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Pebble Mega Update – July 2026

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Re: Pebble Mega Update – July 2026

#121

Post by cush »

haritha-j wrote: post #109

The index is a ludicrous product. The battery life, they claim, is 2 years. This is one heck of a misrepresentation. It is actually 12-15 hours. They get the 2 years because its meant to be used around 10-20 times a day, in *3-6 second* recordings. The device is being marketed as external memory for your brain. I'm hardly a philosopher, but I don't have many useful thoughts that are 3-6 seconds in length. heck, when…

That discrepancy isn't explainable given a change in daily use. 12hrs vs 2 years is a 1000x difference. You're saying they expected people to use it 1000x less than they actually are? That's them expecting people to use it for 1 min per day, and people actually are using it for 16 hours per day

Re: Pebble Mega Update – July 2026

#122

Post by kspacewalk2 »

skinfaxi wrote: post #103
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the mechanism for stopping them?

Interdiction at the ports. Seizure of persons related to the enterprise crossing into the jurisdiction.

Because the warranty is too short? I'll go with 'no chance' on that one.

Re: Pebble Mega Update – July 2026

#123

Post by cush »

Tade0 wrote: post #94
svl7 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A piezo button would be neat, might be able to generate enough electricity for each use without having to rely on a battery at all. Not sure about the form factor here though.

Or even a thin-film amorphous silicon solar panel + capacitor. Assuming most of the weight of that ring is the battery, it appears to be storing around 0.5Wh, so two years of operation should amount to approximately 30uW of power. It should be possible to squeeze this much from a 0.5mm2 amorphous cell in direct sunlight. Considering the ring is 6.6mm wide at the widest point, they could get orders of magnitude more p…

It would be funny if solar panels worked this way. We could just spray paint our homes with them. Free energy!!

Re: Pebble Mega Update – July 2026

#124

Post by cush »

baby_souffle wrote: post #95
bArray wrote: post #53

Was just checking out the Index 01 [1]: > Why can't it be recharged? > We considered this but decided not to for several reasons: > You'd probably lose the charger before the battery runs out! > Adding charge circuitry and including a charger would make the product larger and more expensive. > You send it back to us to recycle. I don't think this is true. The charging circuit could have been in the charger itself. To…

> To provide access to the battery, one of the terminals could be behind a transistor enabled by the micro So it’s a brick as soon as the battery goes flat?

yep, you can buy a new one

Re: Pebble Mega Update – July 2026

#125

Post by proee »

I liked the idea of the Pebble index, but don't really want another device to manage. So I ended up configuring my apple watch to record a memo using the double-pinch gesture. It uses whisper ai, and translation has been great. After voice memo is translated, I parse the text using some apple shortcuts and inject things like tasks into my daily memos.

So far it's been working great, and it's allowed me to offload important ideas that are on the tip of my brain.

Re: Pebble Mega Update – July 2026

#126

Post by cush »

It's kind of interesting reading the scathing comments about the lack of a rechargable battery, but it probably makes the most sense if the two year battery life claims are true, as you'd likely be ready for an upgrade by then and the technology would be cheaper and/or more advanced. This thing isn't an iphone. It weighs a few grams. There's likely less silicon and battery in it than in the singing greeting card you got two year old for their birthday. Everyone needs to chill out

Re: Pebble Mega Update – July 2026

#127

Post by apparent »

lukeify wrote: post #26

> Is there a warranty? > Yes, we warrant against manufacturing defects for 30 days after you receive your order. Is this the shortest warranty on a consumer electronics device ever? What on earth are they thinking.

Honestly not sure how this is legal given that the software is not fully baked when the devices ship. That is, people were getting PT2s when there was no way to test the touchscreen because the OS didn't support it yet. Same for speaker.

My guess is that if you got a bad unit and discovered it later when the software was updated, they'd probably swap the unit for you. That seems like more of a no-brainer than the screen crack replacements they're apparently doing.

Re: Pebble Mega Update – July 2026

#128

Post by apparent »

VCFundedGenYer wrote: post #108

I feel this would have been incredible....in the 2014-2016 timeframe. There just isn't any room for this product anymore. Pebble was at the top of their game before Apple came in and showed them up.

If Apple made a watch with 1/4 the battery life of a Pebble, I would agree. However, there are apparently 20,000 people who prefer to have less functionality and more battery life than Apple/Samsung/Google are interested in offering.

There are other options like Garmin and Amazfit, but honestly the UI on both of those are pretty awful, especially compared to the slick Pebble UI.

Re: Pebble Mega Update – July 2026

#129

Post by wolpoli »

benrutter wrote: post #63
bArray wrote: post #53

Was just checking out the Index 01 [1]: > Why can't it be recharged? > We considered this but decided not to for several reasons: > You'd probably lose the charger before the battery runs out! > Adding charge circuitry and including a charger would make the product larger and more expensive. > You send it back to us to recycle. I don't think this is true. The charging circuit could have been in the charger itself. To…

Yeah, that's really not great at all! From their website: > Wait, it's single use? Yes. We know this sounds a bit odd, but in this particular circumstance we believe it's the best solution to the given set of constraints I don't want to be too harsh, since it seems like the pebble team are working hard at producing some exciting tech. But intentionally making a single use device is phenomenally irresponsible in today…

Constraints include needing to keep component cost low and ensuring that they could sell more hardware in 2 years.

Re: Pebble Mega Update – July 2026

#130

Post by mbirth »

Aurornis wrote: post #112
bArray wrote: post #53

Was just checking out the Index 01 [1]: > Why can't it be recharged? > We considered this but decided not to for several reasons: > You'd probably lose the charger before the battery runs out! > Adding charge circuitry and including a charger would make the product larger and more expensive. > You send it back to us to recycle. I don't think this is true. The charging circuit could have been in the charger itself. To…

Exposed terminals would need a lot more than a single transistor. It would need ESD protection and it would change the outer case from being a complete sealed over mold into something that had to seal against two exposed terminals. That’s a big change. They would also need to ship a separate charger device to go with it, which approaches the complexity of the simple ring product. These are solvable problems, but it w…

Also ask any serious Garmin watch user about their charging/data contacts. They start to rot away after 1-2 years of being exposed to sweat.
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