Two new PebbleOS watches(ericmigi.com) |
Two new PebbleOS watches(ericmigi.com) |
I own and use a Pebble Time Steel and a Pebble Time as my only watches. I'm not really missing anything and I'm very happy with my old Pebbles - yet, I'm still quite tempted to pre-order a Core Time 2 to support development and out of curiosity. I'm looking forward to seeing how the touchscreen is implemented. Intuitively, I'd consider a touch-based interface almost an anti-feature on a Pebble, but given their software/UX quality, maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.
It’s too bad third party watches are second class citizens in iOS.
Poor notification integration because of the restrictions on iOS explained in their blog post.
If you want long battery life, I’d go for a Garmin. But the Apple Watch is really the best option for 90% of people.
But would I pay $225 for a Core Time 2 when I could get a Garmin Forerunner 55?
Probably not. But still, it's amazing that we are getting new Pebble watches.
Or is Apple Watch just that good on Android as well?
Loved it! Got an Apple Watch and hated it. Got a few more Apple Watches and now the activity rings alone have me hooked. 800+ days in a row of closing my rings means I cannot switch away from apples tightly closed ecosystem :(
I wish this came out years ago and I never got to experience the Apple Watch
Good luck
Hoping once they actually release and we find out if the targets are hit or not with battery life and water resistance.
I just hope they don't release limited color cases again and not have any left for warranty support as happened with my Blue Pebble and all they could offer was a Black one.
Cringe...
Why do people _do_ this? You should make it _easier_ to search for you product.
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/33910/i...
I'd like to hack around with the HR sensor, so I pre-ordered the Time 2.
What are good resources for looking into building an app for it? I see the OS is hosted here https://github.com/pebble-dev/pebble-firmware But most pebble-related google searches bring up ancient material and I'm not sure what's still relevant.
I am mainly considering buying one to track my heart rate, but I don't want my data to leave my watch unless I copy it myself. Any budget friendly recommendations?
By default it uses the Pebble App for sync. You can decide whether that meets your privacy needs or you want a custom app. Someone has probably shared how to do what you want.
See the other trending HN post for Apple compatibility (TL;DR it sucks because Apple makes it suck).
For people who have developed apps for them in the past, does everyone just use the embedded JavaScript engine? For maintaining apps that modify the firmware or talk to new peripherals does that require maintaining a fork or is there some module system?
AFAIK, if you're doing firmware replacements you're likely going to be maintaining an "out of tree fork" unless it's already well-modularized in the way you're imagining.
I agree that a true electrophoretic display is a lot nicer to look at; unfortunately the refresh rate leaves a lot to be desired in a highly interactive watch. Hopefully someday we get a technology with the best of both worlds.
I am curious what people here use their smart watches for on a daily basis and couldn't live without, other than to check the day/time. for me it's just message alerts, timer, and media controls. just those 3 features on a e-ink screen would make me super happy.
But putting that aside, I’d say the essential features for me are notifications, timer, calendar, media controls.
My dream is that pebble eventually becomes a beautiful time piece. Maybe teenage engineering could be convinced to give the pebble a design refresh.
Specifically I refer to the debacle around the pebble 2 variants and the 1st round pebble core that totally got the ball dropped on it.
Love the Pebble -- still have my first OG one in my drawer!
I can’t stand wearing watches and adding another fucking screen to keep track of is bonkers in 2025.
It’s kinda crazy apple haven’t added tracking in airpods yet - there are at least 2x more airpods sold.
The CEO did a Reddit AMA:
https://www.reddit.com/r/pebble/comments/1jea5cc/ama_with_er...
I am surprised by his comment there:
« Honestly 5 years seems pretty good for a $150 consumer gadget. »
So, its creator feels that a $150 watch is cheap. Huh. That is interesting.
I never owned a Pebble, but I’ve had 3 smartwatches in the last 8 years: an original Amazfit Bip which I liked a lot. It lasted 5 years, its battery life was 6 weeks when new and 4 weeks when old, it was always-on and daylight-readable, and it was about $70.
https://www.cnet.com/reviews/amazfit-bip-review/
When it finally died, I replaced it with a Bip 5 last year. I didn’t like it – screen is wake-on-demand, it wasn’t sensitive enough to a wrist-flip to wake it so I had to press a button, and the battery life was down to 10 days. Higher-res screen, more colours, but no additional useful functionality to me. It cost about $80.
https://www.amazfit.com/products/amazfit-bip-5
So I sold it on for about $45, over half what I paid, and bought a used Amazfit Neo. It looks like a real watch, it was £15 used – about $20 – and it’s always-on, battery life in weeks, very visible, has a backlight, and does the essentials.
https://www.gsmarena.com/amazfit_neo_review-news-45962.php
So I’ve had three watches now and the total price of all 3 put together is about what Eric here dismisses as a consumer gadget.
Huh.
That is a potential Ratner’s moment right there.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/ratner-losses-me...
A nice bedside dock in which I could mount the watch and have it sync data at that point would round the whole thing out.
> Core Time 2 has a larger 64-colour display, metal frame, costs $225 and starts shipping in December
Pretty affordable!
But whenever July (and December) comes, I'm very much going to dread the import duty on these things.
Well that's a name I've not heard in a long, long time...
How difficult is it to add a blood pressure sensor?
Also, it seems like you might be a bit anchored to the low end of the smartwatch price spectrum from your own preferences, but I don't think it's particularly expensive among major smartwatch brands. Apple has by far the biggest market share, but I also tried to piece together how it compared to other companies with leading market share according to this chart[0]. It's a couple years out of date, but from looking at more recent data I don't think the market leaders have changed all that much. I might have made some mistakes navigating the websites of the various brands to piece together the comparison.
