We're bringing Pebble back
repebble.comThank 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.
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.
> 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? ;-)
Indeed, I forgive Google about 40 of their killed projects for giving us pebble in return.
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).
not the reader though
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!"
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.)
These were different times, people hadn't burned themselves on Embrace, extend, and extinguish that much yet.
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".
Never forget.
not the reader indeed
What happens when they kill it again?
Open source licenses are irrevocable. You can quit providing the source, but you can't sue someone for using a copy they already took.
40 down, 400 to go.
> 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!
Thank you!
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.
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.
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.
Thank you, replying!
Weathergraph is the best weather app I've ever used, thank you so much for it!
Thank you! I hope to keep it that way :).
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.
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.
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
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...
They have QR payments, but no NFT? That doesn't seem right.
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.
Outside the US, modern banking is available, and credit cards are unnecessary.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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 ;).
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.
If your world is limited to the US and western Europe, sure.
> 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.
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.
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.
Would you wear a Pebble too?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Their app syncs with the Apple Health app (which is better), so that's what I use (and one reason why I like Withings)
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.
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.fitbi...
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.
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.
The GBD-200 I have can receive notifications.
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?
[dead]
Sounds like a Garmin Forerunner (255? 265?) with a custom watch face might fit the bill.
Amazfit watches.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Have you reached out to them? I've found their customer support even for out-of-warranty items to be fantastic.
I hadn't; I should try.
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.
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.
You should have a look at he Garmin instinct 2x. They've nailed it.
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.
You might want to invest some of that money in anger management classes
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.
If a smartwatch requires anger management classes in order to use successfully, that might indicate something about the watch. :P
... or expectations.
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.
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.
> 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...
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
And not that expensive :(
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.
BangleJs is totally hackable
Pretty sure I yelled something like "yoooo no way!!" :D too awesome.
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
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.
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.
I have the Forerunner 945 and it's the only thing that has ever filled the void left by Pebble. Garmin is so good.
Same here. It's the best smart watch I've had.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
USA, and that’s with good insurance and a primary care provider
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.
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.
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.)
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Also, you can set your watch to auto detect and start your workout tracking with a a subtle notification.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
I think for me it’s more the targets - trying to shave a minute off a 5k time or similar.
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!"
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.
The Strava effect is a huge motivator for many.
> 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.
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.
True, but people who tend to prioritize personal health also tend to be richer than the average bear.
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.
> 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.
> And they are healthier than fresh vegetables.
Citation needed
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.
from SERP page 1
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/4060/
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. β-Carotene, however, was found to decrease drastically in some commodities."
It was occasionally lower, too.
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)
Surely a Garmin is what you want? No subscription, 7 day+ battery life, smart watch features are there but largely secondary.
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.)
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.
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.
It sounds a lot like you might appreciate Garmin watch, too.
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.
It was an option I considered, but the accuracy of the sensors was way worse than apple for the price.
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
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.
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.
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.
Dollar cost averaging health metrics :)
I sort-of feel like maybe Pebble isn't for you, it had always been the smartwatch 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
Garmin is what you're looking for. Battery lasts 1-2 weeks. No subscription.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Modern optical sensors are pretty dang accurate on garmin watches.
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.
I love the animation when you click "No" on "Do you want a new Pebble?". So extra.
Gotta be honest I feel like Garmin is the perfect balance of pebble vs apple watch
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
The metal in the charging point can cause some allergic reactions, nothing a small silicone cap doesn’t fix though
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
Im not OP, but this sounds like the garmin instinct.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
> 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...
What if I'm not interested in those and just want the text notifications and maybe my pulse?
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
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.
Probably SWOLF? Which is a measure of your stroke efficiency https://thirdcoasttraining.com/2024/11/22/understanding-swol...
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?
That’s just marketing surely? Is there any activity that you’d want, apart from diving, missing from a fenix/epix?
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).
> 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.
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.
There are some models that basically do them all - fenix, epix etc.
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.
I like my instinct, but Garmin is so locked down, less hackable than even an Apple Watch.
You can download the SDK and side load applications. No annual developer fee. Not sure how it’s more locked down.
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.
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.
I think that was NFC. The problem was, iPhone generated a random UID for all other cards, while this one was fixed.
You can also use Garmin watches for transit in Japan, if it's a Japanese model.
My Garmin watch will only allow me to add emv cards.
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.
You run native code on the Watch itself and most of the limitations are around not doing anything that will kill the small battery.
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.
I meant the Apple Watch, I should have quoted the relevant bit I was replying to
> Don’t know about Apple Watch development
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.
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).
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.
Did you randomly bring this up, or are you saying this because you see a Garmin redirect when you click "No"?
I ask because I get directed to the Apple Watch homepage.
Oh interesting, I got directed to Pixel Watch
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.
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!
