trackers in a vain attempt to
| guilt themselves into exercising, rather than because they're
| actually useful. Unfortunately the market for "exercise guilt
| trip talisman" is larger than the market for "small,
| comfortable phone companion" and so nobody makes a watch
| without protruding sensors anymore.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| > The fitness sensors/features are just toys IMO.
|
| Not completely wrong, however they're very useful for
| tracking trends and that's a useful thing to do.
| bb88 wrote:
| I got a google pixel watch, and thought, "Oh Cool I can use
| it to pay with my watch!".Unfortunately, for that to happen
| it requires a pin which means it's locked all the time.
|
| If the watch is locked while riding a bike say, it's near
| impossible to unlock it.
| smj-edison wrote:
| Counterpoint, but I use the fitness tracking in reverse, as
| I have CFS and have to be careful about how much energy I
| spend. When I get a notification that I've reached my
| "goal", I know I need to rest so I don't overdo it. It's
| also useful for tracking how much sleep I get, so I can get
| a sense for how much I can do that day. Not the typical
| use-case, but it's really helpful for pacing!
| gerdesj wrote:
| "it allows me to take out my phone a lot less and keep it
| entirely silent without missing important calls or texts"
|
| Fair enough - there are rather more nerves on your wrist
| than wherever your phone is situated near to. I suppose
| that might depend on pocket shape and deployment and a few
| other factors!
|
| OK so a vibrating watch will trump a vibrating phone in
| most cases - for notifications. That sounds like a
| compelling thing but not enough for a device that needs
| charging and care.
|
| Now, how important are those calls and texts? At least you
| are old school enough to worry about a phone and SMS. Most
| kiddies are ... ...
|
| Each social and comms app that you use can notify you but
| what is actually important and which should be able to
| shake your wrist? I personally think my physical person is
| nearly sacrosanct. I'll allow a phone to shudder in a
| pocket and no more.
| asimovfan wrote:
| is it a g shock or casio variant? the new ones can read email
| and take your pulse too
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| > The smartwatch everyone wants has a battery that lasts for
| weeks,
|
| I have both a Garmin and an AW S10. I really don't get why
| Apple doesn't get this. They insist on putting over powered
| SOCs in their systems and then shrug off the battery life with,
| "well now you can charge it to 80% in 30min!" Sure, but that
| still sucks.
| xattt wrote:
| An e-ink/cholesteric LCD Apple Watch Air would really be an
| out-of-the-blue product.
|
| There would be a bit of an existential crisis for customers
| to figure out whether they wanted basic timekeeping and
| motivations, or real-time fitness tracking.
| red_hare wrote:
| I was rocking my Pebble 2 until the iOS app finally rotted out
| of the app store a few years ago and switched to Casios.
|
| I agree with the above. The limitations are what made Pebble so
| special. I recommend everyone take a crack at writing an app
| for Pebble someday; it's a ton of fun to write with such a
| limited C API.
|
| I can't wait for the comeback. Now that it's open source, I
| hope we see open competition on the hardware front as well (the
| way we have retro handhelds and e-readers).
|
| Time to dust off the code for that Time-Round Pong app I
| started in 2015...
| rebootK wrote:
| I'm still salty about Pebble being shuttered. Smart Watches have
| come a long way since then (I'm rocking Coros Pace 3 right now),
| but I'm excited to see where this goes.
| yreg wrote:
| This is amazing news, I loved my Pebble. It had such a wonderful
| UI.
| dillonshook wrote:
| Please include the pebble round format! That looks so much better
| to me than square formats (including all the apple watches)
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| > Startup founder lesson learned -- never forget to define and
| talk about your long term vision for the future.
|
| What's the long term vision.
| thedangler wrote:
| I still have mine and wear it from time to time. Can't wait for
| an update lol.
| pinoy420 wrote:
| I like how clicking no takes you to a far superior product (apple
| watch)
| hnlurker22 wrote:
| I honestly wouldn't touch anything these founders make. They're
| really good at hyping things up and then selling (Pebble &
| Beeper)
| deadbabe wrote:
| I like the idea of a Pebble, but I already have a latest gen
| Apple Watch and a Garmin in a drawer somewhere mostly forgotten.
|
| It's too addicting to just buy small, cute, computer hardware.
| Very wasteful, not mindful.
| charlieok wrote:
| cool, seems like the ideal device for something like Circa Solar
| as watch face https://www.circa.bio/
|
| Although as far as I can tell, Circa Solar isn't open source. But
| maybe there's another similar thing that is?
|
| I always liked the idea of an "apparent solar time" watch face,
| and never did find a way to do that with Apple Watch.
| aristofun wrote:
| Amazfit Bip was an amazing watch (even if not strictly "smart")
| with near ideal balance of battery life, features and screen.
|
| Unfortunately the company wasn't smart enough to develop this
| direction and followed the leaders like apple with their shitty
| smartphone-on-hand rather than real watch philosophy.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| _" I don't envision raising money from investors, or hiring a big
| team."_
|
| How does one do this, though? Is he planning on self-financing
| presumably out of some personal wealth? I've been working in this
| industry for almost 30 years and I still can't figure out how
| people are making things happen that aren't of the _" Hey VC, I
| went to Stanford, I'm going to make Uber, give me money bags"_
| variety
| follower wrote:
| > Is he planning on self-financing presumably out of some
| personal wealth?
|
| This may be relevant context for your question:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/09/technology/beeper-messagi...
| nebulous1 wrote:
| How were users left when pebble got sold? It's a little
| disappointing to read that the OS wasn't already open source. Did
| they provide any information that could allow other teams
| recreate services or update the firmware or were people left to
| fend for themselves?
| eythian wrote:
| There have been community-run services going since Pebble shut
| down. My pebble behaves as though nothing changed to this day,
| except the lack of new features being released.
| nebulous1 wrote:
| Yeah, I saw that there is something called rebble, which is
| great. I'm just wondering whether the company did anything to
| support this before selling. I'm not an open source
| absolutist, but I really hate the trend towards obsoleting
| hardware because a company pulls support. Community stepping
| in is great, but it's not always possible without company
| support.
| dzogchen wrote:
| This is awesome. Pebble is still the best so many years later! I
| also have the Garmin, but Garmin thinks UX design is a waste of
| money or something, its horrendous. Pebble is the absolute
| undisputed King here.
|
| Can't wait to get my hands on a new Pebble!
| donjoe0 wrote:
| Still rocking my Time Steel since 2015, still running the same
| official version of the software on both watch and phone - as far
| as my Pebble is concerned nothing much has changed in the last
| decade except the app store mysteriously went offline, and the
| battery no longer lasts two weeks (shutting it down every time I
| get home).
|
| Really awesome to hear by the time this little guy gives up the
| ghost there might already be a legitimate/official successor
| available to switch to.
| causality0 wrote:
| A modern Pebble would be very interesting. An e-paper display
| smartwatch that runs whatever I want it to would be great, with
| the benefits of modern batteries and e-paper. Maybe use those
| advancements to build it cheaper so I could have a smartwatch
| that does the things I need (text message display, media control)
| which being cheap enough I don't have to be constantly scared of
| breaking it while doing manual labor.
|
| _If enough people are interested, we 'll build it_
|
| I'd remove that line from the website. That's a line from a bad
| Kickstarter.
| rzazueta wrote:
| I _LOVE_ My Pebble and even got Rebble working on it not long ago
| to revive it.
|
| However...
|
| If you want to make it _TRULY HACKABLE_ as you claim, you will
| _not_ encumber it with cloud dependencies like you did last time.
| Let _ME_ self host my own Pebble server if I choose. Go ahead and
| default to your servers and sell services and whatever, but let
| me host my own and switch the base URL to my own domain,
| preferably with open source software and simple APIs, without
| requiring me to go through your servers.
|
| That way, even if this attempt also doesn't pan out, those of us
| willing to do the work will at least still have the functionality
| we want. I get the whole VC "lock them into required cloud
| services for life so we can make endless subscription revenue"
| model, but it's absolutely corrupt.
|
| And, Eric, I know you know that - you have a hacker's heart.
| Please listen to it.
| NoahKAndrews wrote:
| Pretty much all of the cloud stuff has been reimplemented with
| open-source code by the community! See rebble.org.
| bcraven wrote:
| rebble.io is the correct address
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| I second this. I'll be very hesitant to buy in if it's locked
| to a cloud service. And people are waking up to this, with the
| Bambu controversy and all. Please don't make this mistake.
| ericd wrote:
| Ooh yeah, big bonus points if it integrates easily with eg
| Homeassistant.
| lolinder wrote:
| So much this. Learn from Framework: Sell the hardware at a
| price point that makes your business sustainable without
| needing a cloud component to push you over into profitability.
|
| Yes, it will lock out people for whom that price is
| unacceptable, but now more than ever your real customer is
| serious hackers, and we are collectively more than fed up with
| the cloud and subscriptions. Framework and Nabu Casa need to be
| your models here, because your customers are overwhelmingly
| their customers.
| erohead wrote:
| I'm 100% with you! No VCs this time...no mandatory cloud
| subscription. But I'm not really sure that this fear is
| grounded - before we sold to Fitbit we 'unlocked' the Pebble
| mobile app so you could use it with any cloud you wanted,
| including self hosted. So...it already meets your definition
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Possibly that's a good thing to mention on the homepage. :)
| saidinesh5 wrote:
| This is really good news!
|
| Wishlist for the next device:
|
| More sensors: heart rate, spo2 and ecg...
| flakeoil wrote:
| Please, not too many sensors. Long battery life and small
| size and low weight is more important. All the other
| smartphones and fitness watches have these sensors so get
| one of those instead.
|
| Maybe a HW interface to attach other sensor modules could
| be an option, but could also easily become a distraction
| and pull down the overall experience.
|
| [Edit] A wireless i/f (bluetooth, LP RF) is of course
| better to use as interface to any peripheral sensor
| modules.
| gvurrdon wrote:
| A Pebble 2 HR with a colour screen would do the job for
| me, I think.
| donjoe0 wrote:
| Never cared about Pebble's fitness/health tracking and
| never used it. I don't need my health reported to me in
| numbers every day, I'm not a performance athlete nor a
| hospital patient. Living my personal life trying to hit
| some numbers dictated to me by some app sounds like a
| horrifying idea, like a second work life at home.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| I prefer accurate sensors over many sensors.