1) Apple - $150 is cheaper than all their models 2) Samsung - cheaper than all but one model 3) Huawei - similar to their second cheapest 4) imoo - $20 more than their cheapest model 5) amazfit - the cheaper brand you already mentioned 6) Garmin - cheaper than all their models
You're already using the cheapest smartwatch brand in those top 6 brands, so while $150 might feel expensive to you it's actually on the cheaper end of major smartwatch brands.
As a side note, this was all a bit interesting to learn about as someone dedicated to my $15 casio dumb watch.
[0]https://www.statista.com/chart/15035/worldwide-smartwatch-sh...
It's making me re-assess what I thought were the goals of the Pebble project. Maybe it's not for me.
As someone who just wanted a low-frills smartwatch and was following repebble for that, I'm disappointed and have unsubscribed from their update emails. This thread at least pointed me towards a bunch of other good options though, so it got me there in the end.
Pebble's fans are not in general AW owners. Instead, Pebble fans go to Garmin, Amazfit, or other watches with relatively long battery life and physical buttons. In my mind, AW pricing is irrelevant, and these other devices are the closest competitors to Pebble.
This is a weird take. An avg price for a normal watch is $100-$200. This is a watch with a lot more functionalities that a quartz movement, and the production run is much smaller. I think the price is very fair not taking into account the price of an Apple Watch.
These watches are for people who were fans of the original Pebble and miss it, therefore they're willing to pay a bit more to get back something that they thought they'd lost.
They give you the fitness-tracking functionality of a pure-play fitness band, plus they sync to your phone so you get notifications on your wrist -- answer and reject calls, read messages, reply with a thumbs-up or whatever -- and you get the fun stuff like customisable watch faces.
And they are well under $100.
It's already a product category, but many people seem unaware it exists.
Much the same as the high-end budget smartphones. I've had a couple of decent capable modern Android phones that were under $200 new. This is a thing that exists, but the folks that follow fashion don't seem to realise.
I spent years being relatively poor and in serious debt. You learn to live without luxuries, but if you're smart, you find the ways to get good stuff cheap.
A $150 smartphone can deliver 90% of the functionality of a $1000 smartphone. In the same way, a $75 smartwatch can deliver 70-80% of the functionality of a $500 watch.
And TBH, I know which I prefer. Phones and watches live hard lives, for electronics, and they are easily lost, stolen, dropped, broken, etc.
I would rather have a $200 phone in my pocket than a $1000 one, because I know the risks, and if the 4-digit-price one gets damaged or vanishes, that hurts my budget... but I can tolerate a low-3-digit loss more easily.
That depends on where you live (a $200 watch certainly wouldn't be considered "normal" where I live), but also: a normal watch has a lot more aesthetic value than this, even considering that this has good aesthetics for a smartwatch. It usually also has a significantly longer usable life, at least five times that of devices like this.
But I should have clarified in my original comment that the "primed by Apple watch pricing" was specifically referring to the people that seemed to think this was really cheap and that the price should be increased! I don't think the price here is unfair necessarily, but definitely disagree with the people who seem to think this is really underpriced.
No, it really is not.
Take off a zero.
After that you should be totally fine, what are you hoping for your smartwatch to do? I primarily use my pebble for notifications from my phone to show up on my watch which doesn't require any sort of external access.
I liked my Pebbles, but I won't spend $300 on one because the chance of failure (again) is so great.
As you should, because if they raise the price because of tariffs they won't see a dime of it. It's less raising the price and more that they don't yet know how much tax they'll be expected to collect and remit.
I have some sincere questions on the design choices. For context, I own a pebble time (everyday wear for triaging notifications) and a polar watch (for exercise tracking). Also part of a cycling community where we swap exercise watches to try out what else is out there. I have found I always sleep in my polycarb pebble time because I forget I am wearing it - it is that unnoticeable.
1) Why limit Core 2 Duo screen to BW? Feels like a step back when the Core Time 2 will have it. Sourcing parts?
2) According to the blog, I understand the Core Time 2 is your (Eric's) dream watch, so not trying to rain on your parade but trying to reason about the audience you're catering to here. The heart rate monitor suggests that it can be used to track physical activity. But... no GPS, metal (heavy) case, and protruding sensor diminish the utility of the sensor. If you've ever run with a light watch, you'll start noticing how quickly metal watches fatigue the skin. I've slept with watches on that track my sleep (optically) and the protruding sensors always causes pressure points - similar to a pebble (heh) in the shoe. Having 30 days battery life, speaker, and better vibration make for a great gadget that doesn't need to be taken off... unless it is not comfortable.
[0]: https://www.polar.com/en/science/whitepapers Purpose built devices are optimized and companies that build they have domain knowledge. You've probably never heard of polar but they publish the science behind their features where as garmin has nice looking gear but has gimmicky features, like "body battery"
2) It's not a running watch. I'd recommend getting garmin if you're looking for that.
I think we are on the same page but I've communicated poorly. Why even include a heart rate sensor on a watch that is not intended for exercising in when the trade-off is sacrificing comfort and raising the complexity and cost of the design?
There's one with a color screen.
On my Samsung Galaxy watch, if I get a notification from my Unifi security cameras, for example, I get a little thumbnail image appear on my watch. There's no special app on my watch, just the app on my paired Galaxy phone.
Will it do this? Or would I just get a text notification? I don't understand smart watches well enough to know how much they are doing themselves vs how much of what they do is to be a mindless projection of whatever the paired phone tells them to do.
If you get a push notification on your mobile, I don't see a reason why pebble won't display it. The thumbnail image might be fixed but all the text content will be shown. And FWIW, the entire thing is open source so you can go in an add it, or open feature requests, etc.
