Design looks similar to my Amazfit balance 2, which I recommend
Pebble Round 2
231–240 of 303 posts
Re: Pebble Round 2
#232Pebble seems to be the only watch company that I feel understands what a smartwatch should be. It feels like everyone else is trying to make a phone replacement. Pebbles are more of an extension to your phone. Sure it can do some things without the phone, but it isn't trying to make calls, access mobile data with its own sim, use GPS. Those kinds of watches feel like they are designed for athletes who want to leave t…
I would say Amazfit are great, I don't need an app store and a programmable watch to do cool stuff in whatever programming language on weekends.
The set of pre-installed apps, integration with watch messages, call notifications and media controls are enough.
However maybe I am old fashioned, the oldie Timex and Casio smartwatches were also good enough for me.
Re: Pebble Round 2
#233I have no idea how the 2 major smart watches (android wear, apple watch) have such horrible battery life. Microsoft Band had a 3 day battery life that would've been 5 days if we weren't forced to use a trash accelerometer that drained our battery by a crazy amount. That aside, Android wear being a complete OS is a waste of power. There aren't any useful apps for it that take advantage of the watch running a full OS.…
Easy, as you point out, they are using the wrong OS stack.
My Amazfit lasts weeks on a single charge, and besides I don't need an app store on my phone.
Re: Pebble Round 2
#234Pebble seems to be the only watch company that I feel understands what a smartwatch should be. It feels like everyone else is trying to make a phone replacement. Pebbles are more of an extension to your phone. Sure it can do some things without the phone, but it isn't trying to make calls, access mobile data with its own sim, use GPS. Those kinds of watches feel like they are designed for athletes who want to leave t…
I'm a runner, so obviously biased, but I implore everyone (to the point of annoyance) to check out some of the cheaper Garmin smart watches. They use MIP displays so the battery life runs about 2 weeks, you get phone notifications, the ability to find your phone, sleep scoring, step counting, heart rate monitoring. Then there's the obvious GPS run recording which you don't have to use. There's more stuff as well but…
I tried a Garmin for a while but the UI bugs/inconsistencies/onboarding process put me off a lot so I eventually got rid of it. Using an old Apple watch SE at the moment and apart from the minor inconvenience of charging it overnight (no need for sleep tracking) it does everything better.
Re: Pebble Round 2
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interestingly a Garmin can turn off an alarm on an iPhone. Not sure if this counts as an action in response to a notification, exactly.
ANCS lets bluetooth devices trigger basic positive/negative actions on notifications. Stop alarm is presumably one of those basic actions. But it doesn’t support custom actions that the app developer might have registered.
It's been always kinda weird to me that BT spans four layers, from antennas to volume controls. You'd think all the vertical integration should make it reliable and interoperable, yet in practice it's the exact opposite.
Re: Pebble Round 2
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In these countries, the price of the product is simply higher, to account for this Maybe on the individual level, but the aggregate effect is that manufacturers are incentivised to save money by increasing reliability. Which is a good thing for everyone.
I mean, it's good for the people in America and other shorter-warranty countries, who get to free-ride on any enhanced reliability that this results in. But honestly I've had Macs that still work 15 years after I bought them, and iPhones that work for easily 6 or 7. That's not because AU or EU require a somewhat longer warranty, I don't think.
> But honestly I've had Macs that still work 15 years after I bought them [...].
2002 PowerBook user checking in. Not great for "modern" work, CPU gets really hot compiling "simple" stuff like git or libressl, but OSX 10.5 is a superior user experience to macOS 15. Still great for lightweight web browsing (disable JS!), some coding (Python 2.7.14!), classic games (StarCraft! from a *box*!).
Re: Pebble Round 2
#237Pebble seems to be the only watch company that I feel understands what a smartwatch should be. It feels like everyone else is trying to make a phone replacement. Pebbles are more of an extension to your phone. Sure it can do some things without the phone, but it isn't trying to make calls, access mobile data with its own sim, use GPS. Those kinds of watches feel like they are designed for athletes who want to leave t…
> Pebble seems to be the only watch company that I feel understands what a smartwatch should be.
So, why do you think Pebble didn’t succeed? I think that’s because you’re a minority, and demand for a Pebble-like product is too low at the price point where it would be a viable business.
Re: Pebble Round 2
#238Proud of this one! Feel free to ask any questions you might have. (Pebble founder)
The specs link directly to the Pebble Appstore, which showcases a bunch of really cool watchfaces that are... all for the square screen. I think it would be wonderful to land the user on a showcase of faces specifically adapted for the round screen.
Re: Pebble Round 2
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a runner, so obviously biased, but I implore everyone (to the point of annoyance) to check out some of the cheaper Garmin smart watches. They use MIP displays so the battery life runs about 2 weeks, you get phone notifications, the ability to find your phone, sleep scoring, step counting, heart rate monitoring. Then there's the obvious GPS run recording which you don't have to use. There's more stuff as well but…
> They use MIP displays so the battery life runs about 2 weeks Double-check this because they have a lot of OLED models now alongside their MIP ones. Battery life is more or less the same either way with AOD off, but with AOD enabled the OLEDs fall behind the MIPs.
Yes, and they are outright removing the LCD displays from some of their major lines, (e.g. Fenix 8 Pro). The writing is on the wall.
Re: Pebble Round 2
#240What’s the maximum range to your phone to get notifications? I’ve been trying to cut back on my reflex to look at my phone every few minutes. It’d be great if I could keep my phone on a charging stand and be able to walk around my house and still get notifications.
I think Eric posted about this, and it was an impressive distance. Obviously YMMV based on the size of your house and how thick the walls are, but my old Pebble worked in much of my house and I would expect that as BT has gotten better (on both the phone and watch) in the last decade, the new versions will have even more range.
also probably depends on the building you live in.
not trying to start a flame-war, but i can imagine that you get quite some range in the US, if you live in one of those cardboard-inner-walls houses.
in the 30cm thick solid wall apartment i live in my pebble looses connection the next room over, i almost need line-of-sight for it to work. working at my desk, get up, walk 5 meters to the bathroom, watch looses connection.
maybe my smartphone has a weak bluetooth receiver, compared to other models, who knows...