The Pebble Has Been Brought Back
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Follow-up question - is this the watch I've been looking for that doesn't spy on me and require a cl of us account to use?
Yes, this combined with gadgetbridge.
A pinetime is also a good alternative. (also with gadgetbridge)
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IIRC, it has a reflective LCD, not epaper display.
Core 2 Duo
- 1.2" black/white e-paper screen
Core Time 2
- 1.5" 64 color e-paper screen
Am I missing something?
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It says they're able to extend the battery life from 7 days to a month due to how efficient the new Bluetooth chips are.
You must have skimmed pretty fast.
I did indeed skim pretty fast, but it doesn't say that, it just says from 7 days to 30:
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Yes! The best thing about Pebbles (IMHO) is how they handle notifications. In the specs, they list Nordic nRF52840 BLE chip (BLE stands for Bluetooth Low Energy)
Thanks for the info! Was actually thinking my current watch's battery was beginning to hold a charge less and less lately, so definitely keeping these in mind.
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I did indeed skim pretty fast, but it doesn't say that, it just says from 7 days to 30:
Battery life: I’m really excited that battery life will be increased from 7 days to 1 month! This is due to massive improvements in Bluetooth chip power efficiency over the last 10 years.
It's further down the page.
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I still can't believe that no one else has made a smart watch with physical buttons and low energy use that has surpassed the pebble after all this time. I'm still cautious that this venture will pan out, but honestly there really hasn't been a smart watch released that matches my use case. Sleep tracking makes no sense if I have to charge the watch daily, as I'd probably charge it over night. Media control with screen buttons is awful. Fossil came close with their hybrid smart watch, but the layout of the media controls made no sense and couldn't easily be used without looking at the watch. Just let me check my calendar and texts and skip through ads in podcasts, and last over a week of battery and you will have my money.
Don't love the closed-in ecosystem but Garmin watches with MIP display do almost all you just said.
- Touch screen + also Buttons for 100% touch-free interaction
- Battery life of around 3 to 4 weeks (depending on what you are doing)... more with the Solar models
- Media control is there, but don't really use that
Podcast ad skipping sadly not a thing.
Price might be an issue though. The top end models with all the whistles come at a smartphone flagship price point.
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My Garmin Forerunner 245 Music does all that I'd say
The benefit if the core repebble watches are that they have 1 month of battery life, they're cheaper, and they are open source
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Core 2 Duo
- 1.2" black/white e-paper screen
Core Time 2
- 1.5" 64 color e-paper screen
Am I missing something?
Oh that seems to be new since the original pebble
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Battery life: I’m really excited that battery life will be increased from 7 days to 1 month! This is due to massive improvements in Bluetooth chip power efficiency over the last 10 years.
It's further down the page.
It's damn near the very bottom lol, so I forgive myself for missing that. When I skim something for a product, I'm looking at the tech specs/BLUF message, not digging thru the entire page of text. Anyway, glad it's all sorted out.
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I did indeed skim pretty fast, but it doesn't say that, it just says from 7 days to 30:
[...] Battery life: I’m really excited that battery life will be increased from 7 days to 1 month! This is due to massive improvements in Bluetooth chip power efficiency over the last 10 years. [...]
Source: https://ericmigi.com/blog/introducing-two-new-pebbleos-watches
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Google recently open sourced Pebble and today, Repebble has put some of the watches up for preorder.
Pre-ordered one immediately. I miss my old Pebble Time Steel so much. Part of me wishes there's one with that design but I'll take what I can get.
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Google recently open sourced Pebble and today, Repebble has put some of the watches up for preorder.
I've pre-ordered the Core Time 2.
Pre-orders are something I never usually do, but given this is essentially just an improved version of an existing product, as opposed to a Kickstarter, I feel more confident. And I can cancel the preorder at any time (plus I'll see reviews of the cheaper model before the Core Time 2 ships).
The price made me wince, though. It's very expensive for the functionality. Technically cheaper than the original watches adjusted for inflation, but that ignores the current-day smartwatch market. Still, I loved the Pebble.
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I want one, but I don't know what I'd do with it. It's hackable, it pairs with a phone/tablet/etc.
I'm just trying to figure out what it can do for me. My lack of imagination annoys me.
I use my autopebble with tasker. Scripted a few things, like find my phone, load my audiobook, messages, etc.
Used to have Google Home messages and lights and stuff, but I stopped using smarthome stuff for the most part. Mostly I use it for music control and weather and time though. -
Core 2 Duo
- 1.2" black/white e-paper screen
Core Time 2
- 1.5" 64 color e-paper screen
Am I missing something?