(Notification Center gives you extreme amounts of control over what to send to the watch how it gets displayed, etc. It's the reason I'm still daily wearing my pebble watches)
This is really like a cool gadget purchase impulse.
it's trying to make a cheap product into a niche product with kind of premium price, 150$ and 225$ for a watch is already pretty high.
The people who can afford it, they already got apple watch.
I guess $100 average profit is "normal" in terms of production, marketing, r&d and all of that.. but this is just an old watch that someone is selling again since the OS was open sourced. The profit is just all profit.. I can't imagine a non-US manufacturer won't just start cranking out devices people can flash with a better OS.
As it is I find the pricing to be a hard sell given how many features you are losing compared even to cheap fitness bands e.g. lots of advanced health tracking, NFC payments. I applaud Eric on self-funding the project and I'm sure the risk and volume questions there are contributors to the cost.
All that said, I may still pick up a duo because there really isn't anything like a Pebble and I would really like this to be a success so that we can see lower prices, more styles, and an even more awesome community at some point in the future.
I don't think that this should be trying to compete head-on with existing smartwatches on styling. And for the purposes of a hackable device, a larger screen seems like a selling point. Also, the larger screen makes touchscreen features more usable.
Got a Pebble Time in highschool and it was so much fun to use and so polished. It was one of the first electronic devices to truely enamor me. I have worked with embedded syatems for the last ~3 years and I have been wondering lately just how no-one else has been able to since make a smartwatch with such good "taste" as the Pebbles...
Happy to have a fresh device to live with! Thank you Eric!
For those of us interested in health metrics - can we expect the precision of the heart rate sensor to be sufficient for calculating HRV (heart rate variability)? It doesn't have to be natively supported, but I'd love to see a third party app offer this some day... In fact I may work on it myself, provided the data from HR sensor is good enough.
I have a tendency to stay up late and get up at random times, so I need to track if I get enough sleep.
I did decide to purchase a Pebble Time Steel and a new battery alongside the Core 2 Duo. I hope that with Eric back in charge, the old Pebbles will be allowed to use the new app and hopefully get modern apps.
> 1. Can I choose a color for Core Time 2? Yes you can! Just not yet. We are finalizing all the color options and will contact everyone prior to shipping so you can choose which color best suits you! Just make sure your contact information is correct for your pre-order
But I am worried about compatibility. I assume it will be possible to connect into Home Assistant eventually, but would be nice to get confirmation on how open the platform plans to be in allowing me to get my own data.
I also wonder if they will pursue partnerships. I feel safe sharing my walking data with my insurance company and can usually max out the rewards simply by getting my steps in on most days and doing normal annual things. Will Pebble work with them?
I had and loved Pebble in the past. You sold us and ditched us first chance you got.
Why would we trust you now?
Lovingly, Zeljko
If it’s sensitive enough, a compelling skydiving altimeter app could be developed. Considering most purpose built altis used worse screens and cost 350+, could be a quite compelling use case.
There's something genuinely heartwarming about seeing Eric Migicovsky remain true to his vision, finally delivering the product I dreamed of but couldn't afford a decade ago, after all.
I preordered.
Bring these back on side of watches. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004293400666.html
I don't think I've ever used any of my now 3 smartwatches to control my phone's media player. But then I mainly only listen to music on my phone when I'm on a plane.
1. IIRC the first Pebble was $99, and the one after it was $149. We're a decade on, inflation is rampant, and the new devices are evidently intended as lower volume products. $149 seems OK to me in 2025. $225 seems OK as well for the color unit, but I don't feel like waiting until December, and can't justify buying two watches. I put my money down for the $149 unit. We'll see how much it ends up being by the time it's on my wrist in Ireland. My current "smart" watch is a Mi Band 6. I'm on screen no.2, strap no.3, and shortly battery no.2: all told, I certainly have $100 invested in it by now, even though it cost me 42 Swiss Francs ($45?) to buy initially.
2. There are other hacking-friendly watches out there, but they do not have the depth of app ecosystem that Pebble did/does. I think those thousands of watchfaces and applications ready to fire on day1 are worth something. This is not a net-new smartwatch environment, it is an established if a bit aged standard that is being polished back up for the modern world.
3. I'm the target market, but I definitely don't have an Apple watch because it doesn't work with Android devices, and I absolutely detest iOS (and am increasingly frustrated with Apple's blatant cash grab-ism vis-a-vis RAM and flash prices on their computers to the point that I've pivoted back to Linux devices).
I managed to eke out a couple more years after Pebbles were discontinued by finding replacements on ebay. If this is a low volume run, I'm contemplating the opposite—whether I can justify not buying multiple while I still can.
That was also 10 years of inflation ago.
I'm guessing comfort wasn't considered because it isn't a common complaint.
I've mentioned this in the above reply but I'll repeat here: It is not common to wear watches for more than a few days at a time simply because there are not many whose battery will last that long. The effects of fatigue/pressure point from the sensor bump are less observed but not missing. Majority of consumers wear Apple/Android watches that need to be recharged every day. With 30 days on wrist, I can extrapolate that fatigue will be more pronounced - so I am calling it out.
2. People already exercise in metal straps and aluminum Garmins.
These just seem like you-things. Which is fine, but you should temper your complaints/bikeshedding accordingly.
It is not common to wear watches for more than a few days at a time simply because there are not many whose battery will last that long. The effects of fatigue/pressure point from the sensor bump are less observed but not missing. With 30 days on wrist, I can extrapolate that fatigue will be more pronounced - so I am calling it out. I understand I am a small sample size but I have 2 watches whose battery lasts 7 days and the one without the bump is more pleasant to wear for a week between charges. To the point that I always reach for the comfort option and eventually sold off the other.
