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We're bringing Pebble back

repebble.com

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Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#241

Post by billybuckwheat »

bigiain wrote: post #129
billybuckwheat wrote: post #7

Excited (cautiously) about this. Loved my Pebble Time and was gutted when 1) Pebble bit the dust, and 2) my Pebble vanished down that black hole things like small devices and the other sock invariably go down. If this happens, I hope they can keep the revived Pebbles just smart enough and rebuild the app ecosystem. Best of luck, folks. I'm cheering you on from the sidelines!

Also cautious. Extremely cautions. I got rug pulled by "the pebble team" the first time, leaving me with 3 watches they effectively bricked.. Not gonna sign up for that again. (I got a refund on my last Pebble order. When the money showed up I drunk-ebayed a 2nd hand ~40 year old mechanical watch. I now have about 20 wind up or mechanical auto winding watches. I do have a few chinese ~$40 "smart watches" that do an O…

True. I used it after Pebble went away -- Gadgetbridge helped extend the watch's life a few more years. I bought a PineTime as a sort of replacement for my Pebble Time about 18 months ago. An OK watch and, as one blogger I read noted, it's just smart enough.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#242

Post by amatecha »

IgorPartola wrote: post #226

I am extremely excited for this. It would be amazing if it had wireless charging so it was completely sealed. The battery life on my Pebble was amazing, the customization was great, and I really hope this new iteration works well with iOS to deliver notifications. NFC for unlocking things would be a bonus too of course. But no matter what, I am very excited especially since the OS will be open source.

You can also have waterproof with magnetic pin charging like "magsafe" style (doesn't have to be wireless per se) :)

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#243

Post by xyst »

> PebbleOS is now open source

> Proprietary source code has been removed from this repository and it will not compile as-is.

So much for “open source”. Must have been some nasty telemetry in this OS.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#244

Post by MostlyStable »

zem wrote: post #183
MostlyStable wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what we are usually taught, but it doesn't actually seem to be the case. In the smartphone market in particular, as the market itself has grown, the offerings have all seemed to converge on a relatively uniform feature set. Niche phones for niche markets have slowly been weeded out. I don't understand why this is the case, but empirically it seems to be so. That's not to say that there are no weird, niche phon…

third party apps (particularly stuff like messaging, banking and government services) only supporting the main two operating systems is a big barrier to a new one getting any traction.

On android at least, it's entirely possible to have weird, niche, hardware options. Why do no android phones have IR blasters anymore? Or FM Radio support? Why has the headphone jack almost entirely disappeared? (as far as I can tell, Sony is the only manufacturer with phones that will work on American networks). These are options that the mainstream consumer has decided they don't want, but I don't buy that there aren't niche markets for them (I know I'm not a typical consumer, but I can't be that far out on the tail, and I want all of those things)

Yes, weird, niche, OSs are much harder because of network effects, but weird, niche, hardware should be getting more diverse, not less so.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#245

Post by xyst »

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 Apple Watch Ultra has worked wonders for me in terms of battery life and “always on display”.

My only wish is for an easily serviceable battery.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#246

Post by wvenable »

Developing the for the Pebble was a lot of fun. There was a Pebble hack-a-thon recently (recent being 2 years ago) and I finally got around to finishing a project that I started a decade earlier:

https://github.com/codaris/pebble-cpp

It might even become relevant again!

Pebble had an ingenious design for its watch apps. Despite the watch having a limited processor and even more limited RAM, it could accommodate several apps, each boasting a lot of capability.

Each Pebble app was comprised of two components: one that resided on the watch and another on the phone. Users could install these apps from Pebble's dedicated app store, and the same app was compatible with both iOS and Android. Pebble brilliantly bypassed Apple's app install restrictions and cross-platform compatibility challenges by executing the on-phone portion within the platform's JavaScript engine.

If you wanted to create a weather application, the phone component of the app would be written in JavaScript and retrieve weather updates from the Internet, which would then be conveyed to the watch's C-based app for display. Watch apps could also have a settings page that was implemented in HTML.

I have always been impressed by of the cleverness and simplicity of this design.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#248

Post by TeMPOraL »

Avamander wrote: post #131
TeMPOraL wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's an absolutely shame that Pebble was so innovative and functional, but couldn't reach mass market. I think trying to reach "mass market" - or specifically, the market of people who are into fitness and sportsball - is largely what killed them. I'd like to believe that they could've catered to existing userbase a bit longer, grew a little more slowly but sustainably by doubling down on an idea of an ergonomic, b…

> Alas, maybe the whole thing was over once Apple, and Samsung got their marketing wheels spinning. Totally possible, like Nokia vs the iPhone. Difficult to say for sure though, seeing vendors like Fitbit and Garmin still operate in the same space.

Not as ergonomic, no e-paper, and not hackable. They're fitness gadgets, not tools.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#250

Post by amatecha »

rossng wrote: post #27

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!

There was a hack "solution" to fix the display by putting a piece of cardboard or paper behind it to keep the connection good. I was able to get my OG pebble working again until it was finally replaced by an Apple Watch I was gifted quite some time later (like a year or two!) :)
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