The Pebble Has Been Brought Back
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Have you tried reading the rest of the comments?
Sure have!
He told someone not to buy it if they expect more than five years without repairs. That person seemed to think spending more than $100 should get them a product that lasts a lifetime, and was irritated the founder said he thought it was pretty good that a piece of low cost consumer electronics made it five years before needing repairs.
What part of that says to you that it's not reparable or won't last five years?
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Sure have!
He told someone not to buy it if they expect more than five years without repairs. That person seemed to think spending more than $100 should get them a product that lasts a lifetime, and was irritated the founder said he thought it was pretty good that a piece of low cost consumer electronics made it five years before needing repairs.
What part of that says to you that it's not reparable or won't last five years?
The comment that Eric replied to saying "please don't buy this" mentioned nothing about repairs. It was entirely about overall longevity of the device.
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The comment that Eric replied to saying "please don't buy this" mentioned nothing about repairs. It was entirely about overall longevity of the device.
In the context of him saying the device is repairable, the top comment talking about repairing it, and the comment in question replying to that thread, it seems a bit weird to say "he didn't say it in this comment, so the comments where he says it's repairable don't count".
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In the context of him saying the device is repairable, the top comment talking about repairing it, and the comment in question replying to that thread, it seems a bit weird to say "he didn't say it in this comment, so the comments where he says it's repairable don't count".
It seems a bit weird to say the comment he replied directly to was not referencing specifically that comment.
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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.
Yeah, I feel you. There was a time, some ten years ago, when computers / the web / tech in general were actually great and not those emshittyfied things we have to use now. There are too much people that are just compliant enough to use every shit that gets shoved down their throat, to the loint that it os damn hard to boycott all the shitty thing and not be effectively Amish.
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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.
I have a Vivoactive 4 that I picked up used from Facebook a couple of months back. Its a few years old now, and the regular LCD screen looks pretty bank once you've got used to OLED. But it cost me £50, works perfectly well with GrapheneOS, and Tue battery still lasts a week.
It's left me pondering upgrading it to a new one with an OLED screen.
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I have a Vivoactive 4 that I picked up used from Facebook a couple of months back. Its a few years old now, and the regular LCD screen looks pretty bank once you've got used to OLED. But it cost me £50, works perfectly well with GrapheneOS, and Tue battery still lasts a week.
It's left me pondering upgrading it to a new one with an OLED screen.
To offer a counter point: I've owned 3 different VivoActive 3 Music watches for about 2 years each. All of them had the screen stop working. Could be my bad luck, but I wasn't super rough with them (never wore them in water)
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Methinks you underestimate the complexity.
And all the other watch makers I've looked at are not doing, or even considering, what Pebble did.
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I'm still very confused about why we needed PebbleOS for this. It's been like 10 years and no one could come up with any comparable software? They whipped up the hardware design in a few months.
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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.
It runs basically the same PebbleOS, so they'll work with any app that works with the original Pebbles. They plan to keep using the community app hosting at https://apps.rebble.io/. There's also GadgetBridge that's compatible. Eric mentioned on HN the intention for an official open source library that can be used to make other companion apps too.
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It seems a bit weird to say the comment he replied directly to was not referencing specifically that comment.
... What?
Your screenshot has the founder saying it's reparable. It also has him telling someone with unreasonable expectations that they would be disappointed.
If you literally take his comment out of context you can construe it as him saying they didn't consider repairability or lifetime. But why wouldn't you look at the context that's right there?
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... What?
Your screenshot has the founder saying it's reparable. It also has him telling someone with unreasonable expectations that they would be disappointed.
If you literally take his comment out of context you can construe it as him saying they didn't consider repairability or lifetime. But why wouldn't you look at the context that's right there?
I dunno what to tell you other than I fundamentally disagree with your assessment and I'm done arguing about it.
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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.
I pre ordered, and I'm usually annoyingly loud about not pre-ordering.
That being said, i love my pebble time. I Kickstarted it back in the day, and it still works but the battery is weak. I could replace the battery, but i want more devices like this, so I'll put some money in and eat Ramen for a few weeks. -
Methinks you underestimate the complexity.
Maybe I do. But there are dozens of Chinese no-name companies who developed entire smartwatch ecosystems.
Dozens? Name three, and be sure to include number of aps in each ecosystem.
I'm sure there are dozens of Chinese smart watches, but most that I've seen are white-labels and sorely missing an ecosystem.
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Dozens? Name three, and be sure to include number of aps in each ecosystem.
I'm sure there are dozens of Chinese smart watches, but most that I've seen are white-labels and sorely missing an ecosystem.
Go to Amazon and search for smartwatch
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Honestly daily charging isn't the worst I just usually charge my watch when I'm in the shower and getting ready in the morning pop it back on when I'm done and I'm good to go.
A commute-by-car is a great time to charge a smart watch, too.
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Google recently open sourced Pebble and today, Repebble has put some of the watches up for preorder.
Is there any company that let's you export your health tracking data in a non proprietary format and doesn't charge you a monthly subscription to use your smartwatch's health tracking features?
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Is there any company that let's you export your health tracking data in a non proprietary format and doesn't charge you a monthly subscription to use your smartwatch's health tracking features?
Fuck I want that so bad.
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I pre ordered, and I'm usually annoyingly loud about not pre-ordering.
That being said, i love my pebble time. I Kickstarted it back in the day, and it still works but the battery is weak. I could replace the battery, but i want more devices like this, so I'll put some money in and eat Ramen for a few weeks.Preordered here too, for all the same reasons. I went for the Time2, even though it's not due to ship until later. I've waited nearly ten years, I can wait another six months...
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Does it spy on us?
One thing about the Pebble - and, I assume, these watches - is that they didn't have WiFi or LTE, only Bluetooth. So it wasn't possible for them to do any communication except through the apps already running on your phone. So, broadly, it's a no.