On a lighter note, I do hope I'm not providing a series of increasingly bizarre and nonsensical questions or scenarios ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YDpvMYk5jA
Assuming $100 average profit, that's a $2M for 20k watches. Given the work opportunities that the founder and other employees have, that's not a lot of money for them to make in a year, and it comes with significant risk. Basically seems like this is a passion project, for which I am very grateful!
The DHL shipping though I remembered it was $25 and it is still $25 today
Reading through the terms on the shop page, it seems they're preparing to (maybe) raise the prices at any time, and they'll ask you to pay more before shipping, if they end up raising the prices after you buy it.
So please have some well deserved praise for your work on this. We have gotten an open source wearable OS, purpose built hardware, R&D, a community, more pressure on Apple to be less of a gatekeeper, and something we can own in a crazy short timeframe. I hope you see this despite it being buried. Thank you, you glorious nerd.
I've done the math and according to my calculations that's approximately 30X more battery life than an Apple Watch. Impressive!
With that battery service the watch should last you about 6-10 years judging by the current status of my Series 4.
Yes, a watch should be able to last a lot longer than that, but I think if you're buying Apple products you already have the expectation of a maximum 10 year lifespan just from software alone with just about the entire product lineup.
I got 8 days out of the PineTime, which was LED (I assume). You couldn't see anything if the display wasn't turned on.
I just bought a BangleJS (quite a bit cheaper than the Core 2 Duo, but no speaker and only one button) and the estimated battery life is a month. It uses a colour LCD, making the display visible whenever there is light. For example, daylight makes the display bright. It has a light source that gets turned on by the button.
The Core 2 Duo has an e-paper display that only draws power when the display changes.
I don't understand how anyone is willing to buy a watch that barely lasts a day.
1: https://ericmigi.com/blog/introducing-two-new-pebbleos-watch...
This thread is full of people complaining how these aren't like their preferred watches, in terms of design, face shape, no GPS, etc.
I think this is a much more valid criticism in that their expensive flagship watch is not like their cheaper watch.
Which is funny to me because that's explicitly the point.
> These watches are not made for everyone. We want to be upfront with you about what to expect.
It's probably the most frustrating part of smartwatches. Everyone has a different list of mandatory features, and few seem to accept that their list isn't universal. Unlike phones where just about all of them have just about all the features, the smartwatch market is a wild west. It makes finding the right one for you a lot of work, and it's understandably disappointing when a watch checks all but one or two of your "must have"s.
The "pebble 2" from the Kickstarter -> "core 2 time" The "pebble 2 time" is nowhere to be found.
(The pebble 2 time was supposed to be the same underlying hardware, but a much classier case, slightly different form factor). They look much more like a normal watch, versus the pebble style feels like a geek toy.
I still get compliments on my pebble time round to this day!
I've been wearing my
But then I've read in the Q&A about the tariffs and how that would affect the price at time of shipment.
This is too much uncertainty for me.
I've got no incentive to buy from the US right now, as a European.
I wish you the best of luck, as you definitely put a lot of love into it
- Simple and beautiful design
It's ugly, and the gap with the industrial design of today's watches is wider. I suggest contracting with a good industrial design firm to redesign the case: the case material, screen and internal electronics can remain the same.
Frankly I'd like it if they leaned even harder into hard edges, like octagons over curved bevels.
I want to be able to track my runs.
I love the banglejs because it is hackable but the GPS was very difficult to use. But it is such a fun device to hack on.
Given that they're specifically saying you shouldn't use it as a sports watch, what use is an HRM, especially when compared to the utility of a compass and barometer/altimeter?
If I recall correctly, the original Pebble had a Compass (which may not have even been used until a OS overhaul later on) but the Pebble 2 SE didn't. (https://www.reddit.com/r/pebble/comments/4kz7ch/why_pebble_i...)
The https://www.whoop.com/, for example, doesn't even have GPS. All of its value comes from its HRM.
Barometer is especially niche and not something very trustworthy outside of devices made for it. To the average person, compass is only useful for showing orientation on a map.
It muddies what would otherwise an easy upsell/upgrade.
Are you going to sell replacement parts this time? I was immensely disappointed to see the initial watches being pretty repairable in theory, but no parts being sold. It was marketed as a tinkerer‘s device after all.
I’m wearing my Pebble Time Steel right now - and quite like it. Haven’t found anything better. It could use some better activity tracking, but the worst thing about it right now is that it doesn’t really have an iOS app (AltStore is pretty flaky). Any news on that front?
For some reason there just hasn’t been a real spiritual successor, so the revival is greatly appreciated.
>>I think you might recognize this one It’s almost exactly a Pebble 2, upgraded with modern chips and new tricks. Duo is short for ‘Do-over’.
Reading this press release I thought -- they perfectly read the minds of the target customer. Retaining the spirit of the product and exceeding expectations with polished improvements.
Great job guys! I'm in
I’m especially interested in the “revival” nature of this project. How did staying mostly true to the original vision guide you practically?
You mentioned briefly that some apps may have stopped working as they attempt to hit now no existent url endpoints. Least of which is likely the old official pebble endpoints.
Have you done any design work as a revival project such that the project will be more robust in future. Eg 50 years from now, if things didn’t pan out and your company is still here, such that the watches and their apps are all that bit more resilient?
Curious as to your thoughts on designing in longevity of serviceability into this reboot given you can feel that yourself.
Though I will be keeping an eye on them incase my needs change. I hope they do well and stay true to their ethos, and avoid trying to chase or become the Apple Watch.
Two features which I think it would be useful to give more prominence to especially as you move from pre-order stage to general sale stage:
Strap is replaceable in both models Both models count steps
Would be high priority things for me! Look forward to seeing how this develops and best of luck.