|
| My last watch would measure my heart rate to be in the 140s
| while sleeping. I have since slept with a chest strap heart
| rate monitor and do not in fact have a medical condition.
|
| Granted, that was a cheap watch, but I still don't see the
| use case of a smart watch for health tracking versus
| phone+100$ chest strap.
|
| I believe the usefulness of these kinds of devices for
| health tracking is vastly overstated due to lack of
| accuracy.
| Neikius wrote:
| Well I for one agree here. Some good sensors would be nice.
| Otherwise why even have a smart watch? Just get a regular.
| But there will be a tradeoff, there always is and we cannot
| have everything. At this point in time I will settle with
| something that is open and builds a healthy ecosystem.
| follower wrote:
| TL;DR: Succinctness has never been my strong suit? :)
|
| ----
|
| > But I'm not really sure that this fear is grounded - before
| we sold to Fitbit we 'unlocked' the Pebble mobile app [...].
|
| If I'm reading OP's comment & your reply correctly, my
| impression is there's potentially a fear of either (a) "re-
| locking"; or, even just (b) "new thing not unlocked"--and, I
| think, you're saying that (a) isn't going to/can't happen?
|
| On closer reading I think you _might_ _also_ be saying that
| (b) isn 't going to happen because "new thing" is still going
| to use the previous unlocked app and/or _maybe_ a new
| unlocked app? But, if that 's the case, I only really saw
| that possible interpretation after a much closer re-read.
|
| (Alternatively, maybe I just didn't weight sufficiently
| strongly the FAQ: "Will it be exactly like Pebble?" "Yes. In
| almost every way.")
|
| More broadly (outside the positive example of your specific
| track record with regard to OGPebble & the app unlocking),
| given the landscape of the past 1.5+ decades littered with
| even just recent examples such as Spotify's Car Thing,
| Google's Stadia controller, Bambu Labs, and pretty much
| _every_ _phone_ _ever_ [0][0a], I think it would be a stretch
| to consider the fear to be _entirely_ _un_ grounded.
|
| Particularly if some portion of the device firmware etc
| and/or server software is still going to be closed source.
|
| In terms of strength of confidence in the potential of
| achieving a "desired open outcome/ongoing experience", I
| imagine the ordering from least to greatest trust required by
| product purchasers is something like: "completely open &
| unlocked from the beginning", "legally binding
| commitment/escrow for open & unlocked on 'exit'",
| "word/reputation for open & unlocked on 'exit'", through to
| "amorphous hope for largesse/noblesse-
| oblige/benevolence/other-fancy-latin-phrase for positive
| outcome at some unspecified future time".
|
| And, um, trust in general might be slightly lacking these
| days, for some reason. :)
|
| Anyway, IMO FWIW.
|
| ----
|
| On a slightly different note, while reading comments in the
| various PebbleOS/RePebble threads I've been contemplating
| what has changed with regard to the consumer electronics
| hardware market compared to, say, fifteen plus years ago.
|
| Certainly the "hope" of Android bringing the Power & Freedom
| of "Linux on Desktop" to "Linux on the Phonetop"[1] from the
| early 2000s seems to have been completely abandoned[2] but on
| the other hand Framework[3] exists and the Steam Deck[4]
| exists.
|
| Perhaps the two most surprising things related to this
| "control over personal devices" topic from recent history:
|
| (1) the discovery 1-2 years ago that it wasn't _just_
| irascible curmudgeons like _me_ wanting to have control over
| the devices in their lives[5] but a much younger generation
| was _also_ looking to "dumb phones" in a conscious effort to
| exert some control over the impact of such devices on their
| lives.
|
| (1.1) aside: the attraction of similar demographic(s) to
| audio cassette tapes on the other hand, I totally _don 't_
| "get" but by now I'm starting to suspect this state may now
| be primarily driven by the desire to not accidentally make
| cassettes uncool by "getting" it. :D
|
| (2) noting over the past year or so the significant increase
| in the number (or even the mere presence) of YouTube comments
| from gamers remarking that they have just, or, want to, move
| from Windows to Linux. _Gamers_. _GAMERS_! The same
| demographic who previously would ruthlessly mock anyone who
| dare suggest such a move might be possible[6] let alone
| desirable...
|
| This might all just be the biased perspective of a jaded
| idealistic optimist[7] but it's not _nothing_. Unless it is.
|
| Approaching consumer electronics hardware with this trend as
| a guiding force may also not be the way to run a financially
| sustainable hardware business but on the other hand, what if?
|
| ----
|
| BTW I noticed in one place on the page
| (https://repebble.com/) the text states:
|
| * "(which purchased Fitbit, which had bought Pebble)"
|
| and in another it states:
|
| * "before the company's IP was sold to Fitbit in 2016".
|
| I mention this because the difference is a nuance that has
| seemed to be significant in other times/places, so thought it
| might have unintentionally slipped through proof-reading--
| even if of no real consequence now. :)
|
| ----
|
| Also: Hello! (Again. :) ) This was unexpected news, for sure.
|
| Left another "short" note for you here (in case you've not
| encountered it organically):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42856930
|
| ----
|
| [0] Yes, yes, Fairphone exists.
|
| [0a] Televisions!
|
| [1] Irony? Satire? Sarcasm? _*shrug*_
|
| [2] Speaking of small phones, this still remains of interest:
| https://smallandroidphone.com/
|
| [3] I _so_ want to know what category Framework 's "Next
| Thing" is in--primarily because what's seemingly the "most
| obvious" category for them to move into also seems the most
| "unlikely" by any reasonable measure. So to find out would be
| to either be surprised by a category I hadn't considered or
| surprised by the audaciousness of their next goal.
|
| [4] Hand-waving away for now any problematic aspects of its
| current context.
|
| [5] See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42848761 &
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42845574 (non-pejorative
| :) )
|
| [6] Yes, yes, every PlayStation fan-persoin runs BSD.
|
| [7] I do like the phrase "user-respectful technology" as used
| here: https://rebble.io/2025/01/27/the-future-of-rebble.html
| follower wrote:
| Oh! Also: I'd be really interested for you to expand on "I
| think I've learned some valuable lessons[0]".
|
| The 2022 updates gave an interesting insight into how your
| perspective had changed in regard to your initial thoughts
| and I'm interested to know if another three years has lead to
| further perspective changes.
|
| I found Andrew Witte's remark of particular interest with
| regard to "...we allowed early success [...] to mask the fact
| that we never gained a good understanding of what our actual
| customers valued the most. We lucked into having made
| something people wanted (the original Pebble) and, IMO, never
| really were able to figure out exactly why it was successful.
| So it was hard to reproduce that success."
|
| ----
|
| [0] https://ericmigi.com/blog/success-and-failure-at-pebble
| blobbers wrote:
| When micropayments fail to annoy sufficiently, just turn them
| into microsubscriptions! Try 3 days for 30 cents!
|
| -- agree with you rzazeuta!
| Neikius wrote:
| I keep looking for a decent watch. And phone. And there is just
| nothing available. Everything gets encumbered with this and
| that cloud. This and that app. Mandatory policies, apps,
| surveillance and eventually subscriptions or selling of your
| personal data.
|
| I don't think we will be getting this in our "free market". It
| would need to be mandated by state for manufacturers to use
| open APIs. There is just no incentive for them to offer those
| otherwise.
| mattogodoy wrote:
| I came to say exactly this. I could not have stated it better.
| As a Pebble power user back in the day, who owns 3 watches and
| pledged in the Kickstarter to get the new Pebble that sadly
| never saw the light of day, the only way I'm coming back is if
| every piece of this puzzle is open source. And by this I mean:
|
| - Servers: I agree with you. Make a default "cloud" owned by
| Pebble, but give us the ability to self-host it. NO
| SUBSCRIPTIONS, NO ADS, NO PRIVACY INVASION, PLEASE.
|
| - PebbleOS: This is already a reality, and I'm very happy that
| it's happening.
|
| - Mobile apps: Make them open-source! Let us play with them and
| you'll benefit of the fixes, improvements and innovation of the
| community.
|
| - Hardware: It would be fine for me if the hardware was not
| open. As long as I can install my own firmware on it and have
| full control of it, I'm happy.
|
| I think I speak for most of us when I say that I'm sick and
| tired of not owning my stuff. In the dystopic world we're
| living in, with enshittification at it's peak, an open,
| hackable, and truly owned device would feel like a breath of
| fresh air.
|
| You have a real opportunity here, Eric. Please use it :) Best
| of luck!
| aaronarduino wrote:
| This is amazing news!I'm glad I've kept my all my pebbles. The
| pebbles were my first smartwatches and still my favorite. Thanks
| for bringing them back. I wish you all the best!
| nhumrich wrote:
| Was an OG backer of Pebble. I then doubled down and backed time
| 2, which never shipped. :(
|
| I still have yet to find anything quite as good as the pebble.
| Fossil hybrid came close, but now fossil shut that down.
|
| I am beyond excited to get a pebble back. Please let this happen.
| paulm7242 wrote:
| well, now everyone will know about the `show dog` command :)
|
| ...good memories working with the pebble team back in 2013 as a
| coop student <3
| samyakbardiya wrote:
| When Pebble Watch was released, I was a 16 year-old child, and I
| was so fascinated by the watch, that till this day, I haven't
| bought any smartwatch, because deep in my mind, I knew they were
| nothing aganist a Pebble Watch. After I grew-up, I tried to look
| for any second hand pebble watch, but couldn't find any in my
| country. BUT I would love to get a new one now!
|
| > The new watch we're building basically has the same specs and
| features as Pebble, though with some fun new stuff as well.
|
| why use the same specs? they are almost a decade old :-/
|
| Please ship to my country, India, I will definitly get one. and
| please don't change some hefty shipping, most of the time, the
| shipping charges are more than the product itself :-(
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| I stopped wishing this or even asking for this. Never happens.
| Framework laptop did the same. And by the time they launch
| there are usually much better and much affordable options.
|
| I guess the legalities and logistics against the possible sale
| ares just not worth it.
| samyakbardiya wrote:
| yeah, it's sad though.
| owenversteeg wrote:
| It's a shame that you can't buy certain things based on where
| you live, and I empathize - but ultimately the problem is
| that selling abroad _is_ expensive.
