I've tried a couple of Garmin watches (Vivoactive 3 and Forerunner 55) and the Amazfit Bip, and this is where they all fall completely flat. The UX is just horrible by comparison. It's like these companies have no regard for designing the OS UX and are just trying to cram features in.
And the fact that companies want to make touchscreen watches is just with few/no buttons is baffling to me. Tapping tiny buttons on a tiny screen is a horrible experience. And there's tons of moving targets because of the tiny amount of real-estate.
Pebble _just got it_ with the 2.0 OS and beyond. They were a joy to use.
I begrudgingly have gone back to using an Apple Watch, because despite being subpar, the UX is somewhat together these days, just enough to be tolerable. When I move away from iOS again, I'll probably either pull out an old Pebble that still has some battery life, or a Casio GBD200, which isn't really a smartwatch but ticks some major boxes for me (always-on-display, silent vibration alarm, and timers, chief among them). The GBD200 runs on a coin cell too, so I never have to worry about charging or a replacement being difficult to find!
I once interviewed a candidate who came from Pebble. He had the most impressive interview performance of any candidate I've ever interviewed.
Can you tell more about this?
Steve Jobs obsession that the mouse should have only one button was probably right for the computer, but the input device had over 80 buttons minimum. (Keyboard)
Clearly whoever makes the call about Apple Watch buttons doesn't swim, sprint or cycle.
All the marketing about "sports" is to make you feel sporty not because it's actually useful.
Of course, for the use Apple make money from (Apple pay) there is a tactile button dedicated for the purpose.
LOL. Mine has 12, of which I regularly use 10.
Not that expensive, slick UI, full of features, great Android integration and a wonderful dial/crown which is well used in a couple of apps to make it all easier - you can use it to answer/cancel calls or finish/repeat alarms/timers.
AND THEN Samsung launches Watch 5 and DROPS THE FREAKING CROWN! Back to 1.5 buttons - because the second one, as the Apple Watch, is stuck to Samsung Pay (can't even set it to Google Pay) and recent apps, no app uses.
WHY? WHYYYY? The crown is amazing for scrolling through screens when I'm biking (shaky) or swimming (touch disabled). It's WAY better for scrolling in that tiny screen. It's awesome as interaction aid. WHY REMOVE IT??
I do miss the long battery and buttons, but I must mention that a touch screen gives you many more UI possibilities.
To me, I hated that everything was so huge on the display, leading to very low information density. I always enjoyed how the pebble could show a decently long text message on the display at once, when the font was set to small.
I also feel like, outside of the fitness functions, the menus are too deep/branching. Pebble got it right, in that the menus tended to be shallow, if a little long at times.
I was gifted a Garmin Vivoactive 3 a few years ago. Like you, I've come to the exact same conclusion regarding the Garmin watches. It is slow and annoyingly needs to connect to their servers to do anything (couldn't even access my own data when they were hacked). I still use it mostly when i run/cycle but battery life is slowly going away.
Also, i want to stress the point that while smartwatches are nice for certain applications, they mostly are toys. Yes, the data is interesting, but how many of us really do something from that data? I know I don't. And if you really need this data (professional athlete or whatever), most of the time, someone will pay the gadget for you.
For a lot of reasons (price, planned obsolescence, privacy), i'll probably get a g-shock that'll last years on a coin cell that's easily replaceable everywhere.
Which is why I was sad when Pebble doubled down on the fitness/sports marketing in the months before they shut down.
I don't care about fitness tracking and sportsball data. What I do care about is an e-paper-like screen (not just the "always on display" phone screen tech, but a proper "looks the same whether I look at it or not" always-on screen), hackability, predictable UI and buttons. The ability to operate the watch (and remotely control the phone, via Pebble/Tasker integration) without looking at it is supremely useful to me. That, and no fucking cloud. Ever. Hardware tied to SaaS is the enemy of all that's holy.
Definitely take a look at the Casio G-Shock GBD100/200 watches. They're for sure bulky and sporty, though the 200 a bit less so. I'm impressed in what they can do on a coin cell! I haven't tried the BT connection yet, but they seem to do step tracking, timers, and silent alarms quite well! The UI/UX definitely isn't Pebble-esque and is very utilitarian, but seems solid.
I now wear a Garmin Instinct. The UI isn’t as joyful and it’s not quite as pretty. It’s every bit as practical as the pebble and then some. Also you couldn’t kill it with a stick.
I still miss the Pebble, though.
I particularly miss being able to write custom apps.