I'm currently wearing the BangleJS v2 [0] which has the following going for it, all for $90USD:
* 1.3 inch 176x176 always-on 3 bit colour LCD display (LPM013M126) with backlight
* Full touchscreen (6H hardness glass)
* GPS/Glonass receiver
* Heart rate monitor
* 3 Axis Accelerometer
* 3 Axis Magnetometer
* Air Pressure/Temperature sensor
* 175mAh battery, 4 week standby time
* Full SWD debug port on rear of watch
* The OS and every app are open source, all written in Javascript
In my experience it lasts over 2 weeks with multiple daily notifications and wearing it 24/7 for HR and sleep tracking.
The Pebble was a compelling offer when it came out, but I'll have to pass on this one.
Worst aspect of these watches are the custom charging cradles you have to lug around when travelling.
Hell, even usb-c with some cap/sliding door mechanism would be better.
Is that not one of Intel's trademarks from the past 20 years?
The closest mark I could find is a wordmark for INTEL CORE INSIDE DUO cancelled in 2014 due to disuse.
https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=78775512&caseSearchType=U...
I understand this is a semi experiment and will not expect the warranty or certainty that an Apple will give. This is to support the possibility of making an alternative become viable.
Question for Eric, is there a way to ensure charging works with USB? Please don't make us carry yet another cable.
Thanks.
From the 360° shot on the product page, these appeare to use a proprietary cable, like almost all other smartwatches.
I'm definitely ended up on vacation without the cable and just cut the ends off a USB cable to charge my watch.
All I see is display size and strap width there.
https://developer.rebble.io/developer.pebble.com/guides/even...
I also tinker with health data from wearables. I've built some Whoop-like UIs for a couple cheapo wrist straps from Aliexpress, but their HR monitors are always so bad that they're useless outside of when you're sleeping.
PS: Pebble owner and daily user since more than 5 years here
And I have the perfect name for it: the Second Time ‘Round.
Please, Core, resist the temptation to enshittify yourself with another useless round screen.
I daily drive the pebble time, but wear my round for dates or when I want to be a bit more stylish. I still get compliments on it to this day.
I'm in my 50's and my reaction to the same information was "yeah, seems about right".
The nRF52840 is not the most performant, I would've really liked if they had chosen a SoC, like the nRF5340, with more RAM or cores for this reason amongst others.
Side note - I got the first pebble through the kickstarter pre-orders in my first year out of high school. Seeing something so novel was definitely a contributor to me switch from CS to Mech E and working in the consumer electronics space now. Thanks for making cool and interesting things :)
It is fast - but we've done this before (many times) and know what we're doing. I've been blogging about the experience too https://ericmigi.com/blog/february-shenzhen-trip-update
Edit: preordered!
More reliable buttons (up to 30% longer lifetime in testing)
Any chance the particular extra color for the metal one could be an actual metal color? My pebble steel with the metal link band was a great combination of stylish and functional. I never really liked the look of any of the later models so even when I bought them I always went back to my pebble steel. I went ahead and pre-ordered the new metal one and I suppose I’ll go for black if I have to but I really hope you come out with a stainless steel or silver color.
Also what’s the watchband compatibility? Will this work with the original pebble bands or with standard watch bands or something new and proprietary?
It says it works with standard 22mm watchbands, so it seems like you can just put on any 3rd party band you like.
I can't spend $225 right now, and by next month I'm guessing the pre-orders will already have blown way past your production quantity ^^
The comparison chart, under "sensors", doesn't mention the compass under the Core Time 2; does the Core Time 2 drop the compass? A 3D magnetometer seems like a useful sensor for orientation purposes.
Is there a light sensor, to allow automatically disabling the backlight when there's enough ambient light and enabling it when there isn't?
You mention "Standard Pebble charger" for both; I'm guessing that that isn't USB-C?
Any chance to open up support and reparability for old pebbles? For example, run the newly open OS on old hardware or source parts for old pebbles, like batteries for pebble time ;)
Any plans for a more sporty model (i.e., HR, GPS?)?
Core Time 2 has a heart rate monitor!
Core Devices will publish an open source fully featured library, that anyone can use to build an open source companion app as well.
* The originals used Sharp MiP but advertised them as "e-paper" do your new models use MiP LCD (or similar) or actual "e-paper" ie "e-ink" (electrostatic capsules).
* Pebble time round 2?!?!
* The touchscreen - this is an issue I had on my Galaxy watch including the bezel rotating as well. Are there efforts to pevent the touchscreen from inadvertently doing things when I'm resting one arm against the other? For Galaxy watch I had to switch off bezel rotation/touch screen waking the watch & only allow buttons, because it would constantly wake up when I had my arms crossed/resting position.
* The backlight, is it backlit or front-lit? I suppose this more relates to if it's genuine capsule e-paper, then it would be nice to be front-lit.
* No compass or barometer on CT2?
Thank you! <3
In short, I really want to stop giving my money to Garmin. But I don't want to compromise on quality of the data being recorded. What are your thoughts on that market?
One very frustrating concern - the warranty. This is $255+ for a device that is only good for 3 million seconds. Would it be possible to arrange replacement at cost after 2 years?
I know I’m not the only one and whatever gaps in applications you have aren’t as large as you think and can be filled in by the large passionate community you have fostered.
(and I wouldn’t worry about other attempts that have come before you. Before Breaking Bad, studios told Vince Gilligan that Weeds already existed.)
Is there an emulator available somewhere where one can start prototyping an app with tap support?
