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We're bringing Pebble back

repebble.com

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Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#311

Post by bb88 »

modeless wrote: post #306
gerdesj wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a watch in 2003 or so and it cost about £120. I have never worried about powering it - the face is a solar power trickle charger. I can barely generate enough vitamin D for myself but my watch can power itself from the sun here! My watch's time is accurate to within my perception. I run a little fleet of stratum 1 NTP devices and I set my watch roughly bi-annually, whether it needs it or not! The day of week…

For me the #1 feature of a smartwatch is it allows me to take out my phone a lot less and keep it entirely silent without missing important calls or texts. I can filter down my notifications to just the essentials and when one comes in I feel the vibration on my wrist and can tell at a glance if it is important or not. My phone never makes a sound, not even vibration. Other things I enjoy are having weather/stock pri…

I got a google pixel watch, and thought, "Oh Cool I can use it to pay with my watch!".Unfortunately, for that to happen it requires a pin which means it's locked all the time.

If the watch is locked while riding a bike say, it's near impossible to unlock it.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#312

Post by Rapzid »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #248
Avamander wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Is a diving watch a tool or fitness gadget?

I have the opposite opinion on what's a tool and what's a toy.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#313

Post by gerdesj »

sen wrote: post #303
gerdesj wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a watch in 2003 or so and it cost about £120. I have never worried about powering it - the face is a solar power trickle charger. I can barely generate enough vitamin D for myself but my watch can power itself from the sun here! My watch's time is accurate to within my perception. I run a little fleet of stratum 1 NTP devices and I set my watch roughly bi-annually, whether it needs it or not! The day of week…

It wouldn’t be HN without a comment like this. “Why even use the internet? You can live just fine without it. Pen and paper doesn’t crash like a computer does. Electric lights? Candles are fine.”

I own an IT company. Why not read my comment for what it was and not assume what you think I am or are or whatevs?

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#314

Post by xattt »

HumblyTossed wrote: post #304
modeless wrote: post #282

Reposting the comment I made when Fitbit acquired the hollowed-out shell of Pebble, which still applies today: I liked Pebble as a company because they knew how to make just the right engineering compromises to make their product work. The smartwatch everyone wants has a battery that lasts for weeks, a high contrast always-on color screen visible in daylight and total darkness, no bezel, and a round case only a few m…

> The smartwatch everyone wants has a battery that lasts for weeks, I have both a Garmin and an AW S10. I really don't get why Apple doesn't get this. They insist on putting over powered SOCs in their systems and then shrug off the battery life with, "well now you can charge it to 80% in 30min!" Sure, but that still sucks.

An e-ink/cholesteric LCD Apple Watch Air would really be an out-of-the-blue product.

There would be a bit of an existential crisis for customers to figure out whether they wanted basic timekeeping and motivations, or real-time fitness tracking.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#315

Post by maxerickson »

Steltek wrote: post #307
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " The smartwatch everyone wants has a battery that lasts for weeks, a high contrast always-on color screen visible in daylight and total darkness, no bezel, and a round case only a few mm thick. " The Garmin watches that have a MIP (Memory In Pixel) display already cover most of that, provided you avoid using some of the more power hungry features that the Pebbles never had anyway. What is the Pebble Watch's value…

Compared to _Garmin_? The Pebble UI and OS will run circles around it. Intuitive, fast, and amazing.

Do you think Garmin watches are displaying the seconds late or something?

