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We're bringing Pebble back

repebble.com

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Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#21

Post by joshstrange »

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.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#22

Post by tombert »

jsheard wrote: post #19
tombert wrote: post #13

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.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#24

Post by jsheard »

tombert wrote: post #22
jsheard wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#26

Post by mrinterweb »

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.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#27

Post by rossng »

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!

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#28

Post by solarkraft »

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.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#30

Post by tombert »

jsheard wrote: post #24
tombert wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 respon…

Yep, that is probably where my confusion came from.
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