The Pebble Has Been Brought Back
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How's navigation with Pebbles? If I start bike navigation in Google Maps on my phone, can I get turn-by-turn directions on the watch, and does it not suck?
There was/is a companion app called PebbleNav/NavMe that worked okay-ish, as long as you could survive with "Turn left in 100 metres to x street" type instructions with no map view (not really something you can do with 144x168 pixels).
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How's navigation with Pebbles? If I start bike navigation in Google Maps on my phone, can I get turn-by-turn directions on the watch, and does it not suck?
There is an Android and a companion Pebble app ("Nav me") that reads the Google maps notifications ("In 300 meters turn left onto Jefferson Street") and displays them on the watch. The remaining distance until the next navigation instruction decreases real time. Nothing fancy like minimap view, but can be useful in some situations.
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What makes it miserable on iOS?
The Pebble app was removed from the App store, so you have to manually sideload it every 7 days.
And:
Here are the things that are harder or impossible for 3rd party smartwatches (ie non Apple Watches) to do on iPhone:
- There’s no way for a smartwatch to send text messages or iMessages.
- You can’t reply to notifications or take ‘actions’ like marking something as done.
- It’s very difficult to enable other iOS apps to work with Pebble. Basically iOS does not have the concept of ‘interprocess communication’(IPC) like on Android. What we did before was publish an SDK that other apps (like Strava) could integrate to make their own BLE connection to Pebble. It was a clunky quasi-solution that other apps didn’t like, because it was hard to test (among other things)
- If you (accidentally) close our iOS app, then your watch can’t talk to app or internet
- Impossible for watch to detect if you are using your phone, so your watch will buzz and display a notification even if you are staring at your iPhone
- You can’t easily side load apps onto an iPhone. That means we have to publish the app on the iPhone appstore. This is a gigantic pain because Apple. Every update comes with the risk that a random app reviewer could make up some BS excuse and block the update.
- Because of iOS Appstore rules, it would be hard for us to enable 3rd party watchface/app developers to charge for their work (ie we can’t easily make an appstore within our app)
- Getting a Javascript engine to run in PebbleOS forced us to go through many hoops due to iOS — creating a compiler inside the Pebble iPhone app that in itself needed to be written in (cross-compiled to) JS to work with Apple's restriction on downloadable code can only be JS
- As a Pebble watch/app developer, using the iOS app as relay to the watch sucks since the "developer mode" terminates every few minutes
https://ericmigi.com/blog/apple-restricts-pebble-from-being-awesome-with-iphones
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due to Pebble selling out to Fitbit.
Due to Pebble going bankrupt, and managing to sell its software assets to Fitbit to gain just enough money to refund the kickstarter pledges and pay off it's biggest debts.
Subscriber paywalled. I am so unbelievably sick of these.
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Subscriber paywalled. I am so unbelievably sick of these.
That's weird, it isn't for me.
Try https://archive.ph/iULP4 or https://web.archive.org/web/2/https://www.wired.com/2016/12/the-inside-story-behind-pebbles-demise/ -
can it play tetris
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The Pebble app was removed from the App store, so you have to manually sideload it every 7 days.
And:
Here are the things that are harder or impossible for 3rd party smartwatches (ie non Apple Watches) to do on iPhone:
- There’s no way for a smartwatch to send text messages or iMessages.
- You can’t reply to notifications or take ‘actions’ like marking something as done.
- It’s very difficult to enable other iOS apps to work with Pebble. Basically iOS does not have the concept of ‘interprocess communication’(IPC) like on Android. What we did before was publish an SDK that other apps (like Strava) could integrate to make their own BLE connection to Pebble. It was a clunky quasi-solution that other apps didn’t like, because it was hard to test (among other things)
- If you (accidentally) close our iOS app, then your watch can’t talk to app or internet
- Impossible for watch to detect if you are using your phone, so your watch will buzz and display a notification even if you are staring at your iPhone
- You can’t easily side load apps onto an iPhone. That means we have to publish the app on the iPhone appstore. This is a gigantic pain because Apple. Every update comes with the risk that a random app reviewer could make up some BS excuse and block the update.
