31–40 of 47 posts
I suspect this blog entry was written this week due to a prominent YouTuber doing a history video featuring Pebble: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRdMQwQT47k "Pebble Smartwatch: From $230 Million to Zero"
@bberenberg - you may be interested in https://sahha.ai/ They're building a developer API to measure wellness and mood without user input. I'm considering maybe trying it in an app we're developing, but I have no affiliation with them (aside from being in the same part of the world Aus/Nz).
> Our models are trained on a validated clinical rating scale but instead of needing the user to fill out a questionnaire the models predict the score based on the user’s digital phenotype. > Sahha produces this digital phenotype by producing a holistic picture of the user’s movement, sleep and phone usage.
I don’t believe this will do anything helpful for my interests, though I can see how this could be used in a surveillance method to adjust things like insurance pricing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I now wear a cheap (~£20) vintage mechanical watch. It tells the time. It does need charging every day or two, but charging only takes a few seconds and doesn't require an adapter or power socket.
Citizen Eco-Drive (<$20 eBay). Trickle charges off the bar light filtering through my Glenfarclas 105.
I miss physical buttons interfacing with apps. There are many apps that would benefit from this, as mentioned in the article.
When Pebble died, I switched to a Garmin watch. It replicated the features of the Pebble that I held most dear, most importantly, the long battery life and physical buttons. Sadly, it isn't possible to develop apps for it, though. To this day, there isn't a watch that adequately replaced the full glory that is the Pebble.
When Pebble went down I bought 4 Pebble Time Steel, 1 Pebble Time and 1 Pebble classic on eBay. One Time Steel is kaput (don't wear Pebbles on hot jacuzzis), am using the second and the others are in the drawer waiting for their turn. I hope to have Pebbles for the rest of my life.
I love my Pebble Time watch, and for the first several years I used all the bells and whistles: the sleep tracking, the Bluetooth alerts, even the mini games (like Tetris) from the Pebble Store. But after about 6 years of ownership, I noticed that my battery could only hold a charge for 3-4 days, compared with 10-12 when I first got it. Then I realized that I wasn't regularly paying attention to the sleep tracking da…
I got one of the Fossil Hybrid Watches. Looks like a normal watch (that was important for me) but has an eInk display in the background. I've disabled lots of notifications but it still keeps track of various data without a hassle and relays important messages to the watch face. Battery lifetime on a charge is... I don't know, maybe I charge it once a week or every 10 days or something like that?! It's not so often t…
However the biggest problem is that the eInk screens seem to be a major failure point - even when working normally it seems to suffer massive burn-in making it unreadable after a few months.
My first watch had the screen die due to what I believe was trapped moisture (the weep-hole on the back is easily clogged) and just a few days ago my current watch also had the screen go bad.
It's really sad because the feature-set is almost precisely what I want, at exactly the price I'd like to pay
I love my Pebble Time watch, and for the first several years I used all the bells and whistles: the sleep tracking, the Bluetooth alerts, even the mini games (like Tetris) from the Pebble Store. But after about 6 years of ownership, I noticed that my battery could only hold a charge for 3-4 days, compared with 10-12 when I first got it. Then I realized that I wasn't regularly paying attention to the sleep tracking da…
So finally I removed them all excepot for two that weren't as intrusive and also were very useful for me: phone calls and meeting/event notifications from calendars. That way I could keep my phone "silent", and also don't miss meetings (I have very bad time management abilities)
I love my Pebble Time watch, and for the first several years I used all the bells and whistles: the sleep tracking, the Bluetooth alerts, even the mini games (like Tetris) from the Pebble Store. But after about 6 years of ownership, I noticed that my battery could only hold a charge for 3-4 days, compared with 10-12 when I first got it. Then I realized that I wasn't regularly paying attention to the sleep tracking da…
I got one of the Fossil Hybrid Watches. Looks like a normal watch (that was important for me) but has an eInk display in the background. I've disabled lots of notifications but it still keeps track of various data without a hassle and relays important messages to the watch face. Battery lifetime on a charge is... I don't know, maybe I charge it once a week or every 10 days or something like that?! It's not so often t…
I love my Pebble Time watch, and for the first several years I used all the bells and whistles: the sleep tracking, the Bluetooth alerts, even the mini games (like Tetris) from the Pebble Store. But after about 6 years of ownership, I noticed that my battery could only hold a charge for 3-4 days, compared with 10-12 when I first got it. Then I realized that I wasn't regularly paying attention to the sleep tracking da…
Cheap Casio Watch:
- Never have to charge it
- Continuously shows me the minutes and seconds on the stopwatch
$700 Apple Watch Ultra:
- Needs to be re-charged daily
- Refuses to offer a minutes and seconds mode for more than 10-15 seconds at a time (it will keep counting, but will just show the minutes unless you continuously keep raising your wrist)
- Refuses to offer a settings option to adjust the above behavior (presumably because Apple's UI in general is basically "would you like 5 minutes, 10 minutes, or 60 minutes?" with very little thought given to the idea you might be able to actually comprehend how many minutes you want and that it might not be one of the Cupertino options)
Also since I'm already rambling -- just to ramble a bit more:
- Receiving "now's a good time to be mindful" or "time to take a break and stand up" alerts while I'm driving and (maybe because of the specific distance from my house) particularly when I'm about to merge onto the nearest freeway .... when the watch has a GPS and knows how fast I've been moving and where I am ... kinda leaves me speechless.
To balance:
It is still useful overall for seeing Maps directions displayed directly on the watch face -- and this would be the major use case for me. But it's enough of a PITA to keep it charged that I generally just use my phone instead anyway.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I got one of the Fossil Hybrid Watches. Looks like a normal watch (that was important for me) but has an eInk display in the background. I've disabled lots of notifications but it still keeps track of various data without a hassle and relays important messages to the watch face. Battery lifetime on a charge is... I don't know, maybe I charge it once a week or every 10 days or something like that?! It's not so often t…
I'm in a similar boat - I pretty much use the watch for HR tracking (as a proxy for stress), but otherwise keep things like the notifications disabled. This gets me about 20 days between charges However the biggest problem is that the eInk screens seem to be a major failure point - even when working normally it seems to suffer massive burn-in making it unreadable after a few months. My first watch had the screen die…
I have had it almost three years though and I can still read it unless the ambient light is too dim.
I find it useful to quickly answer phone calls and to control music/podcast replaying and of course the heart rate and sleep tracking.
It is a good device even with this problem - I will probably buy another to replace this one, possibly when they release their next update.