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Pebble Time 2 Design Reveal [video]

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Re: Pebble Time 2 Design Reveal [video]

#211

Post by deanc »

leokennis wrote: post #113
deanc wrote: 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 use-case. I only really engage with my watch to check the time and my pulse which I can do with a glance, otherwise the screen is permanently off. The other times are when I'm doing some activity (running, swimming) and GPS is on but for example with running the screen still only shows when I glance at it. Apple still has an enormous amount of room to optimise their hardware and software in this space but I've no idea why they haven't done it yet.

Re: Pebble Time 2 Design Reveal [video]

#212

Post by Borealid »

gffrd wrote: post #149
jsbisviewtiful wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Garmins are incredibly expensive and not everyone wants a fitness tracker. Garmin's UX is also very disjointed between devices for how expensive they are. Plus, battery life tends to be garbage for smartwatches. I just sold my Apple Watch for a Coros because I was tired of trading battery life for features I didn't want/use and Garmins also require yet another subscription for some features. As someone who just spent…

Are we talking about the same Garmin? I have an Instinct 2 that cost me under $200 new, goes 2+ weeks between charges, and handles all activities I throw at it quite well. I agree: their launching of a subscription service is disappointing, because (1) it was wonderful having a no-recurring-cost ecosystem before, and (2) presumably that's where they'll be investing their product dollars. But, it's not required, and t…

For the moment, Gadgetbridge also exists if you want a FOSS app that can deliver much of the same functionality Garmin's own app does.

Re: Pebble Time 2 Design Reveal [video]

#213

Post by afandian »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #176
tills13 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't know if it's the same thing, but Sharp Memory LCD has low quiescent consumption and memory somehow built into the display.

https://sharpdevices.com/memory-lcd/

Re: Pebble Time 2 Design Reveal [video]

#214

Post by dspillett »

leokennis wrote: post #208
GloriousKoji wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And still the Garmin offers much of the same functionality. It seems Apple is wasting 30 × battery life just to be 2 × "nicer" than a Garmin.

That is the (modern) Apple way. They optimise for smooth experience first¹, other factors second.

----

[1] Actually second, their priorities are money->UX->others - hence being uncooperative with any efforts to improve standard web apps despite the potential user benefits as they could compete with their appstore

Re: Pebble Time 2 Design Reveal [video]

#215

Post by merelysounds »

telesilla wrote: post #114
neom wrote: post #99

Looks great! The very first Pebble was actually instrumental in building digitalocean - I met them at MLH hackathon at CalTech and forced one of the founders to sell me a demo unit- all I used it for was notifications on the digitalocean twitter and outages pushed from slack, I tried to reply to every single tweet at us immediately. A little memento of when I hired Mikeal Rogers: https://s.h4x.club/4guEJN95 Funny, no…

Agreed. I'd kill for a watch that you could hold all notifications until you decided to receive them all, ideally at a slow pace over a period of time. For now, I disable notifications but it's a shame I can't access them when I'm ready to do so. I have hopes for this pebble!

Anecdotally - I also disable most notifications, but this approach works for me.

In my case the notifications that I didn't receive are still in the relevant apps in the form of unread messages, missed calls, or similar; I can look at them later, when I have the time.

Sometimes an app would send a notification that would leave no trace in its app; e.g. a time sensitive reminder. But if the app's design assumes there's no benefit to viewing that notification later, I'm happy to trust it - and this approach acts for me as a natural filter.

Re: Pebble Time 2 Design Reveal [video]

#216

Post by pjmlp »

mzakharo1 wrote: post #194
KetoManx64 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4x the price to start off with, 51x51x15mm size, Only 11 days battery life if you use the always on display according to their site, completely locked down OS and ecosystem that puts you at 100% their mercy when it comes to EOL and updates, no idea what their privacy policy is, but you probably have to accept it if you want to use it and just put up with the fact that all your data, location, heart rate, and everythi…

Garmin allows side loading apps and sdk is easy to use. I would not call this locked down

Also Monkey C is definitly a better language than plain old C.

Re: Pebble Time 2 Design Reveal [video]

#217

Post by dspillett »

legitster wrote: post #125
deanc wrote: 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…

The Pebble battery life is with the display always on. It's squarely aimed at people who want the watch functionality to be first and foremost - no dorky wrist flicks or the distraction of the screen coming on and off all the time.

> The Pebble battery life is with the display always on. … no dorky wrist flicks

My watch display (Garming Fenix 7) is always on and the battery life is great. Any dorky wrist flick or button presses are for the backlight when it is needed.

[Though as others point out, the balance of needs targetted by the two devices differ noticably]

Re: Pebble Time 2 Design Reveal [video]

#218

Post by darrenf »

frosted-flakes wrote: post #188
ragazzina wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't think it really means anything other than "color" I am not a native English speaker, but isn't "color" more ambiguous than "colorway"? If I say "The red color is gorgeous", I could or could not be talking about a product. If I say "The red colorway is gorgeous", I am definitely talking about the color of a product.

"The red one is gorgeous" would be the idiomatic way of saying that. Adding the word "colour" is redundant. "Colourway" is just marketing-speak that is not common outside of tech reviewers.

> "Colourway" is just marketing-speak that is not common outside of tech reviewers.

This needs a big dose of YMMV, I think. I've heard the term way more outside of tech, especially for footwear and in skateboarding.

Re: Pebble Time 2 Design Reveal [video]

#219

Post by Wowfunhappy »

com2kid wrote: post #181
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is having a sensor on the watch substantially better than just retrieving the UV index for your location and time of day?

It is! With a UV sensor you can actually tell when someone is outdoors in the sunlight. The MS Band's sunscreen experience was tailor made to automatically remind people to reapply sunscreen when needed, but it was a fair bit smarter than just a simple timer. I have a blog post about it at https://meanderingthoughts.hashnode.dev/cooperative-multitas... The important bit is the Band knew if someone was in the sun for…

Thanks, now I want this!

Re: Pebble Time 2 Design Reveal [video]

#220

Post by xnorswap »

jwi wrote: post #167
tacticalturtle wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They recently recovered the 'Pebble' trademark and thus rebranded: https://ericmigi.com/blog/july-pebble-update

And much needed, because to me at least, "Core 2 Duo" is an old Intel processor.
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