In the meantime, I'm wearing a Withings ScanWatch [0]. Not as extendable as a Pebble, but it has some features I care about and doesn't distract me.
For years, I used my steel HR (got a weird one branded Nokia because they had purchased Withings only to resell Withings to the founder a year later), loved the sleep tracking, health report etc... But the activity tracking wasn't the best, especially running.
However the battery's life is out of this world. I loved the mix between tech and good old watch.
As others mention hybrid watches are probably the closest alternative.
I've found an Amazfit Bip to be a totally satisfactory replacement for my Pebble Time, but it doesn't cover every single usecase. It does have a battery life measured in weeks though (usually 3-4 for me, less if I use the GPS to track a bunch of exercise), which is a pretty nice selling point.
These are marketed as fitness devices first, which they are, but the smart watch features are comparable to the Pebbles. The lack of a touchscreen, the long battery life, and the epaper-like display are all there.
However it looks like Google is killing that in newer iterations...
The notification functionality is not as customizable, but otherwise I haven't really been missing the Pebble much.
I miss the simplicity, yet the huge amount possibilities (via their store and SDK) and watch faces the Pebble had. They still managed to keep the device distraction free along with a good battery life. I'm all ears for any good Pebble-like smartwatch if anyone knows one.
I wasn't a huge fan of Pebble, the company - they didn't sell replacement parts, for instance (the watch for geeks? yeah, sure).
For some crazy reason, though, to this day, this watch is still almost the only one that gets such a basic thing right: Telling the damn time.
The formula is as simple as it is unreplicated:
- Always telling the time
- Good battery life
- Buttons
Why nobody else makes such a watch is a mystery to me. The Amazfit Bip comes close, but it requires touch interaction and doesn't look as nice as the Pebble Time Steel. It's also supported by GadgetBridge though and also does heart rate tracking while having much better battery life (while being smaller!). When my Bip broke after a few months I bought another (5 years old at this point!) Pebble and am pretty happy with it. I could use some heart rate tracking, though.
There are more Pebble users out there using Gadgetbridge for example.
There could also be many more users using neither. For example, my wife is still using the OG Pebble (the monochromatic one) with the official app and stock firmware, today. I was using my Pebble Time with the OG app/firmware as well, until couple months ago when I broke my phone and couldn't transfer the app to the new one, at which point I decided to go the Rebble route.
This is the killer feature for me and why I still use mine daily. I don't know why nobody else is doing this. With media controls on a shortcut slot I can pause whatever media I'm playing, switch songs, etc without even looking at the screen. No other smartwatch I've used comes close to that convenience.
Real watch hands, buttons and an e-ink display. 7-10 days battery life.
It's a really nice watch.
I don't exactly know which model it is, but it's a Garmin watch with the traditional hour/minute arms and a tiny little screen. But it really kicks ass at telling me the time :)
> - Always telling the time
> - Good battery life
> - Buttons
I'm not so sure this is "unreplicated". Since bailing on Pebble I've had 2 Garmin watches which always tell the time, and have good battery life and buttons.
Haven't used a smart watch in 6ish years, so maybe they're better. From what I understand though, they still don't have always on displays for time, right? I hope I'm wrong and that they do.
Apple is on the fourth version that has an always-on-display, and Google's new Pixel watch has it. Can't say about any others with any confidence, but I'd be surprised if Apple/Google are the only ones.
"Why nobody else makes such a watch is a mystery to me."
There ya go.
There are always people who mourn the Pebble and I understand why. But the market has clearly shown you don’t need a week of battery life to be successful.
I had two Pebbles and was very sad when it shut down - my Pebble devices are no longer functioning but I've been using an Apple Watch for maybe 6 years now and am very happy with it. Sometimes I miss the battery life, but I never feel like it's a restriction and the UI on the Apple Watch is really very good.
The Pebble Time 2 was so far ahead of its time, I promise you I would still be rocking it (or whatever came after it from Pebble) if they had shipped it to me.
The continuous trickle of articles about how great these second generation Pebbles turned out, and my ongoing wait for an alternative that comes even close certainly haven't helped me forget!
Just noticed the Kickstarter page is still up https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/getpebble/pebble-2-time...
:(
- > 7 days battery life
- HR monitor (useful as a sports watch)
- < 10 mm thickness
- toned down to fit different clothing styles
- hackable
- high-contrast, always-on screen
- buttons
I am currently wearing a Garmin Fenix 7 Sapphire sportswatch, which comes close.
- affordable
Features from the Fenix 7 which I value over Pebble (apart from the obvious):
- Materials: titanium and sapphire. Means it is indestructible. Great for hiking expeditions.