You could always sell it. <hint hint>
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.
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.
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.
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.
The 265 and 975 both have touch screen on top of the buttons.
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
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!
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.
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.
> 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?
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 "$"?
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.
No, that's not how it works. Especially not on a wrist device.
you replied to a thread talking about garmin watches... not the pebble
?
https://crossvine.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/20250128_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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Why can’t it be also cached on the phone though?
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.
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".
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/
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.
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.
My Garmin has a dedicated hardware button that says "LAP"
Don't some Garmin watches support long press app launch?
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.
On the iPhone I get redirected to the Apple Store page for the Apple Watch. Nice humor.
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.
I interpreted it as an intentional insult :)
Same on Mac (Firefox)
Same on android Firefox& Chrome
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).
Looks it tries to identify Apple devices and goes to Pixel for everything else.
Edit: per erohead, that change was made after your comment.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.
I got pixel with Firefox for Android
>- Android devices go to Pixel Watch,
>- 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
I got redirected to pixel
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.
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.
From what I've seen these aren't available in the US, unless I've missed one. (I would be very interested if so!)
The only one I'm aware of in the US is the basically-discontinued Timex Pay. It requires a Chase bank account / card to link with, however.
That is awesome... Any links? Any risk vectors I may be missing?
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?
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?
My (Timex Pay) one seems to function using a virtual card (remotely lockable) provided by the bank, which uses some sort of tokenization-based security chip on the band itself. I imagine there's probably some security flaws because they provide the NFC encoders to the user. It's backed by https://tappytech.com
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.
You could cut out the chip from a debit card and glue it to the back of the pebble?
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
haha thats too funny. i wonder if his eye starts to heat if he buys too many drinks
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.
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.
Good call, I just changed it to send to pixel watch if opened on Android or Windows!
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.
I thought they killed FitBit and are doing Pixel Watch again instead
https://store.google.com/product/pixel_watch_3
> "A better "thank you" to Google would be to direct people to Fitbit."
Fitbit has already gone off to the great Google graveyard, unfortunately.
no. they just released the Fitbit ace
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 ).
It's just a joke I think. But yeah linking to the pixel watch would have been nicer.
What if you clicked no because you already own a Pebble?
Upgrade option
why not redirect to google watches specially if the team is from goodle !
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.
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
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
Possibly that's a good thing to mention on the homepage. :)
This is really good news!
Wishlist for the next device:
More sensors: heart rate, spo2 and ecg...
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.
A Pebble 2 HR with a colour screen would do the job for me, I think.
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.
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.
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.
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 ungrounded.
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
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.
Pretty much all of the cloud stuff has been reimplemented with open-source code by the community! See rebble.org.
rebble.io is the correct address
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.
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.
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!
When micropayments fail to annoy sufficiently, just turn them into microsubscriptions! Try 3 days for 30 cents!
-- agree with you rzazeuta!
Ooh yeah, big bonus points if it integrates easily with eg Homeassistant.
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.
> 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
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!
Thanks for being there at the beginning!
That’s really cool.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Oooh, clever :). Just dash quickly when the Sauron's eye looks in another direction :)).
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!
I still use my PTR daily! See https://rebble.io/ :)
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!
> 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.
> 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.
Not as ergonomic, no e-paper, and not hackable. They're fitness gadgets, not tools.
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.
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.
Is a diving watch a tool or fitness gadget?
I have the opposite opinion on what's a tool and what's a toy.
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.
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.
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)).
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.
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?
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.
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!
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)
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.
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.
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.
Whoa, I loved that app! I used to track scores for intramural games in college. the UI was so clean and simple!
No way! hahaha that's amazing. I love the internet. I remember waking up the next morning to like 120 downloads, totally unexpected.
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.
Unfortunately, as mentioned in another comment, the Bluetooth stack is apparently one of the items that is not included in the source release[0]:
including: 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...
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.
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...
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).
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.
My speculation is that they used very low level software design to achieve such reliability. This could be harder to maintain but who knows...
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!
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.)
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.
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.
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.
In an alternate timeline, we are all wearing Pebbles synced to our Palm Prēs.
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…
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-...
Never heard of Basis Peak, but I've heard of Pebble for over 10 years.
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 :)
I was a backer for the original and then again for your final run. Sadly you never delivered on the Pebble Core... The product I'd been dreaming of for years.
I hope something similar is in the works as it hit all the right notes for me.
I'd still be wearing my Kickstarter edition to this day except it succumbed to the screen pressure issue and couldn't be opened to fix it without destroying the screen. Note: please don't glue this version together.
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.
Ifixit had some pieces and I got a Pebble 2 screen and bezel from Ali Express. Your point is still valid.
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.
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).
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! :)
I signed up for updates from https://smallandroidphone.com/ back in 2022 and have seen nothing since :( I think it's dead.