The aesthetics are different enough that a comparison doesn't seem that interesting.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#316

Post by donjoe0 »

dev_snd wrote: post #207
thoop wrote: post #136

Love this! After my Pebble I tried an e-ink "Watchy" from SQFMI ( https://watchy.sqfmi.com/ ) thinking that the battery life would be great but the battery only lasted a few days. I've been wearing a Bangle 2 ( https://www.espruino.com/Bangle.js2 ) which feels closest to recreating my Pebble. It has super long battery life and feels a lot like my Pebble did, but doesn't have the polish of the pebble UI and animations…

I've never worn a pebble, but I also have a banglejs 2 and I really love the watch for it's hackability. I've written my own watchface and a couple of other apps and made changes to a number of existing apps, it's really simple because you can always test your code changes live on the watch while keeping it on your wrist. There's an IDE that connects to it using Bluetooth and the code can be modified during runtime L…

Huh. I appreciate what they did with the tech there, but looking at this Bangle.js the first thing that comes to mind is I hope NuPebble(?) doesn't adopt that excessively-curvy-rectangle shape that screams Apple Watch, I've learned to recoil in disgust even seeing that shape.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#317

Post by suddenclarity »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #289
modeless wrote: post #282

Reposting the comment I made when Fitbit acquired the hollowed-out shell of Pebble, which still applies today: I liked Pebble as a company because they knew how to make just the right engineering compromises to make their product work. The smartwatch everyone wants has a battery that lasts for weeks, a high contrast always-on color screen visible in daylight and total darkness, no bezel, and a round case only a few m…

> " The smartwatch everyone wants has a battery that lasts for weeks, a high contrast always-on color screen visible in daylight and total darkness, no bezel, and a round case only a few mm thick. " The Garmin watches that have a MIP (Memory In Pixel) display already cover most of that, provided you avoid using some of the more power hungry features that the Pebbles never had anyway. What is the Pebble Watch's value…

I use a Fenix 6X Pro and it's a great exercise tracker with notifications. I don't see it as a smartwatch though. You can't reply to messages beyond stock replies or visit an url. I'm yet to find an interesting app and I find the UI cumbersome whenever you want to do something.

I still think it's a great watch and I love the battery life. I just believe it's possible to make something so much better. I don't know if Pebble is the answer but I welcome them trying.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#318

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

Steltek wrote: post #307
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " The smartwatch everyone wants has a battery that lasts for weeks, a high contrast always-on color screen visible in daylight and total darkness, no bezel, and a round case only a few mm thick. " The Garmin watches that have a MIP (Memory In Pixel) display already cover most of that, provided you avoid using some of the more power hungry features that the Pebbles never had anyway. What is the Pebble Watch's value…

Compared to _Garmin_? The Pebble UI and OS will run circles around it. Intuitive, fast, and amazing.

I use Linux daily; the Garmin interface is painless by comparison, dohohoho.

More seriously, yeah it could be more intuitive and consistent. But I sat down, read through the manual end to end, and now I'm fine with it.

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#319

Post by grogenaut »

abraxas wrote: post #279
grogenaut wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My vivoactive 5 swimming is top right button short press (activities) scroll tap swim. Top right to start. Screen shows only interval time and distance or laps (configurable). Bottom goes to interval rest. Lots more data and a rest timer. Bottom starts swimming again. Top stops the activity. Long press top to save, bottom to discard. All operations are buttons because the touch doesn't work well with water on basical…

> scroll tap swim this watch has no touch interface. any scrolling and selecting has to be done via the five buttons which I ALWAYS somehow get wrong. Who on this beautiful earth thought it was sane to make the bottom right button be the "Back" button in a L2R (English) locale?

you replied to a thread talking about garmin watches... not the pebble

Re: We're bringing Pebble back

#320

Post by michaelt »

llimllib wrote: post #140
abraxas wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't swim, but I have done thousands of runs with my series of garmin watches and I can say that the UX for them is spectacular, everything is in a sensible place for me to do without thinking. Not sure what problems you've had with it specifically

Garmin is certainly better than some previous smartwatches I've had. You get a sunlight-readable, always-on display and a week-long battery life.

But with my Forerunner, they've packed a lot of options into the five buttons. Leads to a lot of "these buttons are for up and down, except at the start run screen where the up button opens the menu, which you can then navigate with up and down to choose between the six types of run, or exit with the back button"

If you're the type of person who doesn't like to read the manual, you're going to have a bad time.

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