|
| It's not the actual shipping cost: at business rates a small
| 250g/0.5lb package from the US to India is about $20 with
| USPS first class (weeks) or $45 with UPS (days.) It's the
| other costs of selling abroad that are the issue: legal
| issues, different liabilities, complying with import
| taxes/other taxes, certifications, etc. The cost of complying
| with these things is very high and if you haven't sold things
| internationally you may be surprised exactly how bad things
| are.
|
| One normal household product I'm making has to comply with a
| specific private standard in one country by law; just to
| _read_ the standard is ~$3000. So, if I want to sell in that
| country, just to read about some of the things I'd have to do
| costs me $3000. By the time you actually are legal to sell
| somewhere you can easily spend six figures per country. Add
| up lawyer hours, certifications, translations and cost of
| product modifications and you will need a lot of sales to
| make selling in a new country worth it.
| sockbot wrote:
| How is this going to affect the Beeper / Beepberry project? Are
| you involved with the hardware side of that project still?
| jcoder wrote:
| Excited for this--was NOT expecting it to tell me to follow them
| on Twitter after signing up! That one sure hits different than
| the last time...
| VoxPelli wrote:
| Completely agree! Felt like such a refresh right up until the
| suggestions to follow on the Musk platform - it's basically the
| same as suggesting to follow on Truth Social nowadays, only
| that Musk has more money than Trump could ever dream off
| 51Cards wrote:
| I have worn my Pebbles (yes, I have several) every day since I
| bought the first one at initial launch. Right now I have 3 Pebble
| Time's going (2 black, one gold). All I want is the Pebble Time 2
| that they were so close to launching. It had the very few
| upgrades I wanted (larger screen, healty monitoring). That's ALL
| I need and I will be a very very happy man. I'll even buy several
| just to support the cause.
| FloatArtifact wrote:
| "The new watch we're building basically has the same specs and
| features as Pebble, though with some fun new stuff as well "
|
| While I don't mind the same feature set, I would sure hope you
| upgrade the hardware for something to last 5 years. Update the
| design while keeping the spirit of the original and focus on a
| user replaceable battery.
| gregncheese wrote:
| Would it be possible to get news on bluesky in addition to X
| please?
| sandboxdev wrote:
| Please please please put health tracking in it and open it up for
| people with chronic illnesses. There is a lot of good happening
| in this space for people dealing with Long Covid or CFS/MCAS
| newcoventry wrote:
| Love this! Wish you all would be active on BlueSky. I'd totally
| follow you there I can't abide the X
| cryptozeus wrote:
| Has anyone used it in the past ? Was it any good? I have never
| heard about this from anyone missing it after it was gone from
| the market.
| egoisticalgoat wrote:
| My Pebble Time is still my daily driver! I mainly use it as a
| watch and for notifications, and occasionally for timers, but
| it's still a great piece of tech IMO.
| coder543 wrote:
| It's not even a question. I still have my Pebble Time Round in
| a box. No other watch has come close. That thing was probably
| under half the thickness and half the weight of my Apple Watch
| Ultra and yet it had 3x the battery life!
|
| The physical controls were incredible... I _actually_
| controlled my music from that watch, because you could do it
| without looking. Who has ever controlled their music from an
| Apple Watch more than once a month? It's so clunky and
| cumbersome, and you have to intently stare at what you're doing
| -- you might as you reach for your phone.
|
| I can't believe we're a decade on, and the smartwatches that
| exist today are a joke compared to the PTR. The _only_
| practical improvement from my Apple Watch Ultra is the fitness
| tracking / health tracking sensor suite... which is great, but
| I miss having a good smartwatch, not just a fitness tracker.
| tmshapland wrote:
| So cool! So inspiring that you're bringing it back!
| unobatbayar wrote:
| Next, how do I degoogle my Pebble?
| m-p-3 wrote:
| I owned the Pebble OG, the Pebble Steel and the Pebble Time Steel
| and despite all my attempts, I couldn't fill the void the Pebble
| left. I tried the Amazfit Bip, The BangleJS 2 (that one got
| pretty close IMO) and now rocking a Casio watch that does
| bluetooth but still work on a CR2032 (GBD-200), and more than a
| year on the same battery, which is quite a feat when you think
| about it.
|
| The software UX of the Pebble was on point, and the animations
| surprisingly smooth for such a device. I'm still convinced that
| after all there years, the Timeline UI is unrivaled.
|
| I'm eager to see what you'll come out with :)
| zhyder wrote:
| I backed the first Pebble on Kickstarter. I didn't like its
| industrial design but voted with my wallet for the _idea_ behind
| it. I had high hopes for subsequent iterations but IMO it never
| evolved into a sufficiently beautiful industrial design. From the
| same era, Vector was better-looking with similar screen tech, but
| never captured meaningful mind-share or market-share.
|
| I'd love to have a small watch with long battery life, reflective
| always-on hi-dpi grayscale screen, and classic industrial design
| using a metal case and small bezels. For now I'm (reluctantly)
| making do with a Withings ScanWatch Light.
| amac wrote:
| Hardware is hard. Great to see!
| ulrischa wrote:
| My Pebble was not very good. The display glitched all the time,
| the connector to load the watch was fidgety and the display too
| dark. I hope the mechanical construction will be better for the
| new ones
| tassadarforaiur wrote:
| I don't use it anymore, but I still have my og pebble, and miss
| how well it did what I care about.
|
| Here's hoping we can get a color screen pebble time successor,
| maybe with one of the buttons upgraded to a dial + button.
| rurban wrote:
| Why didn't the e-paper display make it in the market? It's so
| much better.
|
| I also maintain an omron device with such an e-paper display to
| emit error messages. It's night and day
| XEditer wrote:
| I was a huge fan of the Pebble. Had an original Kickstarter model
| and a Pebble Time (well, I still do, but they need battery
| surgery). Loved the epaper/10-day life design so much more than
| the Apple Watch.
|
| I'll be first in line for a new generation watch!
|
| Be great if you could get @Pebble onto BlueSky, for those of us
| who have left Twitter/X.
| VoxPelli wrote:
| +1 on Bluesky, either that or Mastodon, so odd to still have to
| use a highly political and controversial platform like Musk's
| Twitter to follow people and projects like these.
|
| Relying on Twitter is a liability, not a feature :/
| schoum10 wrote:
| Thanks! Thanks ! I love my old Peeble Steel... But my battery is
| old too... I would like to have pieces to repair it ? Phoenix
| Peeble !
| sxrom wrote:
| we live in a great timeline, finally, pebble is back
| katspaugh wrote:
| Pebble was amazing! Whimsical, useful and a loooong battery life.
| Strangely, there's no alternative on the mass market. Or there
| has been no alternative.
|
| P.S. your homepage is terrible.
| Tepix wrote:
| I love the homepage design! Never had a pebble, but if it has
| ECG like Apple watch, i'm interested.
| dariosalvi78 wrote:
| BangleJS
| ksynwa wrote:
| Tangential: I haven't used a smartwatch ever. Do they have any
| utility in the gym? I would like to not carry around my phone in
| there.
| crackercrews wrote:
| Some can stream music over BT. If you want notifications you
| can get a cellular model or connect to wifi. But many people
| want to be left alone in the gym so would stay disconnected.
| karel-3d wrote:
| uhhh are you sure you won't get a trademark dispute?
| fitsumbelay wrote:
| I like what happens when you click "No" to "Do you want a new
| Pebble?" and I'm glad the decision doesn't persist across
| sessions.
|
| Never stopped thinking about Pebble whenever a similar product
| got announced so this is a _really_ great piece of news to start
| the year. I never got into hacking my Pebbles when I first got
| them however now I 'm fiddling around in C and more smol
| hardwares generally so I'm psyched to get it on.
| Justta wrote:
| You shouldn't have stopped when there was no alternatives.
| jesterson wrote:
| Interesting. I wish there would be someone doing reBlackBerry,
| but even if it happens, there will be narrow pool of users I
| imagine. Kids are too used to brainless videos as opposed to
| thoughtful information exchange
| Moldoteck wrote:
| That's absolutely good news. The only thing I hope is to keep it
| thin design, which basically means no pulse measurements. But I
| also understand that maybe there are ppl that want this.
|
| I tried Garmin Forerunner 245. It was the closest but OS and
| button placement were less intuitive. And it was thicker. Pebble
| time has a much sleaker design that doesn't give sport vibes but
| an everyday watch style. PTR looked great too but battery life
| wasn't great
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| Just get a OnePlus 2R.
| zevon wrote:
| Very cool! Looking forward to the future developments! :)
|
| Even as it stands today, all the old Pebbles can still be used
| and are still great. On Android, it's easy using the Gadgetbridge
| app or even the original Pebble app. On iOS, you currently have
| to install the ipa-File yourself - meaning you have to have the
| iOS device in developer mode and re-sign the App regularly.
| Pebble apps can easily be installed via rebble.io. There is even
| still some developer activity - for example, there is a
| relatively recent Home Assistant app - so you can totally control
| your 2025 smart home with your 12 year old smart watch (even by
| voice).
|
| I got my Time Steel used something like 5 years ago for around
| 35EUR and use it most days. In a previous job, I could use
| different Apple and Android smartwatches as much as I wanted but
| I always kept the Pebble as my main and personal device.
| pauly wrote:
| I had my final pebble hardware failure just before they stopped
| trading. I'll give it a miss.
| gymbeaux wrote:
| I'd actually wear my Apple Watch if I didn't have to charge it
| every day. Battery life is paramount.
| xvfLJfx9 wrote:
| Looks very interesting to me. There are a couple of features that
| are especially important to me.
|
| - Good accuracy sleep tracking
|
| - GPS ( I know this uses up a lot of battery but could be off by
| default)
|
| - Self-hostable servers. (I'm a very privacy conscious person,
| and also I don't want to be bound to an ecosystem that might
| disappear one day)
|
| I'm gonna keep an eye on this project. It really looks very
| interesting. I hope it gets far.
| harry8 wrote:
| How does the pebble compare to the pine time?
|
| https://pine64.org/devices/pinetime/
| blutack wrote:
| Have both, the Pine Time hardware is impressive for the price
| and props to the creators of the various available operating
| systems that are surprisingly capable, stable and super
| hackable.