- Garmin Connect (SaaS fitness community).
- HRV (Heart Rate Variability).
- Regular, well tested updates.
Stuff that I miss:
- Hackability (I want to transfer my data directly to InfluxDB)
- Thickness (14.5 mm, which is 5 mm more than the Pebble)
- Community
- 40 day battery life
- HR monitor
- 11.4mm thickness
- Always on transreflective screen
It's not hackable, is a bit thicker and only has one button but unlike the Fenix 7 it is very affordable.
It had a MONTH charge and it filled all my requirements which were mainly about getting notifications.
The Venu Sq 2 was just recently released. I have the Venu 2, myself.
Missing from your list: * <10mm thickness - it appears to be a smidge over * hackable - You have a Fenix 7 so you're familiar with the ecosystem * always-on screen - it's OLED and not always on, but works well enough - there is an always on mode but it's not recommended for OLED
As for the rest: * >7 days battery life - Venu 2 is rated up to 12 days, I charge about once a week * HR monitor - it's there, works reasonably well * toned down - as a lifestyle type, it's a bit more toned down * high-contrast - it's as high contrast as any OLED, and clearly visible in sunlight * buttons - 2 of them
I'd throw in cost as a valid metric. The Pebble watches were really inexpensive and I think that's what brought more broad appeal to them early on. My Venu 2 was $400. That's a tough pill for some to swallow.
No needs hacking because it would take all day to use all features it brings. It is nearly the perfect smartwatch.
https://developer.garmin.com/connect-iq/reference-guides/mon...
I bought that after the Kickstarter fell through. I loved it until the plastic membrane over the buttons degraded, rendering it open to the elements. It didn't last long after that.
(correction, I lost one because the band snapped and the watch dropped into the sea).
Never tried the Garmin Instinct though - its monochrome screen looks better, but the rest of the watch has a distinctly downmarket feel.
Watches are a strange sort of luxury good, where some people will pay thousands of dollars, and Garmin aggressively price-segments their products. Use this comparison tool to see the different features:
(and confirmed for iPhone)
And I have one more with a wasted battery that I intend to replace.
And I'll still buy some more, because I want to have them available for the rest of my life.
There are things that only the Pebble does:
- button only interface that you can handle in the dark without glasses
- a screen that barcode scanners can easily read for authentication into the gym and library
- a TOTP app (authentication tokens) that you can access with only a button press, etc.
Interesting. And it also has an sdk in C.
Although it costs almost 4 times what I'd pay for a Pebble on eBay.
But it is the best Pebble alternative I've seen so far.
Only Pebble can do this? Apple Watch does that too, like literally I use mine for the same cases you described
My experience with bright screens is that low density bar codes work ok mostly. But some high density codes don't work well. One of them is Plessey, still used in Europe.
I wish Rebble would offer a paid mail-in service to replace the batteries, to have someone trusted & reliable do the work. I'm down to about 2-days battery life on my Time Steel. I do have a replacement Time Steel that I bought on eBay, but I'd love to get this one fixed.
I love Rebble, but I wish they did more to round out the service. I'm really surprised they don't have their own web store for new-old stock & certified-Rebble refurbished Pebbles. A Discord channel really doesn't cut it, at least not for me (even eBay is a better experience).
That being said, a store for refurbed Pebbles might be doable, but it would be a big time and cost overhead.
One tip: put your Pebble in airplane mode each night. For me, it extends my battery life substantially. I mapped long-hold left button to toggle this setting, for ease of use.
- Authenticator - TOTP authorization tokens
- Skunk - barcodes
- Time Tracker - I work remotely as a contractor
- Pebble Controler - a remote control for my laptop
I also use a lot the standard apps on the Pebble:
- alarm, to wake me up by vibration, without waking up my wife
- canned messages - to answer phone calls when driving
- notifications, notifications
- hang up phone calls I don't want
- steps counter, when running
I would love to use my 5-inch 16:9 Samsung phone from 2016. It still works fine, but the battery barely lasts an hour. Instead I have to use one of their gigantic replacement phones with a ridiculous 21:9 ratio.
I think our culture is really wasteful with batteries. I can't believe that my iphone doesn't have a built-in setting to cap charging at 80%. Studies show that you can decrease battery wear to negligible levels by doing this. Yet my Android e-ink tablet, my iphone, my smartwatch, and my laptop all do not support a hard battery cap.
At least I can install al dente on my laptop, and root my tablet. Everything else I just have to manually take off the charger before 80%!