Do you have a link to the 'Small Android Phone'?
Looks like it's https://smallandroidphone.com/
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.
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!)
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.
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.
+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 :/
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.
Amazfit watches have done this for since 2016 or so. And cheaply.
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!
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.
Early models had a transreflective displays, newer models sadly don't.
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
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.
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.
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!
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.
Things worked out! We got acquired. Heads down on merging - https://ericmigi.com/blog/why-were-bringing-pebble-back
Hi, please support vanilla linux phones this time?
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.
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.
Wasn’t that bought by Automattic?
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!
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.
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!) :)
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.
Patience is a virtue :)
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...
> 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.
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.
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!
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 kilobytes of RAM! How many companies could have done all that in 256 KB?
I bought a watch in 2003 or so and it cost about £120.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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!
> 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.
is it a g shock or casio variant? the new ones can read email and take your pulse too
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.”
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?
> 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.
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.
> "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?
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).
Compared to _Garmin_? The Pebble UI and OS will run circles around it. Intuitive, fast, and amazing.
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.
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.
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.
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...
pebble the company reminds me of teenage engineering
Except reasonably priced :)
But not financially solvent either. Maybe at higher volumes their pricing model would have worked but that wasn't the reality of the market.
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.
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.
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.
You can also have waterproof with magnetic pin charging like "magsafe" style (doesn't have to be wireless per se) :)
True but that means a proprietary charger standard too.
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.
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.
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.
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"
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.
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
+1 pleasantly surprised by my garmin forerunner for exactly the same with hrv stats as well
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!
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 :-(
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.
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.
yeah, it's sad though.
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.
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
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/
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!
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?
It's unclear that they sold the trademark in the first place.
I stand corrected. [1] Google owns the name Pebble.
1: https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/27/24352968/pebble-smartwatc...
Please include the pebble round format! That looks so much better to me than square formats (including all the apple watches)
Answering "Do you want a new Pebble?" with "No" redirects to https://www.apple.com/watch/. I want neither.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 35€ 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.
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
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.
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.
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
> Startup founder lesson learned — never forget to define and talk about your long term vision for the future.
What's the long term vision.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
The pebble battery life was >1 week, over a decade ago, so, yes?
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!
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!
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.
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)
I wonder if a new pebble could be a bit like a dumb phone.
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.
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!
Australia and Nea Zealand are "other" ?? Ok, I guess. If it's about economy scale, makes sense.
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.
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?
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.
As per blog post:
"PebbleOS took dozens of engineers working over 4 years to build..."
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.
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... ♥
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.
The Pebble got pushed pretty hard, the demoscene even got ahold of it.
https://youtu.be/j_GJfSTz6Dg
https://youtu.be/UC-ru1P3GVo
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You do not bring people back in the way that this website does not work in text mode.
Emacs-w3m just cannot acces it )':
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
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.
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.
I looked at this page on my Quest 3. For some reason, that banner image looks 3D!
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.
I love the homepage design! Never had a pebble, but if it has ECG like Apple watch, i'm interested.
BangleJS
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.
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!
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.
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.
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'. :)
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.
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.
"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
> 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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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
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.
How is this going to affect the Beeper / Beepberry project? Are you involved with the hardware side of that project still?
"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.
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
A bit once bitten twice shy for me on this one, cool though it may be.
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.
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.
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.
In my experience, Garmin counts pool lengths just fine, with maybe 1 out of 20 being miscounted?
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)
I have kept my Pebble WAITING for this day! Horayy!
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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!
The Garmin Fenix 8 is $1,099
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!
And worth every penny. (I say this as a former pebble and then rebble user.)
I moved from Pebble to Casio F-91W. Worth every penny!
I recently did this band-swap "new" for a total of like $70 all-in.
https://www.reddit.com/r/casio/comments/13yy4nh/world_time_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.
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.
Different users; different needs!
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.
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.
I had the Instinct Solar. Not sure if it counts as "fancy", but it certainly was not reliable!
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)
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!
Which watch has an e-ink(/epaper) display? I can only think of Watchy. Pebble was LCD.
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.
> 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.
I'm pretty sure they were transreflective LCDs with an FPGA to handle the low-power refresh.
Not a "normal" one, though...
"black and white memory LCD using an ultra low-power "transflective LCD" manufactured by Sharp"
"Normal" enough that many of Garmin's watches still use MIP LCD...which is what the Pebble used.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The opening animation is so so so good.
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.
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.
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?
A parts manufacturer went bust at exactly the wrong time IIRC.
I can't wait, I never got a Pebble but it was the most interesting smart watch style to me.
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.
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
How does the pebble compare to the pine time?
https://pine64.org/devices/pinetime/
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
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.
I still have mine and wear it from time to time. Can't wait for an update lol.
Will you have nice looking ones? or will they all be "sporty/plastic" types?
