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We're bringing Pebble back

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Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#91

Post by tetromino_ »

taeric wrote: post #12

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 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.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#93

Post by dom96 »

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.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#94

Post by foobarchu »

abraxas wrote: post #74
ctkhn wrote: post #52

Earlier 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…

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.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#95

Post by jorvi »

abraxas wrote: post #74
ctkhn wrote: post #52

Earlier 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…

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.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#96

Post by jsheard »

bitdivision wrote: post #56
ClassyJacket wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#97

Post by averageRoyalty »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #60
mrinterweb wrote: post #26

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.

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 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.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#98

Post by abraxas »

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.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#99

Post by jetrink »

pedrocr wrote: post #47

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.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#100

Post by normalaccess »

jampekka wrote: post #35
INTPenis wrote: post #18

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!

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