I have less fond memories of waiting all day for a newer phone to run out of battery when the same thing happened.
This is one of the worst design trends (perhaps the worst) of modern-day devices.
I used to crawl fark.com so I could read the stories and comments later.
wearchronos.com seemed to hit my use case, but the reviews aren't great.
I had the first generation of Mi Band, the one with only 3 RGB LEDs, no display. And I loved it, I could easily see I have a new Gmail notification when it gently vibrated and the LEDs flashed red (well more of a breathe animation than a flash), or a Facebook Messenger one when it was blue. The Bluetooth communications it used made it easy to program your own vibrations and LEDs.
It sounds non intuitive but 90% of the time the flashing LEDs made me NOT check the phone. I was like, "oh blue, most likely my brother replied, I'll check it later"
I also fantasized about modding my current analog watch but fitting a tiny battery and a tiny BLE chip and a tiny vibration motor and surfacing tiny LEDs is way outside my possibilities. Chronos sounds good in theory but the end result is not what I want. I don't want to increase the thickness of my watch, or have to recharge it or worry about a magnet not staying in place.
You could actually log your food intake via their app. And sync data to your phone by removing the “cap” from the band and plugging it into your phone’s headphone port!
He still wears it most days today. Not sure if this is the software he's using today or not. I'll have to find out if he's one of the 16,000.
[0] https://www.crowdsupply.com/oddly-specific-objects/sensor-wa...
To be fair- I've also got PineTime bookmarked for if my Bangle.js 2 ever breaks, or I just want to mess around with some lower-level aspects of watch firmware.
[0]: https://fashion-entertainments.com
[1]: https://fashion-entertainments.com/fes-watch-u/fw/oss.html
I need a smartwatch that tells the time, gives me notifications, doesn't blind me in the dark but is readable in daylight and lasts days without charging. Calendar access and weather are a bonus. The pebble does all of that.
I was somewhat excited when the Apple Watch was announced only to find out that it, of course, was going to be usable with iOS devices only and therefore not an option for Android users like me. I still haven't found a good alternative to the Pebble and all the lo-fi watches are primarily fitness trackers, which I have no use for.
If there are 100 million people who wear an Apple Watch, it’s not surprising that less than .02% of that number would like something as niche as the pebble.
It’s like the iPod Classic people. Billions of people want music with them wherever they go. 12 of them like it in MP3 form on a little brick that’s not their phone.
I remember this, too.
But good companies plan for the future, not the past. And all of those young people get older. That's one of the few certainties of life.
So what Apple did (intentionally or unintentionally) is create a market, and then let its customers mature into it.
Financial institutions do this all the time.
All these years, I haven't found a replacement.
So I'm trying to move to a simpler watch with just basic smart features and longer battery life, but one where I can customize the watchface with code.
I ended up going with Watchy: https://watchy.sqfmi.com/
And it's cool, but it's extremely basic, a bit bulky and ugly, and has all the drawbacks of E-Paper.
Pebble would have been perfect. If they still sold them I would buy one today. It's tragic the company went under so quickly.
Maybe I should get a Pebble. But I don't really want to buy a second hand smartwatch, and I don't see the point in investing into something that will never be updated and has no official support. All this update does it make the phone companion app work on a Pixel 7.
RIP Pebble. I hope someone makes something similar.
I haven't looked into the process of watchface creation but there is a huge collection[2] that can be installed via Gadgetbridge. It also has the benefit that its privacy friendly without any cloud connections and fully opensource.
[1]https://www.gadgetbridge.org/ [2]https://amazfitwatchfaces.com/
Wait...what?? I've used all the Samsung watches, with 3G/LTE, and the 4 is leaps and bounds better than anything that preceded it (and is for me quite usable and hassle-free).
Can you elaborate a bit about the e-paper part? I always believed that watches were the perfect place for e-paper. Low power, durable, always-on, wide viewing angle, no need to constant refresh.
I thought the smaller the display, the better suited it was for e-paper.
I think the Apple Watch, with all it's flashy animations and bright, beautiful screen contributed to the issue; people only see the shiny, they don't realise they don't need all of those features/oled screen and that they're sacrificing a week long (or more!) battery life for them.
I regularly got like 4-5 days out of the Round and it was super thin! I imagine had they done a model as thick as the GW4 it would've lasted 2 weeks or so! I really wish smart watches had gone in the Pebble direction, always on displays should be the primary feature for people. MIP LCD, not oled.
Then again, I really can't wait until we _finally_ get some properly commercialised AR glasses as I'd rather use those over a phone or watch or anything else at this point.
