41–50 of 758 posts
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!
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.
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!
I love the animation when you click "No" on "Do you want a new Pebble?". So extra.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.