Pebble time round was very pretty IMHO, let's hope they go more that way this time
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Would it be possible to get news on bluesky in addition to X please?
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.
(could you make an account on the Fedi/Mastodon and/or Bluesky?)
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) ?
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.
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!
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!
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.
This is amazing news, I loved my Pebble. It had such a wonderful UI.
I discovered the Garmin Instinct last year, and was very happy to switch to it from my Apple Watch.
I've got one. But I never got used to the idea of having a watch.
Please do, best smartwatch ever. If we get a LTE version so we can leave the phone at home, that would be magical.
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.
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.
This is going to make a great addition to my e-ink collection: - Remarkable Tablet - SOL Reader - Kindle
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.
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 !
The announcement from Google: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42845017
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?
google announcement: https://opensource.googleblog.com/2025/01/see-code-that-powe...
pebbleOS repo: https://github.com/google/pebble
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.)
Belated thanks! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42845337
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
Yep, that is probably where my confusion came from.
Which watches currently use MiP LCD?
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.
"MIP" ?
I thought it was called transflective : for transmittive + reflective ?
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.
cool, seems like the ideal device for something like Circa Solar as watch face
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.
I’d actually wear my Apple Watch if I didn’t have to charge it every day. Battery life is paramount.
I had my final pebble hardware failure just before they stopped trading. I'll give it a miss.
You need to press the "I want one" to even see how a Pebble looks like...
I'm guessing it couldn't possibly do navigation display for Google maps?
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...
Literally the best news I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Great job, looking forward to making some apps this time around!!
Love this! Wish you all would be active on BlueSky. I’d totally follow you there I can’t abide the X
Are all the keys for the bootloaders for all past devices available? Is all the firmware and boot code available?
If there are any devices in the future I would like a surface competitor. Not surface laptop. Just a tablet thingy.
Love how if you click no on the website it brings you to Apple Watch haha
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.
We actually had a company tab at that ice cream shop - anyone who had a Pebble on ate for free :)
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.
> 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
I’m so happy and excited about this. Garmin has been serving well but I want Pebble, now!
Eric going for the Steve Jobs speedrun. Risky but interesting to see how it plays out!
This is awesome. Also weird to be exited about replacing my Apple-Watch with my next Pebble.
Goodspeed!
Australia is missing from the list! We demand satisfaction!
Please, for the love of all things privacy, make this new Pebble work on Linux Phone
Nice! Please consider a round watchface option too this time.
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
You shouldn't have stopped when there was no alternatives.
Please, for the love of privacy, make this new Pebble work with Linux phones.
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!
How about some screenshots, product galleries et cetera
I already have 5 Pebbles and still use one of them every day.
And yes, I want more. :-D
So cool! So inspiring that you're bringing it back!
Please consider a round option too this time!
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.
+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.
What about who has the original one? What will be new for us?
Yay. The Pebble was my favorite smart watch by a long shot.
Been waiting for this day for too long! Welcome back
I hope they will support vanilla linux phones!
Next, how do I degoogle my Pebble?
Hardware is hard. Great to see!
Finally some good news.
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?
As long as I can turn it off. Simplicity and battery life is what appeals to me with the Pebble.
You can do this already if you have a Pebble, someone made an app for it.
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?
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.
Interesting. It would be great if they could open source that too. I would love me some fully hackable smartwatch hardware!
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...
This project is started by a pebble founder, doesn’t seem like too tall of a task to me
I didn't say too tall, I just said tall.
Just get a OnePlus 2R.
I miss PalmOS anyone else?
That’s awesome - I worked at the pebble office a bit at one time helping with some launches. :). Good luck Eric!
we live in a great timeline, finally, pebble is back
Allerta inPulse too? ;-B
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. :)
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.
Neither is Ireland. Things like this make it clear that one lives in a Tier 3 country...
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?
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.
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.
Please make a model with mechanical dials over the Pebble screen!
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.
> 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
capitalism serves all niches , not just "most people"
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
nice, hadn't heard about that one!
> 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.
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.
Would be cool if it had a standard 20mm lug width so you could use it with mostly any mechanical watch strap.
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.
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 ..
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.
Congrats Eric!
Lets goooooooo
more data for Google
STL please!
HECK YES
I'm still disappointed that the pebble core was pulled. A pebble like watch with connectivity might get me interested again.
I honestly wouldn't touch anything these founders make. They're really good at hyping things up and then selling (Pebble & Beeper)
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
uhhh are you sure you won't get a trademark dispute?
More buttons please.
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
Hell yeah!
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A man cannot step in the same river twice.
Google has become cool again!
By dumping a codebase they aren't using?
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!
Fool me once...
I like how clicking no takes you to a far superior product (apple watch)
> 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.
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.
> 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.)
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.
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).
You can’t go back though.
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.