I can still leave my phone at home, and since I don't have a mobile connection on the watch (intentionally), it means I'm truly and fully offline - but I get to keep many features. I can listen to music (direct connection to BT headphones), tick items off the shopping list, pay for stuff, look up my schedule, etc. Some things could work offline where they currently don't (e.g. weather, maps/public transport), but the caching/syncing is overall surprisingly decent.
Unfortunately, it's all using private APIs, no third party watch has the same access, and you can't e.g. pair the AW with an iPad. But otherwise I think it should be the golden standard (perhaps DMA could get Apple to open up the APIs).
Question: does either of the model have NFC capabilities, or is there any plans to add this feature in the future? I am looking specifically for a way to pay contactless with Graphene OS (which does not support NFC payments because Google does not want to).
My only hope is that you can bring the Time Round back in some form: Mine is unfortunately dead, and they're very difficult to purchase even second hand these days! It was the single best smartwatch I've ever owned and used
Will the watch ship with a JTAG clip? Or is that coming later. Not sure if I missed the option in the store
What affect are tariffs having?
(I know e-ink displays can have fast refresh rates, like the 60Hz / fps Daylight computer - but that may not be cost effective / battery efficient here?)
I would pay an irrational amount of money for a watch that can make calls that has a very long battery life.
The closest thing to what you probably want is the Garmin Forerunner 945 LTE:
https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/698632
Discontinued, but young for Garmin devices and still available if you're willing to pay irrational amounts of money. It doesn't make audio calls out, but can receive audio messages (to Bluetooth headphones) and send/receive "emergency" text messages either to the Garmin emergency response center (sends a helicopter to your location, if required) or by SMS with a few canned messages or tediously entered custom messages to to a predefined, pre-approved set of emergency contacts, as described here:
https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2021/06/garmin-forerunner-945-de...
I remember there was also an Intel processor with the same name.
I thought the Pebble app still worked, using Rebble. My understanding is that they are building a new app for the new watches, if that's what you were asking about.
I have a Bangle2 and while it's super fun, I think it perfectly illustrates the point that simply having features isn't enough. I would not say my Bangle2 is the same as my OG Pebble.
It does everything my Pebble did, it's cheaper, and it's been open source since day one rather than first requiring an acquisition and resurrection.
Obviously different strokes for different folks, Eric is great and I wish him and the team over at Rebble (hi ishot!) all the best, but the smartwatch landscape is very different from what it was in 2014
I will also note that backlit LCD is vastly inferior to e-paper in smartwatches. Size of the watch also matters, there are some tradeoffs you have to make.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/pebble/comments/3i6mje/epaper_tech_...
I consider myself a happy customer, and will definitely recommend it with caveats, there's a lot to like about the banglejs 2. But it's targeting a FAR more hacker-oriented crowd than Pebbles did - I would absolutely not suggest one to people who are not willing to debug their watch. It's quite simple to do so (really, I like it!), but it's not something I can recommend to the normies in my life.
Here's someone showing what it's like to use the GPS system and lack of mapping: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtEdM2w1VDM
Pebble only has to be a little better to be 2x more usable. Looking at old videos from 8 years ago, the software was much, much better than anything I'm seeing on Banglejs today.
Pass.
Like, yeah our margins were/are super high, and so were/are the distributors’, but once everything was spun up and running it was also very stable and predictable.
We were located on the outskirts of a 3rd tier Eastern European city and yet we were plugged right into the same global parts supply chain and capable of doing the same global distribution you could elsewhere. If you’re on to something, it’s a good time to be doing hardware. But you’re correct - 2/3 of the entire company was distribution/sales and R&D.
Gross profit = sales or service revenue less the expenses directly related to producing that revenue (this does not include backoffice functions, R&D, rent, etc.)
Net profit, which is the total revenue of the business less all expenses of the business (so, this includes R&D, rent, and the "backoffice" like HR, finance, legal, etc.)
Larger businesses with multiple business segment may account for gross profit separately for each business segment, but the business only ever calculates one net profit item.
There's also unit profit, which is essentially gross profit but at the level of a single unit of goods or services (for services, a unit is usually a customer contract, for recurring services it would be each period of the contract). Unit profit is generally the revenue from that specific unit less the costs directly associated with producing that revenue. Most companies don't calculate unit profit as generally it's not meaningful unless you sell high-value items, like automobiles or planes.
> This is the latest version of the internal repository from Pebble Technology providing the software to run on Pebble watches. Proprietary source code has been removed from this repository and it will not compile as-is. This is for information only.
edit: not sure they use the proprietary stack... at the very least, it looks like they're in the process of switching to a free BT stack
How are you supposed to do that?
One of the nice things about Amazfit watches was that I could dial down the HR polling and get better battery life that way.
My main complaint about Apple Watch is the size, so a very slim watch might get me to switch back. Have a Time in a drawer somewhere, but I assume its battery is shot by now.
I really would like calling too. There's a lot of daylight between I lost my phone and need to call a cab, and send a helicopter.
Right now I have an LTE smart watch, but the battery is optimistically about 24 hours( on a good day ).
I don’t run it at high screen brightness though.
What am I missing?
(Vested interest as a diabetic myself.)
My wife is a diabetic and this kind of stuff, while it seems minimal, makes a big difference for her quality of life.
If you're not familiar, here's a good starting point:
https://androidaps.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
Oh, and you want to avoid Apple's hardware. Some of the software can only be distributed as source code, so installing them to an iOS device is not easy.
That seems very wasteful
Another tip regarding scratches is that the higher tier finishes (Stainless Steel or Titanium in the Series 10) are, in my opinion, worth the price premium solely for the improved screen glass.
Apple barely mentions the spec nowadays, and I'm not sure why they don't tout it. A conspiracy theorist might say that it's because it keeps your watch looking new longer so they'd rather you be buying the cheap one frequently.