This is timely for me as I’m now in the doghouse for missing a reminder to take my kid to the dentist yesterday :(
For the cost of a brand new case ($30) and batteries, I plan to keep using them until the software fails spectacularly.
There's really nothing that compares for my usage.
Loved my Pebble, and I appreciate my bangle.js2 more and more.
Seems like a giant hole wishing to be filled. I know I want one - but I don't want to revive one - I want a new one with active support.
Once in a blue moon I buy a hot new smart watch, but nothing lasted more than a week before being resold.
I had Amazfit Bip for multiple years until it finally broke.
After trying Android Wear, battery life if very bad, I am looking for alternatives.
Is there any modern alternative to Pebble with all basic functions, such as eink display, battery life, notifications or call muting, but it also could reply to messages/notifications?
The face fell off of mine, and the band snapped. The face was put back in with super glue and has been holding just fine for two years, and the band was replaced with a metal one which will last forever.
How did yours break?
I would be perfectly content with something like Casio F91W if it could display notifications through bluetooth from my phone, I don't really need any sleep tracking or any other features just watch with notifications so I don't have to turn on phone screen
* incredible battery life
* tens of thousands of watch faces
* HR
* always-on transflective display
* notifications
you might like the Withings
Apparently I may be able to fix this if I try some soldering, but I'm an inexperienced solderer...
But more likely than not you will manage to wrangle it back together somehow :)
Good luck!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1104350651/tiktok-lunat...
Getting a replacement is not an option as any iPod nano battery is about 10 years old now. A sign of what will happen to all the Apple Watches out there.
I still use my iPod Shuffles a couple of days a week, so there's probably someone out there.
Every time I upgrade macOS, I'm amazed that even the ancient iPods are still supported. I bunged my launch day Shuffle (17 years old) into my new Mac over the weekend, and it works fine, still syncs, and Finder even still shows the icon for it.
Same with my also 17-year-old iPod Video. Man, 17 years went by quickly.
Today, when I run, I just carry my phone. It ends up doing everything the old clip did but in a much larger and more cumbersome package.
I'd probably carry my phone anyway these days after having a run, years ago, where my IT band told me I was done NOW but I was 8 miles from home. It was early Sunday morning and I ended up walking 2 miles on country roads and then through an empty office park before I found some place with a phone to call for a ride. That sucked.
Every major IOS release I think this is the time my Pebble app stops working but it is still going strong on IOS16. Safe for another year. :)
I plan to reluctantly get a Pixel Watch. It's the first Android Wear watch since the Moto 360 that looks decent. Still way too thick though and still with a garbage outdated SoC (which wouldn't matter if the software was efficient like Pebble, but...)
Then I moved to Microsoft Band, Microsoft Band 2, FitBit Charge, Fitbit Ionic, Fitbit Versa, Fitbit Sense, and now on FitBit Sense 2 (definitely a big leap forward).
I view Pebble as a huge success, even if it wasn't an immediate financial windfall for the team, as they pioneered something critical for humans.
Occasionally, I am one of those 16k.
But now I want some basic apps (ie TOTP) but this model doesn't support apps...
I don't use the official app, which has mostly alleviated my privacy concerns.
It's the only smartwatch I've owned and I loved it. I'm back to my $5 Casio now.
He tried to gift it to multiple people (including me) and they all returned it to him after a week or so.
And every time I hear about the Pebble and self-hosting, I get disappointed that it no longer exists.
The final smartwatch.
Sleep monitor is perfect and notifications really help so I never miss anything important without disturbing anyone else.
So, a fraction of users using alternate firmware to the watch that's up to 10 years old - an eternity for modern electronics - and whose vendor shut down 6 years ago. I'd say it's quite a big number.
Considering how much functionality and information is on that phone that could affect my life in absolutely fantastically negative ways if it was hacked (online accounts including owned licenses for software, banking), I have little choice but to buy a new phone now, even though the hardware is more than adequate for my needs and even though new phones don't really do much more much better.
Planned obsolescence, or whatever you prefer to call it, really drives this behaviour.
- Security: hackers constantly find new vulnerabilities. And depending on the kind of device, it can be a big deal.
- Services shutting down, it can be direct (if the device connects to the internet), or indirect (if some "companion app" is no longer available).
- Or just plain obsolescence. The device may be incompatible with modern standards, irrelevant, unfashionable, etc...
Funnily, when I meet people now with the latest and greatest iphone and they see my old phone they often express they wish they still had one of them.