|
| Pluses of my Pebble Time:
|
| - A lovely always on e-ink screen (the Pine Time has a TFT that
| relies on wrist detect to be visible, like an apple or pixel
| watch)
|
| - Much better battery life
|
| - A perfectly crafted UX full of lovely little touches, it's
| hard to explain if you haven't used one. It's full of
| animations but somehow they aren't annoying. Bit like using
| BB10. You can tell the dev-years & care that went into knocking
| off all the rough edges. It's the opposite feeling of "f you
| you're the product" I get from using most modern "tech"
| (Windows/Pixel watch/etc etc).
|
| - Brilliant timeline view
|
| - Rock solid connectivity (again, better than android/pixel
| watches)
|
| - Much nicer HW feel in terms of build & fit/finish
|
| - Huge user base who created a massive range of apps & watch
| faces
| moosebar wrote:
| Great news! Loved my Pebble until it stopped working. I just hope
| for a new Pebble Round. The only smartwatch I really cared about
| due to its form factor and reduzed size.
| unixhero wrote:
| How about some screenshots, product galleries et cetera
| enews01 wrote:
| Love how if you click no on the website it brings you to Apple
| Watch haha
| Elfir3 wrote:
| Please note that the source needs quite a few changes before
| being built as all the proprietary code has been removed. It
| lacks (from the readme): all of the system fonts, the Bluetooth
| stack, the STM peripheral library, the voice codec, ARM CMSIS,
| the heart rate monitor driver.
| vibhurishi wrote:
| Looking forward to it ! My first smart watch was a pebble and the
| interface was/is still the best. Current smartwatches try too
| much to be like phones ( just like the earlier smart phones tried
| to be too much like PCs)
| worldsayshi wrote:
| I wonder if a new pebble could be a bit like a dumb phone.
| raghavbali wrote:
| Coool. I remember when the OG pebble launched but I couldn't get
| one for myself (it wasn't available in my region and my pocket
| money didn't allow for it either ;) ). Looking forward to this
| #bitesNailsFuriously
| trabant00 wrote:
| I personally hope they stay well away from fitness stuff. I think
| all those big companies having a go at it for years has
| sufficiently proved that a wrist device can not be accurate
| enough at tracking steps, sleep or even heart rate. While GPS is
| better served by a phone which has a more accurate chip and also
| the battery to sustain it.
|
| And orienting towards fitness means compromises for size, weight,
| comfort and battery life. The original Pebble was slim, light,
| didn't have a sensor bump, wrapped nicely around the wrist.
| jdranczewski wrote:
| Very glad to hear the Pebble dream lives on! I only switched away
| from my Pebble Time two years ago when I started to need heart
| rate monitoring for health reasons. The Pixel Watch is good, but
| in many ways I still consider the Time the optimal smartwatch
| design in many departments!
|
| The UX especially is something l look back fondly on, especially
| the timeline interface was such a natural way to use a timepiece
| for me.
| graycrow wrote:
| Such great news. I still wear the OG Kickastarter Edition every
| day, years after the battery on my 2nd Pebble, the Time, died. I
| even still sync my old iPad to it to at least keep the time in
| sync.
| kentiko wrote:
| I'm very happy, I will buy it if it has the same spirit has the
| previous ones. I loved my Pebble Time, I am not sure why I sold
| it. It was just what a smart watch was supposed to be, not a mini
| smart phone on your wrist. Buttons instead of touch screen. Long
| battery life. Always on display. Simple to use.
| aa-jv wrote:
| This is great news. As much as I love my PineTime watch, its
| getting a little long in the tooth and I'd love to see some
| upgrades to it, hardware-wise..
|
| That said, there are a lot of other open-source watches in the
| pipeline that could use a bit of motivation to update their
| designs .. The TT-Watch situation is pretty fruitful .. I have a
| Watchy in my drawer somewhere that I should probably get working
| again .. all of these options, and maybe Pebble can learn
| something from them ..
| outadoc wrote:
| Super exciting. I just found my Pebble Time again last week, and
| configured it with Rebble. The animations of this OS still feel
| so great, I hope whoever was responsible for them gets hired
| again.
| krishadi wrote:
| This is exciting news!
|
| There aren't many smart watches out there. I've loved what Garmin
| has done. I had always hoped something which would open up an
| ecosystem to build on. This looks promising on that front.
| zol wrote:
| This is fantastic! I hope you can foster a truly open, high
| quality, light and fast operating system that draws in multiple
| hardware vendors each with their own take on what a watch should
| be.
| shikiryu wrote:
| I wanted the original pebble so much when it came out but
| couldn't afford it.
|
| Now, I can and still want it.
|
| I don't remember, can it vibrate (for timer/alarm) ?
| graycrow wrote:
| Yes, it can, and pretty well. In fact, it's my favorite feature
| and the reason I still wear my Pebble 24 hours a day - reliable
| alarms and notifications.
| bornelsewhere wrote:
| Great news!
|
| Is there a smart watch that would connect to _two_ phones at the
| same time? I'd immediately buy one which showed notifications
| from my personal and work phones.
| ParadisoShlee wrote:
| Australia is missing from the list! We demand satisfaction!
| sebstefan wrote:
| I'm guessing it couldn't possibly do navigation display for
| Google maps?
| zevon wrote:
| It displays notifications fine which I find helpful for
| navigation. There are/were also some more advanced navigation
| apps around. For example this one
| https://apps.rebble.io/en_US/application/52e7521679f937c1820...
| or this one
| https://apps.rebble.io/en_US/application/666e80ff7568f7000a0...
| hnbad wrote:
| I'm very glad to hear that the goal this time isn't growth and
| not to try to expand/pivot into other avenues at any cost. As a
| triple backer it was gutwrenching to see a company producing such
| a great device desperately chase investor money by trying to move
| into oversaturated mass markets instead of sticking to its
| strengths. I still have a Pebble Time (actually I inherited my
| uncle's after he learned that I had lost mine because it had
| fallen apart after I took it for a swim) and although it's been
| degrading visibly over the years (and the limitations like poor
| integration with Outlook for Android and other non-stock apps for
| e-mail, calendars, etc), I still find myself refusing to get a
| different smartwatch because none of them serve this exact niche.
| nym3r0s wrote:
| The primary use for a smartwatch for myself (and many of my
| family, friends) is fitness and health tracking. Card payments,
| notifications, WatchFaces etc. are all secondary.
|
| Basically what Whoop is doing with their strap - but minus the
| subscription model. I know a ton of people who tried the whoop
| but felt it was extremely pricey and didn't have the accuracy of
| an apple watch.
|
| I would be happy to pay ~$400-500 up front for hardware that
| integrates with Apple Health and provides solid, reliable health
| tracking without a need for a subscription.
|
| And by health/fitness - features expected would be sleep
| tracking, activity (gps), heart rate, Sp02, skin temperature
| sensors, fall detection. Then secondarily - additional things
| like ECG/EKG, apnea, AFib detection
|
| The in-accuracy of some of the devices in the market is why I
| still choose to remain with my Apple Watch.
|
| This youtube channel may help understand a consumer's perspective
| on health accuracy -
| https://www.youtube.com/@TheQuantifiedScientist
| alexbouchard wrote:
| From most watch market positioning I'd assume this to be true.
| However for me it's the exact opposite, the watch is a tool to
| cut phone use. All I care about is LTE and the minimum I need
| to get around the world. SMS, calls, WhatsApp, Gmaps. All
| existing decent looking watch have atrocious battery life to
| offer all the health features.
| mrzool wrote:
| > I would be happy to pay ~$400-500 up front for hardware that
| integrates with Apple Health and provides solid, reliable
| health tracking without a need for a subscription.
|
| That price point would make it unaffordable for the majority of
| the world's population. Shouldn't we try and make health
| monitoring and fitness tracking more accessible? That was one
| of Pebble's biggest benefits.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| True, but people who tend to prioritize personal health also
| tend to be richer than the average bear.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Well yes, because prioritising personal health is
| expensive.
|
| High quality, healthy food is much more expensive per
| calorie than hyperprocessed, high calorie/low
| micronutrient, carcinogenic food. Gym memberships are
| pretty expensive, even without any of the personal coach
| and flex location fluff. And for someone with a lower
| paying job, time is more scarce as well, in addition to the
| job itself likely being more harmful to health. And of
| course, health care is expensive, and even if you live
| somewhere with socialised medicine, access to specialists
| is a lot easier and more expedient if you can afford to pay
| extra.
|
| It's not like poor people don't care about their health,
| they just have fewer options and less time to spend on it.
| I support anything that can bring more options to more
| people.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| > High quality, healthy food is much more expensive per
| calorie than hyperprocessed, high calorie/low
| micronutrient, carcinogenic food.
|
| Largely true, but frozen vegetables are inexpensive. And
| they are healthier than fresh vegetables. Veggies are the
| key to good health for the poor.
| hooli_gan wrote:
| > And they are healthier than fresh vegetables.
|
| Citation needed
| jgalt212 wrote:
| from SERP page 1
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/4060/
| dancc wrote:
| It sounds difficult to make a definitive statement based
| on the findings of the referenced paper:
|
| "Overall, the vitamin content of the frozen commodities
| was comparable to and occasionally higher than that of
| their fresh counterparts. b-Carotene, however, was found
| to decrease drastically in some commodities."
|
| It was occasionally lower, too.
| veidr wrote:
| Yes, citation needed (and also probably unlikely to be
| forthcoming or validated) but the rest of the comment
| stands, so let's just ignore this weakest/most-dubious
| claim.
| orzig wrote:
| You have to start somewhere, and then economies of scale can
| work their magic. The most inspiring example in the last 30
| years is probably photovoltaic solar panels.
| toss1 wrote:
| Of course, lower cost is almost always better.
|
| But just because advanced devices with (currently) costly
| components have higher costs is no reason to not create them.
|
| If something works and meets a need, the costs of components
| and manufacture usually come down as engineering and
| manufacturing progresses on the learning curve and
| competition comes into play. (Not true when there is a
| captured market where extractive pricing becomes the norm,
| but those are the exception in consumer goods)
| coryfklein wrote:
| Can someone explain the point of the health tracking features
| for watches? I have an Apple Watch and I do exercise regularly,
| but I found that the annoyance of starting and stopping
| workouts was bothersome so I turned the feature off.