The sapphire crystal screen is the killer feature that justifies the upgraded models more than anything else: it's something like a whole extra number higher on the Mohs scale for hardness (scratch resistance).
I buy them on the refurbished store to lessen the pain of their ridiculously inflated price.
Searching for 'pebble core 2 duo' already comes up with a page of results only related to the watch[1] (including this very comment thread, ironically[2].) Search engines are very good these days.
Will it eventually end in a "we got sued by Intel!" marketing gambit? Certainly a possibility. Is assume they have played through both scenarios.
You can't tell consumers the raw manufacturing cost because people act weird when they are told it: they usually assume the "markup" is profits. They assume that they're getting ripped off because most people don't understand development costs or overheads and they always argue that any profit is too much. This problem can't be fixed.
Apart from the risk of scammers buying a watch to sell, saying it is broken, getting a replacement at cost and the scammer steals the markup/profit.
You can maybe think of ways to make it work, but they are likely to have excessive support costs or other hidden costs for the manufacturer or consumer.
When a product has two price points, like this, it's usually expected that the more expensive one is strictly "better" than the cheaper one in some ways. That isn't the case here, and it makes everything more difficult. Most of us are conditioned to look at the more expensive version, and say "are these extra features worth $X extra" and decide that way. With these watches, I have to try to think about whether I would use a compass or heart rate monitor more.
I knew my preferences were niche, but I didn't think they were that niche. There hasn't been a phone with even half my ideal feature list (that works in the US) in probably close to a decade, and even if I abandon my more niche "nice to haves", there are essentially no new phones, and that's even before I add in that I'd really like it to be relatively repairable. And yes, there _used_ to be phones that had my entire feature list, so it's not a completely crazy list. It's just that phone makers have converged a pretty standard feature list with not too many companies coloring outside the lines. If you want that particular feature list, then sure, everyone has "all the features", but there is a whole universe of additional features that phones could (and some did) have, that they no longer do.
Small size. I'm a 6'2" male, so my hands are probably pretty well above the population average. Maybe it's because I'm a lefty, but I hate how big phones have gotten. It makes one hand use almost impossible, and if it's that hard for me, I have to assume that most people have just given up on even trying. I'd really prefer a sub 5.5" phone screen (part of me wants to say even smaller, but it's been so long since I've used a phone that small, that I don't even know anymore what my ideal size/lower limit is).
Headphone jack. Relatively self explanatory, imo.
No camera cutout. I hate them. I'd literally rather give up the screen real estate and have a bigger top bezel (although, see my point 1, I obviously value screen size less than most consumers). Luckily in Android you can just turn off the screen around the cutout in developer options, but I'd prefer to just not have the screen there. At least on my current phone, it still wastes battery (this might be a non-issue on OLED screens) and will register touches, preventing proper touch recognition elsewhere (this is related to the difficulty of single handed use, would probably be mitigated on a smaller phone)
SD card slot. Maybe the easiest of this list to actually still find? It seems like a decent number of phones these days have a spot for it in in the SIM card tray. I've heard that the reason companies don't include it is that a lot of SD cards are trash and wear out pretty quickly. This could lead to consumers losing data and being mad at the phone manufacturer. In my opinion, this is understandable, but still a bad reason.
IR Blaster/FM Tuner. I consider these two together. They are both pretty niche, and are "nice to haves". Mostly because I want my phone to be as much of a general purpose communications device as possible. The times when these are helpful are infrequent, but in those rare times, extremely nice to have.
Replaceable battery actually isn't on my list, mostly because I consider it part and parcel of "repairability", which (maybe nonsensically) seems like a different category. And, for me personally, battery degradation actually hasn't been a problem for phones. The two biggest things I would want to be able to repair are charging ports (this would be mitigated with wireless charging) and screen repair. These are, for me at least, the two most likely parts to break/wear out, and in my opinion they should both be cheap and easy to repair. Of course, if it was easy to do those two, you'd get battery replacement almost by default, and I certainly wouldn't be mad about easier to swap batteries.
Under the "What if the tariff situation changes?" section on https://store.repebble.com/
I was excited and about to purchase one until I saw this "We might not ship the device unless you pay us more" thing. I get that the economy is very up in the air right now in the US, but sucks that seemingly ordinary businesses are losing international business because of it.
Better to just wait until the whole drama blows over I suppose.
In the past tariffs were implemented or modified with a long notice period so businesses could plan ahead.
Now they are being added or changed at the whim of a tantrum with no notice, so of course prices might need to also reflect that at short notice.
Prices changing after a preorder is completely different and not anything US specific.
FWIW, I'm in south-Europe, maybe that's why I got surprised I wouldn't have known the final price until the device would land in my hand?
https://www.tomsguide.com/wellness/smartwatches/apple-watch-...
> This week, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld the previous verdict of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board that concluded all three of AliveCor’s patents were unpatentable. This is generally the outcome when courts conclude that patents are either obvious or too generic to enforce.
The case over the oximeter functionality is still ongoing, but with luck it'll go the same way.
https://pharmaphorum.com/news/apple-wins-masimo-lawsuit-its-...
Just charged my Garmin Fenix for the first time in... 9 days (it was down at 18%, could get a few more days but it makes me nervous), most of the battery use went to some 11 hours of GPS activity recording and heart rate recording. Could get 30 days if I turned off the features the Pebble doesn't have.
The only real benefit a longer battery life would have is not needing to bring a special charger if I go out of town for a few days, but I solved that years ago using a power bank that has qi and watch charging pads on it as my travel charger.
If anything, I'd switch back to a Pebble or similar because the Apple Watch does too much and I don't want that much gizmo on my person all the time. But the Pebble reboot products don't do it for me design-wise.