The watch featured a 32-millimetre (1.26 in) 144 × 168 pixel black and white memory LCD using an ultra low-power "transflective LCD"
The problem is that e-paper is a category of displays, abnd some companies label reflective LCDs as "e-paper". Which is subjective (and I personally heavily disagree with that categorization, cause then LCD clocks and Gameboys have "e-paper" displays, too).
But in the comment I responded to it was said Pebble has "eink" display, which is categorically wrong, as that is a very specific proprietary technology, which is e-paper in traditional sense, like the ones in Kindles.
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The watch featured a 32-millimetre (1.26 in) 144 × 168 pixel black and white memory LCD using an ultra low-power "transflective LCD"
The problem is that e-paper is a category of displays, abnd some companies label reflective LCDs as "e-paper". Which is subjective (and I personally heavily disagree with that categorization, cause then LCD clocks and Gameboys have "e-paper" displays, too).
But in the comment I responded to it was said Pebble has "eink" display, which is categorically wrong, as that is a very specific proprietary technology, which is e-paper in traditional sense, like the ones in Kindles.
Where exactly is that quote from? I had a look through the product page(s) and could only find e-paper being mentioned...
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It might be one of those "you had to have been there" moments. It's 2014, Obama was reelected, Uptown Funk was on the radio (there used to be this thing called FM radio), and there you are - a happy young thing reading texts on your watch in broad daylight, right the middle of a conversation. You felt like a cucumber straight from the freezer.
I know all that sounds slightly laughable now, but there is an undeniable yearning for that zeitgeist compared to where we ended up.
I never had one (but did want one, just financially couldn't justify it at the time), but it would have a great fit for me. I just wanted a watch to tell the time, and display my phone notifications plus vibrate to alert me to them. That would have been legitimately useful for the job I was in at the time which was challenging to carry a phone (but it was nearby in my bag).
Now, I have no use for any of that. But I am now interested in a heart rate monitor that doesn't hoover my data to replace my old dedicated Polar heart rate monitor (which also told the time, but I only wore it exercising), so the more expensive model is tempting!
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I never had one (but did want one, just financially couldn't justify it at the time), but it would have a great fit for me. I just wanted a watch to tell the time, and display my phone notifications plus vibrate to alert me to them. That would have been legitimately useful for the job I was in at the time which was challenging to carry a phone (but it was nearby in my bag).
Now, I have no use for any of that. But I am now interested in a heart rate monitor that doesn't hoover my data to replace my old dedicated Polar heart rate monitor (which also told the time, but I only wore it exercising), so the more expensive model is tempting!
After Pebble got bought up and went under, I kept mine a good while. It eventually died or I lost the charger, I forget. I've had 'modern' smart watches since then, and they all just stressed me out and were too fiddly. I need buttons.
I'm not really interested in tracking calories burned or heart rate changes myself, so I preordered a cheap one in black like I used to have. Annoying that I'll probably have to pay an extra import duty on it, but I miss wearing a watch and this one is worth supporting - for the thing itself, but also because it's a meaningful story to me.
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Where exactly is that quote from? I had a look through the product page(s) and could only find e-paper being mentioned...
Quote is from Wikipedia. You can see it's the case for both models here:
Besides, I own a Pebble Time watch and can tell you, it doesn't perform like a typical e-paper. It has the bad viewing angles of LCD and screen goes blank when power is lost.
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After Pebble got bought up and went under, I kept mine a good while. It eventually died or I lost the charger, I forget. I've had 'modern' smart watches since then, and they all just stressed me out and were too fiddly. I need buttons.
I'm not really interested in tracking calories burned or heart rate changes myself, so I preordered a cheap one in black like I used to have. Annoying that I'll probably have to pay an extra import duty on it, but I miss wearing a watch and this one is worth supporting - for the thing itself, but also because it's a meaningful story to me.
Extra Import Duty
Thanks Trump!
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Yeah the mobile app is open source too https://github.com/pebble-dev/mobile-app
It is not clear that this is the app that will be used for the new watches. I imagine it will support the new RePebble watches, but I believe that app was intended for the original Pebble watches.
The thing that makes it so unclear to me is that this is a repo owned by the Rebble team, not the RePebble team. I do not know how much overlap there is between the two teams, but the RePebble team does not have any open source repos that I could find. Any mention of open source software by RePebble (including the OS) are links to repos owned by other teams, which is a little concerning.