|
| Is it about inducing more exercise? Or is it the timer aspect
| that it records how long your workout is? (in which case I
| don't understand why it's so much better than a stopwatch?)
|
| For me, and those around me, the fitness feature seems
| vestigial and has very little impact on actual fitness levels
| of the individual.
| pandaman wrote:
| It's very useful for aerobic exercise (running, swimming,
| cycling etc), where you want to pace yourself and keep your
| heart rate and/or speed/tempo in a certain range.
| erikig wrote:
| Also, you can set your watch to auto detect and start your
| workout tracking with a a subtle notification.
| coryfklein wrote:
| Now that you mention it, I have used it for this purpose
| myself! I turned it on when I was on the elliptical because
| I wanted to calibrate on what running in "Zone 2/3/4/5"
| _felt_ like. And once I 'd done that once I didn't really
| need to do it again, though I expect it will be helpful to
| recalibrate every few months as my capacity changes.
| nym3r0s wrote:
| I believe the value add is a combination of both factors -
| ability to measure and (as a consequence) induce more
| exercise.
|
| An example here is how I made sure my parents are getting
| their exercise in by making completing their Move rings and
| 10K steps every day. This pushes them to take a walk in the
| evening instead of doom scrolling / watching TV.
|
| Another example - Check trends like resting heart rate to see
| if my body has fully recovered from covid19, SP02 at night
| indicating potential sleep apnea etc.
| servercobra wrote:
| It's very helpful for race training. Speed work targets
| various paces, endurance I want to hold a certain pace over
| time, etc. I (and many people) have a tendency to go much too
| fast for long distances, so pace targets help me stay where I
| should and be able to go the distances I want. When I was
| just getting started I didn't use much technology, but
| training's gotten a lot easier with my Apple Watch.
| bluGill wrote:
| A few years ago my mom looked at her smart watch (fitbit in
| her case) and it said she did 4 hours of aerobic exercise
| that day and her heart was elevated. She worked a retail job,
| so while on her feet all day, it was not aerobic. She
| immediately went to the doctor despite no other symptoms and
| they found cancer (which was then treated and so she is alive
| today). It isn't clear how much longer it would have been
| before that cancer was detected, but it would have been
| longer and so treatment would have been delayed which is
| generally bad.
| parpfish wrote:
| Is this in the US? Because i can't fathom just being able
| to casually drop in to visit a doctor like this. Any time I
| need to talk to a doctor, I have phone tag with their
| understaffed receptionist for a few days, then we set up an
| appointment 4-6 months in the future.
| SpaghettiCthulu wrote:
| I'm curious, where do you live where that happens? I've
| heard similar complaints from fellow Canadians online,
| but it has never been an issue for me.
| parpfish wrote:
| USA, and that's _with_ good insurance and a primary care
| provider
| richjdsmith wrote:
| It certainly does sound like Canada. I am one of the
| lucky ones and do have a family doctor and it is still a
| minimum of 6 weeks for me to book an appointment to see
| him.
|
| If I am really in trouble, I can go to his clinic as a
| drop-in (along with dozens of others) and wait, hoping
| somebody doesn't show for their appointment.
|
| The state of healthcare in Canada is...bad. really bad.
| Canada's healthcare system is effectively using long wait
| times as a form of passive rationing, where delays lead
| to natural attrition of patients. This is a poor solution
| to address the per-capita physician shortages by
| decreasing demand rather than increasing access to care.
| bluGill wrote:
| US. There are walk in clinics all over that take people
| first come first serve (once in a while the receptionist
| says no way and sends you to an ER where they take people
| in priority order). Generally they are open 9am-8pm 7
| days a week, though it varies by location. These are
| called urgent care and for are things that you need
| urgent but non-emergency care for - you typically get an
| antibiotic or some such treatment (depending on what you
| have) and are sent home. Depending on what you have
| sometimes you are told to make an appointment with your
| regular doctor, sometimes sent to a hospital.
|
| My regular doctor I do need to make an appointment to
| see. Typically I can get an appointment in about a week
| anytime I call, though normally I just make the next
| appointment as I leave the last one and so they are
| months out.
| parpfish wrote:
| Wait... you're saying she went to urgent care and that
| urgent care did a cancer screening?
|
| Urgent care is great, but they usually don't have MDs.
| There are nurses that can give you stitches or a course
| of antibiotics but a cancer diagnosis is way out of their
| expertise
| jhatax wrote:
| Every provider / system is different. My wife is a
| physician who works urgent care shifts over the weekend
| to serve patients as described above. These are in
| addition to her M-Friday routine. She is part of the
| Kaiser system. This is systemwide for Kaiser, so my
| wife's weekend engagement isn't a one-off.
| bluGill wrote:
| I don't know what happened after arriving. They likely
| did sometests and then found a hospital to admit her.
| Then the hospital did more tests.
|
| The important point here is her fitness tool alerted her
| to something and that startee the chain that eventually
| found the real problem.
| RobKohr wrote:
| Say what people will about the cost of medicine in the
| US, if you have money and good health insurance, you can
| get pretty much any medical need taken care of
| immediately.
| repeekad wrote:
| I don't think you're allowed to post anything about the
| US healthcare system being good sometimes, I thought they
| banned that a while ago
| dspillett wrote:
| I walk and run on trails a fair bit1 so my watch is mostly a
| route planning/tracking/recording tool.
|
| When training for something I will often at least consider
| its recommendations and those are based partly on the health
| readings as well as the training load it has tracked from
| treks/runs. Though TBH other than that the health tracking is
| unimportant compared to it being a GPS device that can track
| for a day or more constantly without needing to talk to a
| phone (which sits in my pack/pocket in low-power mode to
| conserve battery unless/until I need it for something). A
| don't even tend to pay attention to the heart-rate stats
| (though I do know people who use those features to directly
| guide their training).
|
| I know a few people whose use pattern is very similar to
| mine, near identical in fact, so I think it is fairly common
| amongst people who walk and/or run more than the average
| person.
|
| ----
|
| [1] Less than I'd like ATM, the rest of life like ill family
| and my own burn-out2 are getting in the way, but I'm getting
| myself back into it
|
| [2] The key reason I'm trying to get back at it: herfing
| myself around the green stuff3, is something I find
| beneficial to my mental state as well as physical.
|
| [3] or even the "mostly brown stuff" as it can be this time
| of year.
| coryfklein wrote:
| Can you unpack a little more by what you mean when you say
| you use the watch to plan your route? Do you mean to say
| you're using the watch - with that tiny display - to choose
| whether you run over hill A or around town B?
|
| And what is the point of the tracking? Do you take time out
| of your day to review your past runs for some reason? My
| completely uninformed self is imagining a person sitting at
| their desk thinking, "Oh yeah, that was a good run. Look at
| that part where I turned the corner onto Market Street!
| Hah, I remember that, good times." And realize this sounds
| so ridiculous I must certainly be misunderstanding the
| point of the tracking.
| BigGreenJorts wrote:
| I cycle and I'm certainly taking time to review past bike
| rides. Especially the fixed routes I have. I'm seeing the
| speed overall, but also reviewing segments that are hard,
| address specific skills/challenges, or where I hit my top
| speed typically. I try to compare this to sleep and diet
| changes between specific rides, but am also keeping track
| of general trends (typically my goal is faster over time,
| but there are some nuances to that.)
| coryfklein wrote:
| Okay that makes sense. I can see how the tracking
| features would be really valuable to you, or really
| anyone that is very fitness minded. Probably folks like
| you make up a minority - though significant - market
| segment? Of my friends, many of them are fit, but I
| suspect only a few are engaging with their fitness data
| on the level you are.
|
| I think some aspect of it must be aspirational. Man sees
| the advanced fitness features and thinks, "this is the
| thing that will get me looking like Vin Diesel!" and it
| _feels_ productive to hit that _Record Workout_ button
| and so the watch makes you feel more athletic in the same
| way that chatting on Slack can feel like you 're being
| productive when you're not actually changing your
| behavior on a fundamental level.
| dspillett wrote:
| > with that tiny display - to choose whether you run over
| hill A or around town B?
|
| Previous devices I've had only did breadcrumb mapping,
| though you can match the trace you are making or the pre-
| programmed trace you are following with a paper map to
| make such decisions. I upgraded a while back to one that
| has actual map data so what you suggest is actually
| possible, though I use it to _augment_ my paper map with
| accurate positioning rather than to replace it for
| navigation decision-making.
|
| > ... what you mean when you say you use the watch to
| plan your route?
|
| "Plan" is probably overstating it. Most of the time I'm
| following a route and using it to make sure I don't go
| too far off course, or if I deliberately take a detour
| ("ooh, I bet the view from over there is pretty"...) to
| help me get back on course afterwards.
|
| The watch does have enough map data and enough brains to
| plot a simple route to a waypoint, it can certainly
| reverse a trace to make a track "home", but I don't use
| any of that. If I'm somewhere where I have a few relevant
| routes already in the watch I can switch mid-outing if I
| decide to do something longer/shorter, and if I go off my
| beaten track I can use it (possibly along with my paper
| map to make decisions about doing direct or around bits
| of landscape) to roughly guide me to a known place.
|
| I do sometimes use the traces to plan _future_ routes
| though, especially when I 've been out exploring new
| routes or a completely fresh area. For example if I spun
| 1800 somewhere there is a good chance there was an
| obstacle at that point I might want to avoid in future,
| which may not be obvious on the paper map, but I remember
| when I see the past trace. Route traces can be nice to
| share too: I can hand send friend a route that I
| particularly enjoyed, and they can do the same back.
|
| These days most trail runs hand out a GPX trace for you
| to more-or-less follow (allowing for number-of-points
| resolution issues on any given watch & such), but back
| when I started events would often just give a
| description. I would go out to do a recce of parts of the
| route following the description and paper map, maybe
| getting lost a few times due to missing a turn, and back
| home I could edit the trace to cut out those deviations
| so on event day I had a reasonably accurate path to
| follow (the watch vibrates if I go beyond a certain
| distance off-course, which I might do intentionally to
| avoid a temporary blockage like an angry looking bull in
| a field but don't want to do accidentally by, say,
| missing a somewhat hidden turning).
|
| Some people use the location & speed tracking data in
| conjunction with heart rate, temperature, and such, to
| tweak their training plan, but I don't go into that
| detail.