I've been moving towards using NFC payments for activating gas pumps as those readers still have you fully insert your card exposing the full mag strip.
Its also often faster for me to just tap my phone than to take my wallet out, pull out the specific card I'm wanting to use to pay, tapping/inserting that card, putting that card back, and then putting my wallet back. Instead my phone which still has a touch unlock is already unlocked before I take it out of my pocket and ready to be tapped and then put back in my pocket.
For card, you need to get the wallet, get the card from the wallet, and then put it back.
Some people don't use wallet or put it close, because I only need wallet to pay or use loyalty card, and I can do that with my phone.
Less to carry, less to idly distract myself with.
The compass could be easily related to an accelerometer used for detecting watch position (a function commonly used in smartwatches to power on the screen on certain positions that suggest you're looking at it) or detecting "steps".
Not so sure about where could you also get the barometric pressure sensor...
Most smartphones don't come with a barometer, and the compass actually needs to be fixed to the display to make sense.
The position thing is just something you get used to. There's not that many reader models in active use and most of them are pretty good about marking where the nfc reader is these days.
It is so weird we talk about caring about an invisible variable that is actually irrelevant.
In theory we should only look at the price and judge whether our expected benefits are likely to exceed that price. And we get distracted by measuring things in $, when what really matters is our benefits which can't be measured in $.
We are also distracted by ideals of fairness (a foolish goal in a business transaction) and zero-sum thinking (am I getting ripped off?)
I don't mind spending money on quality. What I hate is the information gap, and the costs of having to learn how to judge quality myself (because price is no proxy measure). I am distrustful of so many biased signals, plus so many other people's opinions are either unhelpful or influenced.
Mostly we each just fall back on an A versus B heuristic. I find it absolutely mad that the world works at all.
And an answer: look at the bad buying decisions made by others, and learn from their mistakes. I watch my father with money to spare, he wastes 2 hours to save $1, or he avoids spending money on something that would benefit his life or the life of someone he cares for, or he won't buy a Toyota because he hated their adverts once, or he keeps buying a Nissan even after being burnt by a severe costly design flaw.
1. what percentage of this object price is net profit? 2. is that percentage a "fair" proportion?
but atm, I don't have a "scientific" way to respond to those questions so I usually go with my gut, or do whatever other people in my circle do (which is not ideal and I'd like to change)
You only know the actual profit margins much later, after you have sold the devices and seen them last through their warranty period.
If you'd like to minimize excess profit, take note of which products seem overpriced compared to their peers. Traditionally, anything Apple makes is a prime example. For a non-tech example, look at disposable alkaline batteries. Rayovac has been owned by Energizer since 2018 and their batteries have become increasingly comparable over time, yet Rayovac batteries are much less expensive than comparable Energizer batteries. The difference? Mostly marketing and profit margin, at this point.
Large stores can afford to precalculate this and use a service that will handle taxes for you, small stores not so much so you may end paying it personally on receiving the package. But they can afford to precalculate it if the taxes are known in advance (usually starts at whatever your country's VAT rate is).
Now in this case, shipping to the US looks like it will be randomly taxed depending on the phase of the moon and how well Trump has slept last night, so this warning is fair. You can't expect them to absorb a 50% import tax if it's established tomorrow.
Sure, and as you also seem familiar with, you know it's pretty trivial to calculate yourself when you place your order :)
So far, I've never bought something internationally, then before shipping the tax laws changed enough that the toll and/or tax payment was different than I expected.
They'll be cheeky, the big dinosaur corporate will come out swinging and look bad like they always do, and they'll get a load of press in the tech websites which is their target market.
The bad press comes when it feels unfair for the big company to try and pursue action but in this case it would seem that Intel would be perfectly justified...
Intel did make a smartwatch for a while, but I don't think it had a Core Due chipset!
But regardless, they're not saying they would increase the "price" (whatever that means), but just that if the tariff situation changes, then the customer will need to pay the additional tariff. This is the same as what would happen if a state increased the sales tax rate and they had to collect and remit additional sales tax. It just so happens that it's unlikely any state is going to sharply increase its sales tax in the next year, but there's a decent chance the tariff rate will jump. If the sales tax went up, I wouldn't consider that to be the company raising the price. Same for tariffs, in my book.
Which means that in high-profile cases where the VAT rate is disputed, it's the retailer who is on the hook for the disputed amount. Recent examples being Greggs (a baker, who won their case, so no tax payable) and Uber (where I'm not actually sure whether it's finalised yet? But if they end up needing to pay VAT then it's going to be expensive).
I think it may even be illegal for consumer prices. What they display or list in the contract is what you pay.
But on the other hand I'm used to paying import taxes separately when ordering something from outside the EU.
But that doesn't have much to do with a price increasing weeks or months after paying for a preorder.
I am not a trademark lawyer and I haven't even looked this up but if Apple made a "The Beatles Laptop" then I would hope that defence doesn't apply.
That went back to the Apple IIɢꜱ. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sosumi
Tax policies change from the Truth Social post to the press conference.
I find what they’re doing very transparent from top to bottom. If you’re worried about it, don’t buy one. But if you’re worried they’re going to pull the rug out from under you, I don’t think you need to.
Sometimes I'll do it anyway for one of two reasons: to lock in a price that may increase later, or to receive an item earlier than I would otherwise, due to excessive demand.
But I recognize that everyone's a snowflake, so you do you.
Sadly the damage these people are causing by their implicit support for the end of the modern world won’t fix the problem when America realises it’s making itself poorer, history shows countries double down.
Why do you think I haven't been calling my representatives to complain about tariffs? What leads you to believe I'm not on the street protesting?
It doesn't change how I choose to spend my money.