I've got one. But I never got used to the idea of having a watch.
We're bringing Pebble back
71–80 of 758 posts
Re: We're bringing Pebble back
#72I'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.
Re: We're bringing Pebble back
#73Tangentially 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... ♥
Re: We're bringing Pebble back
#74I 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
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.
Re: We're bringing Pebble back
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.)
Re: We're bringing Pebble back
#76I 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?
The pebble battery life was >1 week, over a decade ago, so, yes?
Re: We're bringing Pebble back
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gotta be honest I feel like Garmin is the perfect balance of pebble vs apple watch
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 a…
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.
Re: We're bringing Pebble back
#78I'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?
Re: We're bringing Pebble back
#79[deleted]
Re: We're bringing Pebble back
#80Pebble 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.
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-...