|
| > imagining a person [...] thinking, "Oh yeah, that was a
| good run. Look at that part where I turned the corner
| onto Market Street! Hah, I remember that, good times."
|
| I do have a plan at some point to make a big map of the
| moors & dales for my wall, with my favourite routes (from
| events or personal outings) marked on, the tracking data
| will be useful for that if it can be made to integrate
| nicely with whatever I end up using to draw the main map.
| Like the world maps people have on which they mark which
| countries/cities they've visited. I've had a fair number
| of good times out in the green. Less so for city outings
| or other road/pavement routes.
| bdavbdav wrote:
| What kind of exercise? I run, row, lift and do various group
| PT classes. Running it's essential for pacing and target HR
| Zones, same for rowing, and on the group PT they're very
| variable in terms of what they're targeting, and it's good to
| know if I'm short on (an)aerobic workouts.
| coryfklein wrote:
| I guess I'm not so scientific? I do similar exercise as you
| (minus the PT), though my goal is mostly to avoid being
| sedentary, so as long as I feel like I'm pushing myself I
| feel good.
|
| I did use the watch once to see what each HR zone feels
| like and I thought that was a useful calibration, but as a
| normal dude where fitness is just one small aspect of my
| life I wouldn't buy an Apple Watch specifically for _that_
| feature.
|
| I'm not saying it can't be helpful with fitness, but
| responding to OP saying that fitness/health is the primary
| feature for themselves and many of their family/friends.
| For me, the primary features are:
|
| 1. Telling time
|
| 2. Putting my notifications on my wrist
|
| 3. Starting timers with Siri
|
| 4. Setting up reminders with Siri
|
| Surely there are folks where the fitness features provide
| the critical marginal feedback that gets them up and
| moving, to the point where owning vs not owning the watch
| is a big deal!
|
| But reading the comments here, it sounds like it's _very_
| useful for people who are quite scientific about their
| fitness (HR zones, tracking, etc), and tangentially useful
| (rings remind folks to get off the couch /stand) for other
| folks at risk of a sedentary lifestyle. It doesn't all add
| up to me as "fitness is the main reason many people use the
| watch!"
| nradov wrote:
| Sure, the fitness tracking features aren't essential.
| It's absolutely possible to train to an elite level
| purely by perceived exertion without using any devices at
| all. But the device makes everything easier and more
| convenient, especially if you're trying to target
| specific energy systems or follow a structured training
| plan. Some of us also enjoy sharing activities with our
| friends on Strava.
| bdavbdav wrote:
| The Strava effect is a huge motivator for many.
| kelnos wrote:
| I think a lot of people exercise a bit less
| "scientifically". I tracked my runs for many years, but
| ultimately never did anything with the data, and rarely
| even referred to it for anything useful.
|
| I generally "track" the effectiveness of my exercise based
| on the end results: my weight, how I feel, how my body
| looks, etc., and I can generally tell by how I feel while
| exercising if I'm doing enough or if I need to exercise
| more or use heavier weights.
|
| It's funny, because I _am_ a bit of a data hoarder, and
| love the idea of tracking stuff. But I 've started to
| realize that I never really use that data for anything. And
| it's not like people didn't have effective exercise
| regimens before the advent of all this tracking technology.
| bdavbdav wrote:
| I think for me it's more the targets - trying to shave a
| minute off a 5k time or similar.
| NoLinkToMe wrote:
| > love the idea of tracking stuff. But I've started to
| realize that I never really use that data for anything.
|
| I walked the exact same path.
|
| For runnings and aerobic exercise in general I tracked
| for a few years my times, calories, heartrate. But indeed
| never did anything with that data, nor really used it as
| a benchmark.
|
| After a while I was also pretty easily able to find and
| sit in a particular heart rate zone, without periodic
| feedback from my watch.
|
| Of course you'd want that precise info as a professional
| runner. But for me it was mostly useless. My apple watch
| broke during a swim one day and I never cared to replace
| it. Haven't missed it once to be honest.
|
| I still track my big compound lifts in the gym on my
| phone using a simple app, to track progress. I don't
| particularly do much with that data. If it's improving
| I'm happy, if it's not I'm a bit disappointed. But in any
| case I tend to go pretty hard in the gym, lifting a
| number of sets with a few reps in reserve, and try to
| increase the weights slowly. In that regard tracking a
| set helps to set the baseline for the next workout,
| that's helpful. But I still adjust based on how I feel
| that day, aiming to simply complete a few sets with a few
| reps in reserve (i.e. making it as challenging as it can
| be without sacrificing safety or unnecessarily long
| recovery). It's a constant reminder of how far I've come
| also, which is nice.
| codr7 wrote:
| I once got a pulse meter, almost killed me on the second
| run because I was trying to push myself to the same point
| as the previous, never again.
| barnabee wrote:
| For me:
|
| - Measuring resting heart rate, SpO2, etc. passively and
| tracking these over time and the impact of my fitness regime
| on them
|
| - Sleep tracking
|
| - Tracking pace and heart rate on a run, ride, etc. and (a)
| using it to manage my pace during the activity; and (d) use
| it to measure how my performance changes over time
|
| - Navigation and tracking when hiking/skiing
|
| I don't have so much interest in the tracking during, say, a
| gym workout.
|
| I agree with the GP about wanting a subscription-less Whoop
| as I like to wear "real" watches so a band on the other wrist
| is perfect ("double fisting" watches VC-style is not an
| option I'm willing to entertain). I did like my Pebble enough
| to include it in the rotation of "real" watches though, too.
| BigGreenJorts wrote:
| I've been a Strava user from before the fitness trackers were
| big and using a watch to track location instead of my phone
| is pretty big for me. The additional biometric data (namely
| heart rate and blood oxygen levels) are a plus. I've also had
| life long difficulties with sleep, and the sleep data is nice
| to keep my physical experiences grounded in reality, "Why am
| I so tired today, I slept so well. Oh no, actually I only
| slept 5 hours last night."
|
| On the note about how annoying it is to start and stop
| activities, I strongly agree, tho quick start and auto track
| have eased the pain a lot for me. I cycle everywhere and
| really like to keep track of the total distance I do in a
| month and my watch just automatically tracks that for me.
| patanegra wrote:
| It sounds a lot like you might appreciate Garmin watch, too.
| scrapcode wrote:
| My thoughts were that he was describing my Garmin Fenix
| pretty closely. GPS on-device means I can use all features
| un-tethered from a phone. I don't use the sleep tracking so
| I'm not sure how well it does in that arena compared to the
| competition.
| nym3r0s wrote:
| It was an option I considered, but the accuracy of the
| sensors was way worse than apple for the price.
| KerryJones wrote:
| Based on what data? I've found them to be as accurate or
| more accurate (and the data I've seen says the same)
| _except_ around sleep tracking, where Garmin is worse. But
| it 's not hard to create a function to correct for that if
| you really care about it, it is _good enough_ unless you
| need vanity metrics
| nradov wrote:
| That's an odd objection. Garmin's optical heart rate sensor
| accuracy might be slightly worse than Apple's under certain
| limited conditions, depending on how you test. But anyone
| who really cares about precise heart rate uses a chest
| strap anyway.
| dakiol wrote:
| It would bother me so much to track my health on a daily basis.
| Too much paranoia. It's like looking at the stock price every
| day. I much prefer to track my health twice or so per year.
| nym3r0s wrote:
| I agree that a single outlier is more stressful - but many
| times these aren't medical grade devices anyway so the actual
| data you're looking for is the trend (not the absolute
| values.
|
| A solution could be to measure it but not really track /
| visualize it day to day.
| BigGreenJorts wrote:
| Dollar cost averaging health metrics :)
| trabant00 wrote:
| If you watch TheQuantifiedScientist you must have found out by
| now that optical sensors on the wrist have no chance of ever
| being accurate enough for health and fitness tracking. No
| matter how much they massage their algorithms they simply don't
| have the right sensors at the right positions on the body.
|
| At the same time the fitness features add cost, bulk, the
| uncomfortable sensor bump and cost battery life. The original
| Pebble didn't have any of that and in my opinion was better for
| it. I also see little point in competing with the already
| existing numerous options for fitness tracking, even if you
| only look at the ones without a subscription.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Modern optical sensors are pretty dang accurate on garmin
| watches.
| nradov wrote:
| I've watched it and TheQuantifiedScientist is totally missing
| the point. Current optical sensors on the wrist are plenty
| accurate enough for general health and fitness tracking. If
| you don't believe me then you can literally count your pulse
| with your finger and compare against the watch: very close.
| Optical sensors aren't great for high-intensity training so
| for those activities everyone knows you need to use a chest
| strap if you want accurate data.
|
| For a more practical take on heart rate accuracy see the DC
| Rainmaker reviews instead.
| pbronez wrote:
| You are describing the Oura ring, at least for the passive
| tracking. It has great health tracking fidelity and battery
| life. It won't do GPS, but other than that tracking is great.
| bdavbdav wrote:
| Surely a Garmin is what you want? No subscription, 7 day+
| battery life, smart watch features are there but largely
| secondary.
| hugs wrote:
| I wear a Garmin watch every day. It's great. But... I don't
| love the high price and the fact that the battery isn't
| easily replaceable. (Feels like Garmin would rather you buy a
| new watch instead.) There's a huge lane for Pebble to be the
| torch bearer for the Right-to-Repair movement (especially
| given it's whole story arc so far.)
| Neikius wrote:
| Can you use Garmin without their proprietary app? And if
| not, is it at least working without some sort of cloud
| services?
|
| Too many products nowadays are bound to some sort of online
| checks and that is even worse than "battery not
| replaceable". The second is much easier to circumvent than
| the first (dependence on cloud infra). And ofc the data
| security. I will never be comfortable with giving corpos my
| medical data.
| Piskvorrr wrote:
| Yesterday's "oops we bricked it remotely, no user
| interaction required" definitely doesn't inspire
| confidence - even though it was not intentional and was
| since fixed.
| hmmm-i-wonder wrote:
| I really hope you get your wish, I share it.
|
| I gave up with tracking because the short life of a smart watch
| meant many of the more critical times (sleep/sleep tracking)
| would be interrupted by charging or dead batteries. I just want
| a band/strap that is focused on sensors and battery life
| WITHOUT a subscription.
