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Pebble Time 2 Design Reveal [video]

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Re: Pebble Time 2 Design Reveal [video]

#171
post #66
post #61

What is the use-case now in 2025 for an e-ink watch? I have a Garmin Epix pro gen 2 which gets about a month of battery life and has a gorgeous AMOLED, has profiles for pretty much every sport ever invented, incredibly accurate GPS tracking, all day HR-tracking, ECG etc. I understand it's about 4x the price, but there's also lower-end Garmin's that are about 2x the price with the same screen, slightly less features a…

It's not e-ink but a transreflective LCD. As to "why": I'm not interested at all in Garmin's sports and health features and their cloud stuff. Pebbles work well, get out of the way and have a nice, friendly and slightly quirky interface. There are many apps and watchfaces out there. As of the new ones, the OS is open source. Reasons enough for me. ;)

I'm still daily driving a Pebble Time. No other company has made a simple, functional smartwatch anywhere in the same league as Pebble.

Re: Pebble Time 2 Design Reveal [video]

#172

I love the idea of having it, but as with every watch I ever had, I wear it, put it to charge and then eventually forget it exists. I have a couple of "smart" watches just taking space in the drawer. Probably one I worn the most was just the Casio F-91W. I think the idea of having to charge the watch (means taking it off and not wearing it for a while) breaks the "connection". Then another thing is that I always have…

Checking the time and specific notifications without getting distracted by apps :)

Re: Pebble Time 2 Design Reveal [video]

#173
post #61

What is the use-case now in 2025 for an e-ink watch? I have a Garmin Epix pro gen 2 which gets about a month of battery life and has a gorgeous AMOLED, has profiles for pretty much every sport ever invented, incredibly accurate GPS tracking, all day HR-tracking, ECG etc. I understand it's about 4x the price, but there's also lower-end Garmin's that are about 2x the price with the same screen, slightly less features a…

I used to love Garmin and I'll probably always use their watches for actual sports, but I don't trust the company anymore.

I heavily debated getting one of these and I bit the bullet a few days ago. The use case is I want a watch that I can tinker with and not giving Garmin my data.

Re: Pebble Time 2 Design Reveal [video]

#175

NGL, kind of looks bad compared to blocky P2D. Doesn't feel charming at all, and there's budget Chinese smart watches with smaller bezels.

Exactly. I was considering it, but not if it’s ugly like this.

I don’t even care about colours. If the other one had a heart rate sensor I would’ve ordered it.

Re: Pebble Time 2 Design Reveal [video]

#176
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m shocked they think they can get such long battery life with a heart rate monitor running all the time.

it'll probably pulse on / off. The main draw would be the display but since it's e-ink it only draws when changing.

it's e-paper (reflective lcd), so it does draw some power at all times, but lower without an always on backlight

Re: Pebble Time 2 Design Reveal [video]

#177
post #61

What is the use-case now in 2025 for an e-ink watch? I have a Garmin Epix pro gen 2 which gets about a month of battery life and has a gorgeous AMOLED, has profiles for pretty much every sport ever invented, incredibly accurate GPS tracking, all day HR-tracking, ECG etc. I understand it's about 4x the price, but there's also lower-end Garmin's that are about 2x the price with the same screen, slightly less features a…

Wait an AMOLED with 30 days of battery life? Why/how can my Apple Watch barely make it through 24 hours? What’s the fundamental difference between these two smartwatches that accounts for a 30× decrease in battery life?

Probably because the Apple Watch is effectively a modern 10 year old smart phone made tiny with an ARM Cortex A series CPU running at nearly 2GHz while the Garmin is a ARM Cortex M series microcontroller doing ~200MHz.

Re: Pebble Time 2 Design Reveal [video]

#178
post #61

What is the use-case now in 2025 for an e-ink watch? I have a Garmin Epix pro gen 2 which gets about a month of battery life and has a gorgeous AMOLED, has profiles for pretty much every sport ever invented, incredibly accurate GPS tracking, all day HR-tracking, ECG etc. I understand it's about 4x the price, but there's also lower-end Garmin's that are about 2x the price with the same screen, slightly less features a…

Speak for yourself. I can't wait for my Pebble to arrive so I can junk drawer my awful Garmin watch. The UI is dreadful to the point that I can't believe no one else notices. Like, doesn't anyone else notice how hard it is to get it to wake up the backlight so you can read the screen? I can shake my hand like I'm a paint mixer and it does nothing.

And that's not even talking about the software bugs that destroy a full battery in moments.

Re: Pebble Time 2 Design Reveal [video]

#179
post #49

For those confused like I was: - Pebble 2 Duo: $149, B&W, original Pebble look - Pebble Time 2: $225, color, new round square look * both with intended IPX8, 30-day battery, "e-paper" aka gameboy style LCD, suite of sensors, Pebble app compatibility

Did they give up on the “Core” branding? When I was looking at this a month ago it was the “Core 2 Duo” https://ericmigi.com/blog/introducing-two-new-pebbleos-watch... Maybe Intel had a word?

Check out the first 1 minute of the linked video for answers to both of these questions.

Re: Pebble Time 2 Design Reveal [video]

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, features like this are what leads to DRM and locked bootloader requirements. It's a shame.

Intuitively, segregating the payment processing into its own secure enclave seems to be feasible? As I understand, the "secure" nature of iWatch means that the signature requirement is waived when you pay with it. Regular contactless cards still require you to sign (in the US).

There's secure enclave chips and there's the software you actually run on them, and convincing those who can provide you with tokens to do so with your own hardware/firmware. I'm sure this involves a lot of compliance work and it seems to be "contact sales" pricing all around. Too much for a small project like this!

Although this has gotten me looking into what exactly is required to implement mobile payments, and it's given me some clarity. This doc in particular: https://www.uspaymentsforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/E...

It reads to me like the entity you need an agreement with is a "TSP" (token service provider), and they are at least the sort of organization that you can get a quote from. I don't know if you or the TSP needs an agreement with each bank, but given the relatively slow rollout of Apple Pay support between banks I assume someone somewhere in the chain does.

I can't see the actual specifications though, it costs at least $850/yr as an individual to view them. I did find an old FOSS EMV implementation, but I don't know how much of the spec this implements/what compliance work would be required to use something like it in an actual product: https://github.com/JavaCardOS/OpenEMV

So, thanks for sending me down this rabbit hole. It was somewhat informative at least. :)

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