I love the animation when you click "No" on "Do you want a new Pebble?". So extra.
The amount of us who clicked no is amazing. I loved my Pebble Time but I'm going to give money to yet another Kickstarter and have it be killed shortly after.
We're bringing Pebble back
191–200 of 758 posts
Re: We're bringing Pebble back
#192Earlier 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…
My Garmin has a dedicated hardware button that says "LAP"
Re: We're bringing Pebble back
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like my instinct, but Garmin is so locked down, less hackable than even an Apple Watch.
You can download the SDK and side load applications. No annual developer fee. Not sure how it’s more locked down.
One example: I would like to program a (dumb/ID-only) RFID card into it to unlock a door. I can't as the NFC off limits to apps.
Re: We're bringing Pebble back
#194Awesome! The first Pebble absolutely fascinated me by having a hackable, C-running watch on my wrist.
I vividly remember spending days fine tuning the heuristics of a simple step detection algorithm in the first watchface where I thought “seeing your daily step count next to time sure is awesome”. And later, tens of thousands of people thought so as well - this was one of the signs what the health-tracking wrist device is about to become.
It was incredible that even the first model allowed you to run a 30 samples per second accelerometer sampling and classifying the movement, 24/7, and still lasted days. No other watch offers a similar level of hackability.
And as the time progressed, Pebble became the first platform to get Weathergraph - my graphical weather watchface.
Weathergraph was then ported to Garmin (as Pebble shut down), and then to Apple Watch widget (as it became a capable platform with the introduction of standalone watch-apps in watchOS 6), and then to iOS app & widget, where it now lets me live a life of indie developer, after a serie of corporate design/PM/dev jobs.
Thank you for that, Eric & Pebble team.
I still keep the developer edition Pebble with my name printed on the back (great touch!) in my shelf and heart, and will always remember Jon Barlow, one of the best and most helpful developer advocates I ever encountered.
And kudos to the whole dev team. The watch and companion app was rock stable, always staying connected, the calendar always being in sync, watch apps installed quickly and reliably - the things that 10x larger companies struggled with for years were nailed here almost from day one.
Godspeed!
PS: What a mishap to shut the company down shortly after a release of Pebble 2. It nailed the experience of a lightweight watch, with the most contrasty BW reflective screen I have seen, and buttery smooth animations (while Garmin still renders menus in like 8-10 fps on their MIP screens 10 years later). So small and lightweight, I’d love everyone to try it on, and compare with 2024 smartwatches.
Re: We're bringing Pebble back
#195I’m so happy and excited about this. Garmin has been serving well but I want Pebble, now!
Re: We're bringing Pebble back
#196I don't understand the excitement. It's just a watch.
Whatever you get at the end of this is probably going to be overpriced and underwhelming.
Re: We're bringing Pebble back
#197I 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 really like vivomove looks but after buying lux as a gift for my wife I think I will steer clear. App was bad, syncing issues, she wore it for a while because she liked how it looks but I think she has not charged it in over a year because of how much the experience sucks compared to apple watch or even withings.
I have a withings scanwatch right now, the app is nice, ecosystem is nice - but accuracy is very underwhelming.
I would pay 1k for a watch that
- is hybrid with subtle watch aesthetic and minimal display/vibration for notifications
- has Apple watch level metric accuracy
- has week long battery life
- ideally would have replaceable battery but not a deal breaker if warranty is 3 years
Re: We're bringing Pebble back
#198Ooof, no hardware schematics? Also missing datasheets? This projects seems like a very tall task to me without these fundamental missing pieces. Will Google release them soon or am I looking the the wrong place?
Re: We're bringing Pebble back
#199So 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!
I had two (an OG kickstarter pebble, and the steel), and also suffered screen death. The battery life was incredible, but I don’t know that I could give up the standalone features that the apple watch ultra 2 has. On-device Siri, tap to pay, calling without the phone nearby.. I hate the digital crown though, and it could use a proper torch like the Garmin watches have, so it’s far from perfect.
Re: We're bringing Pebble back
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure you can put it in MBA language like 'specific pitch' or 'value add', you had to try it and see if it felt right for you. The watch had a pretty coherent ux flow for a non-touchscreen device, and could be easily used with gloves on without even looking at the watch in some scenarios (e.g. shortcutting to music controls). It later paired some unique animations to make things feel friendly and a bit quirky…
Fair that I do seem to be asking for MBA speak. Not my intent. For me, the big mental block is that I can't think of much I want to do from my watch. A readable screen is obviously nice. So is advanced battery life. But, if I'm going to be dipping into health tracking, it seems Garmin is the baseline there. The UX flow is one that has me somewhat intrigued. How often are you interacting with the device? And for what…
I really enjoyed my Pebble for waking up in the morning (vibration feels much softer to me than a loud alarm) and media control, e.g. while showering. The display read well passively, and I only had to charge it every couple of days.
The only experience that came close were hybrid smartwatches (analog, but with vibrations, 3 programmable buttons and the pointers could move to indicate apps). Longer battery life, but very closed off (can't sync alarms from external sources) and the phone bridge stopped working after some time.