|
| Until that happens I'm staying out of the ecosystem entirely.
| valicord wrote:
| Garmin is what you're looking for. Battery lasts 1-2 weeks.
| No subscription.
| hmmm-i-wonder wrote:
| I'll take another look at them thanks.
|
| I'd still prefer a band over a smart watch. When I
| initially looked at them they were very bulky and only had
| a few days battery life, but its been a while.
| albrewer wrote:
| > The primary use for a smartwatch for myself (and many of my
| family, friends) is fitness and health tracking.
|
| It also needs to be a good watch. Don't forget to not fail at
| that.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| I'm with parent. It really doesn't need to be a good watch.
|
| I have my phone on me. My watch doesn't need to tell me the
| time.
| nradov wrote:
| An SpO2 sensor can be nice to have but it's useless to most
| people. A healthy person near sea level will always have an
| SpO2 near 100%. It's only really useful to people with medical
| conditions like sleep apnea, or athletes at high altitude. And
| even then you won't be able to get continuous monitoring.
| Current wrist SpO2 sensors require the wearer to hold still for
| a while in order to get an accurate reading.
|
| I turned mine off to save battery life.
| qzx_pierri wrote:
| I have a Garmin Forerunner 255 (which does everything you
| requested and much much more). I used to be a Fitbit guy, and
| the sleep tracking and data is 10x better than Fitbit, with no
| subscription. The battery life is about 20 days.
|
| The Forerunner 255 can be found on Amazon right now for $250.
|
| Mind you, I also used to own an Apple Watch. Garmin is the
| best, and second place isn't close.
| 2color wrote:
| Same here. It's the best smart watch I've had.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| If you had checked the link on the comment you answered, you
| would have seen that he reviewed the forerunner 255 (and if
| that matters all Garmin watch) and found out that their heart
| rate accuracy and sleep analysis suck. All of them, some
| more, some less but nowhere near as good as apple watch or a
| very few Huawei watch and maybe the latest Google watch.
| caleb-allen wrote:
| I have the Forerunner 945 and it's the only thing that has
| ever filled the void left by Pebble. Garmin is so good.
| lawn wrote:
| I agree.
|
| And for those who recommend a Garmin, an Oura ring or similar:
|
| I have a Garmin and it's great but I cannot wear it during
| martial arts (grappling).
|
| I also can't wear a ring doing weight lifting or when I'm
| grappling.
|
| I had a Whoop and it was really good for tracking martial arts
| (the boxers with the holder was super comfortable) but alas it
| was expensive and the sleep tracking with it in the boxers was
| really poor.
| Arelius wrote:
| I sort-of feel like maybe Pebble isn't for you, it had always
| been the smart _watch_ in a world of fitness trackers.
|
| I'm almost the opposite for your, Notifications, then watch
| functionality, and card payments are primary for me. For me,
| fitness, and health tracking are barely secondary.
|
| Which, IMO, is what I've always loved about Pebble, it was a
| smartwatch first.
| blueflow wrote:
| You need to press the "I want one" to even see how a Pebble looks
| like...
| hobo_mark wrote:
| Guys, I am still running my P2HR every day.
|
| I, like most of us I believe (and we are _dozens_ :), am using it
| with GadgetBridge.
|
| I wrote my own watchface for it, in C. Also wrote some automation
| that periodically exports and backs up my data off GadgetBridge.
|
| I would like to keep using GB, but my aging P2 might die any time
| now (already had to replace the side buttons, the plastic
| disintegrated after a few years) and I have been looking for a
| replacement watch that allows exporting my sleep data into GB.
|
| NONE of the hardware currently supported by the app appears to
| make sleep data available in the way Pebble did?!
|
| Please make new Pebbles, and keep them compatible with
| GadgetBridge.
| popcalc wrote:
| Would be cool if it had a standard 20mm lug width so you could
| use it with mostly any mechanical watch strap.
| Ciantic wrote:
| Should they have launched crowdfunding right now?
|
| I think this is the peak of interest in the new Pebble,
| especially with the announcement just being made. Maybe they
| don't need crowdfunding, which is great, but they still need
| buyers.
| dmvjs wrote:
| more data for Google
| rubzah wrote:
| I want a screen that is always on and good-looking. Until then,
| it is worse than my mechanical watch. Color eInk would probably
| be ideal.
|
| Besides that, I'm down for whatever.
| bert2002 wrote:
| Please do, best smartwatch ever. If we get a LTE version so we
| can leave the phone at home, that would be magical.
| NanoYohaneTSU wrote:
| Finally some good news.
| nsypteras wrote:
| So much nostalgia for my Pebble. Got it right as I was seriously
| getting into programming. I still remember how magical it felt
| writing the C code to build my first watch face and how proud I
| was to show people. Amazing news <3
| ubermonkey wrote:
| Man, I'm a gadget guy, and I have been all my life, but this is
| one bit of tech nostalgia I don't get.
|
| I had a Pebble. It never came close to being a watch I wore
| normally; I just used it when cycling, as a "notifications
| screen" -- that way, if I felt my phone vibrate in my jersey
| pocket, I could steal a glance at my wrist to see if it was
| important enough to stop (which basically meant "is it my
| wife?").
|
| When it died, and Pebble was gone, I replaced it with an Apple
| Watch, and it's _that_ class of hardware that proved so handy
| that it mostly has supplanted my collection of fancy mechanical
| watches.
| Olshansky wrote:
| This is going to make a great addition to my e-ink collection: -
| Remarkable Tablet - SOL Reader - Kindle
| smvanbru wrote:
| I loved my pebble. Closest I've found is the Garmin platform,
| with a MIP display. My Fenix 5x works pretty well, and there are
| certainly apps available for it too.
|
| Pebble was something special though, so I'll be looking forward
| to what comes of this.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Note to self: Cortex-M3, 64 MHz, max resource size 96k, app size
| 24k, 144 x 168, 4 buttons[1]. Probably in theory doable with
| nRF5x SoM + cheap OLED.
|
| 1:
| https://developer.rebble.io/developer.pebble.com/guides/tool...
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| A man cannot step in the same river twice.
| nickorlow wrote:
| I'm excited and hope that the open-source nature of this leads to
| an ecosystem of a lot of different devices all running similar
| software. I'd kill to have a garmin-esque pebble with fitness +
| gps tracking.
| nirav72 wrote:
| My very first 'smart wearable' I owned. Amazing watch. Also used
| it to build my first home automation project - Built a garage
| door opener and status monitor with a Arduino Yun , relay and
| magnetic switch. Was able to trigger it with a button mapped on
| the pebble that would trigger something in tasker on a android
| phone that would make an http call to open the garage door and
| also to get the status.
|
| I'd be completely ok if they keep the new pebble as simple as
| possible. Using the same e-Ink display and functionality. One of
| the most memorable things about the original watch was the
| battery life. Didn't have to charge for days.
| 6thbit wrote:
| Sounds fascinating that you essentially "rented out" your company
| through a sale that got you profits and just waited a few years
| for big corp to sunset the product and recognizing its value
| you're now rising it from the ashes?!
|
| How does this work out on the IP and legal side? A portion of the
| OS is now open source, but that doesn't make google surrender the
| trademark does it?
| crackercrews wrote:
| It's unclear that they sold the trademark in the first place.
| crackercrews wrote:
| I stand corrected. [1] Google owns the name Pebble.
|
| 1: https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/27/24352968/pebble-
| smartwatc...
| husamia wrote:
| I really appreciate the innovative spirit behind the Pebble
| watch! It was groundbreaking to have a hackable device that
| allowed users to customize their experience. The ability to run a
| step detection algorithm and see real-time data was a game
| changer for health tracking. It's inspiring to see how the Pebble
| platform paved the way for future wearable technology. Kudos to
| the entire team for their dedication and vision!
| agambrahma wrote:
| I discovered the Garmin Instinct last year, and was very happy to
| switch to it from my Apple Watch.
| hugs wrote:
| I would love to help with making the robots to test this stuff. I
| often joke that one would think that testing buttons would be a
| solved problem by now, but then we keep inventing new buttons.
| I'm looking forward to seeing all the new buttons the Pebble team
| are working on!
| randomor wrote:
| Amazfit and Xiaomi is now dominating this market with its
| superior riscv based architecture and 2x longer battery time and
| 2x less cost. I don't really know how pebble can compete now
| given when it was acquired it was already going downhill in
| market share.
|
| I've never earned a pebble only an Xiaomi band many years ago so
| I maybe missing something.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| A bit once bitten twice shy for me on this one, cool though it
| may be.
| follower wrote:
| Still "daily driving" my burgundy[0] Pebble... hoodie/fleece!
|
| (It's impressive quality company swag.)
|
| @erohead, when you're at the stage of needing a kick-ass RePebble
| SDK developed & supported again[1], you know where to find me. :)
|
| lol @ the FAQ: "Aren't you the guy who screwed this up last
| time?"
|
| Also, while looking through the repo, I'd totally forgotten the
| alphabetically ordered fast-food themed release code names which
| included the "Kiwiburger" (a global chain's local product that
| contains neither the bird nor the fruit) that I now wonder how
| many people it confused. :)
|
| The "Kiwiburger" code name release also happened to coincide with
| the inclusion of "Simplicity" (a watch face I designed &
| implemented) as one of the standard faces shipped with each
| Pebble watch by default.
|
| I was particularly proud of the inclusion of "Simplicity"--
| especially when Engadget subsequently said it was "...sure to
| make minimalists happy" which was what I was aiming for. (I seem
| to recall it also gave me the opportunity to say "Hey, I designed
| that watch face!" when I saw a Pebble watch on display at an
| airport duty free store once. :D )
|
| Anyway, I should probably get this memoir off to the
| publishers[3]. :)
|
| ----
|
| [0] Oh, sorry, apparently it's _cranberry_. :)
|
| [1] I helped develop & support the very well-received initial SDK
| that enabled "Hacker Backers" and others to create their first
| Pebble watch faces & watch apps.