- Because of iOS Appstore rules, it would be hard for us to enable 3rd party watchface/app developers to charge for their work (ie we can’t easily make an appstore within our app)
- Getting a Javascript engine to run in PebbleOS forced us to go through many hoops due to iOS — creating a compiler inside the Pebble iPhone app that in itself needed to be written in (cross-compiled to) JS to work with Apple's restriction on downloadable code can only be JS
- As a Pebble watch/app developer, using the iOS app as relay to the watch sucks since the "developer mode" terminates every few minutes
https://ericmigi.com/blog/apple-restricts-pebble-from-being-awesome-with-iphones
Oh yeah that is wack. When I used my old pebble I was on android but now I use both with iOS being more for communication. I think it’s easier to get apps into TestFlight. I wonder why they don’t do that.
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Garmin allows you to export data to a csv file. I'm not sure if it's all data because I haven't used it, but I know it's simple.
That's good to know, I liked the MIP display watches I saw from Garmin, but the only model with that display seems to be their most expensive watch
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Google recently open sourced Pebble and today, Repebble has put some of the watches up for preorder.
Of all possible names, they're really using "Core 2 Duo"? I feel like anyone who has been following tech long enough would immediately think of the Intel processor when hearing that name.
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That's good to know, I liked the MIP display watches I saw from Garmin, but the only model with that display seems to be their most expensive watch
I think the forerunner 55 is MIP. It's not a smart watch and it's their base level running watch. I had one before I upgraded to the 265 and I loved it. Off the top of my head, I know it gives you sleep data, heart rate, data, stress level data, a HRV, VO2 max. Max. Maybe some other things. Along with the standard steps and Miles moved or kilometers moved.
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I think the forerunner 55 is MIP. It's not a smart watch and it's their base level running watch. I had one before I upgraded to the 265 and I loved it. Off the top of my head, I know it gives you sleep data, heart rate, data, stress level data, a HRV, VO2 max. Max. Maybe some other things. Along with the standard steps and Miles moved or kilometers moved.
Seems like it can be connected to your phone to see notifications and control music using the Garmin app, do I guess it's smart enough for me, that plus health monitoring and long battery life are all I need, and it's more affordable than other smartwatch's as well. Does Garmin charge a monthly subscription to use the health monitoring? And does it allow you to export the health data?
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Seems like it can be connected to your phone to see notifications and control music using the Garmin app, do I guess it's smart enough for me, that plus health monitoring and long battery life are all I need, and it's more affordable than other smartwatch's as well. Does Garmin charge a monthly subscription to use the health monitoring? And does it allow you to export the health data?
The 255 is also MIP and is basically the same as the one I have (265). The 265 swapped out the display for an amoled display.
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Seems like it can be connected to your phone to see notifications and control music using the Garmin app, do I guess it's smart enough for me, that plus health monitoring and long battery life are all I need, and it's more affordable than other smartwatch's as well. Does Garmin charge a monthly subscription to use the health monitoring? And does it allow you to export the health data?
No their app is free. You can access via your phone and on the web. Fyi music control on the Garmin is a bit clunky, but it works.
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Just got this to talk to my phone, gadget wraps carbon and clear screen protector. All I need now is to find out how to change the watch face.
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The app has a nice selection of faces, and you can also make your own (I made a few, though tbh I most use "blue futuristic" on mine
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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.
To interject a bit, as both an original pebble and current re-pebble backer who also has tried most of the other watches (no-name chinese ones and samsung)
The no-name ones actually aren't bad. But none of them have anywhere near the build quality - which is frankly a bit shocking.
They also have nowhere near the interoperability - I can (and did) crank out faces and apps for my pebble to suit my own personal use case. That's possible with some of the big-name ones (like the Samsung), but certainly not the chinese knockoff ones.So for me, personally, having effectively a backup to my time steel is a good deal and I'm down for it. I'd actually prefer nothing else about it change much - aside from going to normal lugs. The weirdo ones are why I still am using the same slightly ratty band all these years later.
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I don't have the pebble or rebel.io app. I am connected via gadgetbridge.org and the rebel.io site.
No current face is showing.
