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Pebble Round 2

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Re: Pebble Round 2

#291

Post by exq »

bfrog wrote: post #153
mrinterweb wrote: post #84

Pebble 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…

Garmin has been doing this for years now. The watches are built incredibly well and are well worth the cost.

I use a Fenix 7x pro solar and it's one of my favorite pieces of hardware right now. I dread having yet another item to charge and keep track of, but this thing lasts a full month if I'm not actively tracking workouts. My only complaint is it's not hackable like a pebble, but honestly I'm not sure what functionality I'd add to it, other than Doom for lols. I really just use it to tell the time, see phone notifications as they arrive, altitude/baro/compass when outdoorsing, and for heart rate tracking. Works great with Gadgetbridge, handles the abuse of my physical job, and doesn't get in my way like other smart watches I've tried, where I had to remember to charge it every other day or I couldn't track my sleep. This watch lives on my wrist and tells me days in advance when it needs a charge!

Re: Pebble Round 2

#292

Post by Groxx »

majesticmerc wrote: post #126
mrinterweb wrote: post #84

Pebble 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…

Every Garmin I've tried has been a complete mess, laggy, and deeply unstable in its connection and what notifications it supported (if any), whether it was cheap or expensive.

I'd love an alternative, but from the models I've tried I don't think Garmin is anywhere near what I liked about Pebbles. Closer than some brands, but not anywhere near what I'd consider "close". Bangle.js is closer, for all its (many) flaws.

Re: Pebble Round 2

#293

Post by Groxx »

jsheard wrote: post #136
majesticmerc wrote: post #126

Earlier 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.

OLED is also a heck of a lot less readable in sunlight. They're constantly improving, but the brightness they need to pump out to actually compete is extreme and they're still nowhere near that.

Re: Pebble Round 2

#294

Post by Groxx »

apitman wrote: post #207
mrinterweb wrote: post #84

Pebble 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…

What I want is a smart watch that lets me map hardware buttons and rotary knobs to arbitrary actions on my Android phone. For example I want to be able to use the knob to control the volume of whatever I'm listening to on my phone. I worked on a prototype of this idea back in school[0] Does Pebble support this? [0]: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lTOxHxHFjwJXeCLROAPf6OJD...

No rotary dial, and... I think no, the closest you'd get is to run an app on the watch (so you can capture the three not-"back" buttons) plus a companion app on your phone to receive events from it and do [stuff]. But that'd mean you'd have to open the app on your watch to control what's on your phone.

The media controls might be able to do the volume part automatically out of the box though? I forget exactly what their UI did when I had music playing, but I think it had volume and skip controls. That's nowhere near arbitrary control though.

Re: Pebble Round 2

#295

Post by odiroot »

majesticmerc wrote: post #126
mrinterweb wrote: post #84

Pebble 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…

Can you get turn-by-turn navigation with Google Maps on these watches?

Re: Pebble Round 2

#296

Post by chrneu »

ValentineC wrote: post #142
majesticmerc wrote: post #126

Earlier 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…

> For the sake of fair comparison, my wife had an Apple watch, which looked better and had way more features, but the 1 day battery life became such a frustration it sat in a dresser drawer. To each their own, but it sounds like your wife just couldn't get into the "happy path" routine of an Apple Watch user. I've been using an Apple Watch since Series 5 introduced the always-on display. I wear it for roughly 23 hour…

as someone who only recharges their garmin watch maybe once a month(with dozens of hours of activity tracking), lol at daily recharging of a watch. that completely eliminates it as a possible product for me.

even after a few years with battery degradation I rarely recharge my watch more than once every 2-3 weeks.

it's kind of wild to me that folks would daily recharge a watch.

Re: Pebble Round 2

#297

Post by chrneu »

have_faith wrote: post #234
majesticmerc wrote: post #126

Earlier 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…

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.

not defending garmin, but they completely redid the onboarding process last year. watch data and everything transfers right over to new devices now. I took me like 10 minutes to setup my new fenix a few months ago.

Re: Pebble Round 2

#298

Post by chrneu »

ragazzina wrote: post #259
tw04 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take it you don’t have a garmin? You can play music directly from it (spotify, YouTube music, etc apps). You get phone notifications, can respond to text messages, make payments, and newer versions include LTE. They are absolutely a smart watch.

Does it last 2 weeks with that kind of usage?

Yup. Garmin battery life is insane. I keep seeing people comment how they charge their watches on a near daily basis and that's just insane to me.

I charge my fenix 7 solar maybe once a month. My use case is about 10 hours a week of activity tracking, usually trail runs. This goes up to about 20 hours a week in the summer but i dont recharge much more often. I use garmin pay and occasionally listen to podcasts on my watch while running. I also use the on-watch maps quite a bit on my trail runs.

Re: Pebble Round 2

#300

Post by chrneu »

nicolaslem wrote: post #60
com2kid wrote: post #50

I 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.…

For what it does, the battery life of the Apple Watch 11 is not that bad. It typically lasts more than 48h for me and charges very quickly. Putting it to charge when taking a shower is enough to not have to think about battery life.

48 hours is bad. Newer garmin watches measure their battery life in weeks, not hours. It's crazy how behind on this apple is.
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