|
| It was quite an experience to be working on the SDK remotely from
| New Zealand[1a] and then have the initial public SDK release
| immediately covered by the likes of TechCrunch[1b], The Verge[1c]
| and Engadget. (An _SDK_! :D )
|
| There was a _lot_ of pent-up interest /demand for the SDK so it
| was really great to see how excited people were when they
| successfully implemented their first watch face or (later) watch
| app. In many/most cases this was the person's first experience of
| anything approaching "embedded" programming--there was a lot of
| effort put into removing as many barriers from the development
| experience as possible, so it was really rewarding to see people
| succeed.
|
| (Initially the process still required a locally installed
| embedded development environment, so even with all the effort
| invested to reduce barriers it still wasn't a _simple_ process
| but turns out people were _really_ motivated. :) It also turned
| out that _I_ was really motivated to script /automate & simplify
| the process simply to avoid having to write documentation
| covering a more manual process. :D )
|
| It was also super cool to see people then develop _other_
| (particularly web-based) tools to enable people with even _less_
| technical experience /skill to still create e.g. a custom watch
| face with their favourite sports team logo or the family dog
| featured on it.
|
| I mention all this in part to reminisce and in part to convey
| some of what the mood around Pebble was at the time for those who
| may not have been around _*cough*_ nearly fifteen years ago and
| were wondering what (part of) the "big deal" was...
|
| An early version of the SDK documentation is archived here:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20130415083512/http://developer....
|
| [1a] via this HN Jobs post IIRC:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4132957
|
| [1b] https://techcrunch.com/2013/04/12/pebble-watchface-sdk-
| now-a...
|
| [1c] https://www.theverge.com/2013/4/15/4228700/pebble-tetris-
| clo...
|
| [2]
| https://github.com/google/pebble/blob/3b927684809fba173ee540...
|
| [3] Okay, one last note: interesting to observe it was suddenly a
| lot more difficult to find Pebble/SDK related links from
| ~2012/2013 due to the amount of coverage the PebbleOS/RePebble
| announcements seem to have received. Read into that what you
| wish. :)
| fudged71 wrote:
| Pebble was the only smart watch that worked well with winter
| gloves on. I was outside a lot during university and it was a
| godsend.
| rav3ndust wrote:
| quite excited for this. i had two pebbles back in the day (the
| original pebble, and the pebble time steel, which i still have in
| a drawer at home).
|
| i've been using my pinetime as my only watch for several years
| now, and it does everything i need it to do. however, i will
| happily pick up a new pebble again if this happens. the battery
| life on each of mine was awesome, the buttons were handy for
| things like quick music playback without having to look at my
| watch, and it had a great little 'app store' with tons of cool
| watchfaces and stuff from the community. looking forward to this
| hopeful 'pebble resurgence'. :)
| Mostlygeek wrote:
| I loved my pebble and still sad it died. Please use inductive
| charging. The metal connectors on my last one shorted when I was
| in a salt water pool.
| ncruces wrote:
| I remember I bought a Round, and started hacking away a subpixel
| rendering library for it, and then it got killed.
|
| I lost interest, but that's still the smart watch I most liked.
| thefifthsetpin wrote:
| I'm so stoked. Pebble was the only smart watch that I actually
| liked and used.
|
| My apple watch just sits on a shelf. My fitbit I only wear when
| sleeping. My pebble unfortunately broke, but it also sits on a
| shelf as I haven't been able to admit to myself that I'd never
| get around to repairing it.
| Rolfy47 wrote:
| If I may be allowed to add a suggestion. Please make sure new
| Pebble is a watch for all time (hah!). I currently wear a $30
| Temu (?) watch that is indestructible (you can take a drill to
| the face without scratching), but ugly as all get out! I would
| like a watch (note Pebble already ticked most of these boxes)
| that is light, attractive, comfortable, easy to read in all
| circumstances, long life, hardy, reliable, and has a weather app
| that actually works correctly and consistently. All the fitness
| stuff is secondary, but a step counter is fun.
| ewedel wrote:
| Wonderful news! Still getting ~ 5 days battery on my Pebble Time,
| but was quite disappointed that the Time2 never made it out into
| the wild.
|
| Looking forward to what new hardware is on the way -- have had
| the same experience where I kept looking at alternatives but
| nothing met the Pebble bar.
| ptico wrote:
| Pebble Time is still my favourite smartwatch design ever, I
| really hope the new one will have similar design (and yes, more
| like 1st one) but just bezel-to-bezel screen
| bane wrote:
| The Pebble got pushed pretty hard, the demoscene even got ahold
| of it.
|
| https://youtu.be/j_GJfSTz6Dg
|
| https://youtu.be/UC-ru1P3GVo
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| That's awesome - I worked at the pebble office a bit at one time
| helping with some launches. :). Good luck Eric!
| Iwantanewpebble wrote:
| It is so exciting, I never found anything better than my pebbles.
|
| It would be great to have a good map system on the watch. Not a
| GPS but a good communication with LocusMap, OSMAND, Google Map.
| growt wrote:
| I just want to claim my bragging rights and say that I was backer
| #105 on Kickstarter for the original pebble. I'm happy that it's
| coming back, it was such a great device.
| miklasch wrote:
| Please consider a round option too this time!
| miklasch wrote:
| Nice! Please consider a round watchface option too this time.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| Makes sense, it's too strong of a trademark to just disappear.
|
| Also, for me it signifies the golden age of hardware startups.
| There was a time when all the cool kids started hardware
| companies, especially wearables were really hot for a short time.
| Weird to think that was almost 15 years ago now.
| aurelien wrote:
| You do not bring people back in the way that this website does
| not work in text mode.
|
| Emacs-w3m just cannot acces it )':
| Gasp0de wrote:
| My Garmin Forerunner has everything the author claims doesn't
| exist except the hackability: Long (10 day) battery life,
| reflective screen (plus background light), physical buttons, all
| the features (step count, notifications, music control, weather,
| etc. plus lots of additional sport functions and even a pulse and
| oxygen sensor.
|
| However, I still get the point of having a hackable device.
| tshanmu wrote:
| +1 pleasantly surprised by my garmin forerunner for exactly the
| same with hrv stats as well
| blackdisk wrote:
| They are nice, but they are no Pebble. Garmin feel like a
| gadget you bought and are stuck with what you got.
|
| Pebble started ok, it was the first attempt. The first UI
| basically scrolled through watch faces which I wasn't a fan of,
| but it was the first real Smart watch so experiments were
| required.
|
| Then they put out the new UI that is used today, it's fast,
| cool playful animations, easy to navigate, had calendar, steps,
| sleep tracking and heart rate right at your finger tips (still
| better than today's watches). The navigation buttons blow away
| any other watch, long press customization is amazing, app
| store, etc.
|
| Garmin, once you pull it out of the box, you got what you got.
| Pebble, everything the newest watch got, the old one did too
| (as long as the required sensor existed) and GAINED performance
| through the years. Not to mention the 10's of thousands of apps
| that gave you so much functionality.
|
| I still think the Rebble store gives Google and Apple a run for
| their money... After 9 years of Pebble being "dead"
| Gasp0de wrote:
| My Forerunner 255 is now 3(?) years old and it still gets new
| updates with new features, so what you say isn't really true.
| blackdisk wrote:
| That's cool, they must be investing more in their watches
| lately, the couple I had right after Pebble died were very
| basic. The stuff they did worked well, but they were
| similar to how you bought a GPS back in the day, what it
| came with was what you got and there were minor updates and
| you could get new maps but not much else
| blackdisk wrote:
| I need more news!!! Give me some info drops
|
| I've wanted this to happen for so long and only gave up on Pebble
| last year after the latest version of Android made the watch not
| work for the second time in a row... At the time there was no
| workaround and it was getting frustrating waiting around for an
| workaround to use my watch. There also had been a large decline
| in posts on Rebble,I thought the magic was dying. So glad things
| were going on behind the scenes!
|
| I ended up getting the one+ watch 2 which was by far the best
| android watch I've tested and the focus on battery life and
| always on display were very nice... But still couldn't meet the
| speed and ease of use of my Pebbles. I've got around 6-7 Pebbles,
| have done repairs, battery replacements, button replacements,
| screen replacements just to keep these bad boys working. They've
| been incredibly reliable overall and I don't know the last time
| I've purchased a tech product that still works 12 years later and
| still functions better than the most recent tech in every way I
| care about.
|
| With this news I took the adb route, started up the Rebble
| subscription again (even though it hadn't been long enough to
| actually expire) and started using them again... Blows my mind
| that it's even better than I remember. There were things I was
| forced to live with with the one+ that I forgot worked fine on my
| Pebble.
|
| So excited by this news, but I need more news!!! I've scoured the
| Internet for anything I can find, no new sources in the last 15
| hours I need new info!
|
| Thank you so much for doing this! I can't wait. If it is possible
| to just get the Pebble Time 2 that I backed on Kickstarter I'd be
| more than happy. The only watch that had build issues was the
| Pebble 2, it was an amazing watch, but the rubber sides didn't
| age well. If you go with that design again, maybe a silicone or
| something stronger.
|
| Thank you again! Please give any information you can! I need a
| weekly fireside chat
| antfarm wrote:
| Answering "Do you want a new Pebble?" with "No" redirects to
| https://www.apple.com/watch/. I want neither.
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| > Aren't you the guy who screwed this up last time?
|
| > Yes, the one and only. I think I've learned some valuable
| lessons.
|
| I'm glad Eric is self-aware. I was PISSED when Pebble shut down
| JUST after the Kickstarter. I was in the process of porting the
| UI from my favorite Nooka watch to Pebble...oh man, now I just
| remembered the founder of Nooka spent a decade working on the Sa
| umbrella that never released.
|
| These guys are a huge reason I don't back Kickstarter projects
| anymore.
|
| I signed up for updates only so I can get a modern Pebble but I'm
| not keeping my hopes up.
| jtuente wrote:
| I'm hoping that you can revive some of the fitness tracking
| features of the Basis B1/Peak smart watches. I especially loved
| the galvanic skin response and skin temperature monitoring with
| the air temperature sensing. It was amazing to be able to
| identify stress by comparing these values.
|
| I could literally identify when I was in an job interview or
| going dancing without just relying on my heart rate. My heart
| rate during the interview was relatively flat but elevated;
| however, my galvanic skin response spiked hard (sweating) and my
| skin temperature dipped without a similar air temperature change.
| On the other hand while dancing, I had reactive heart rate,
| varying galvanic, and rising skin/air temperature (lots of warm
| bodies).
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