Eric Migicovsky, founder of Pebble, the original smartwatch maker, made a major announcement today together with Google. Pebble was originally bought by Fitbit and in turn Fitbit was then bought by Google, but Migicovsky always wanted to to go back to his original idea and create a brand new smartwatch.
PebbleOS took dozens of engineers working over 4 years to build, alongside our fantastic product and QA teams. Reproducing that for new hardware would take a long time.
Instead, we took a more direct route – I asked friends at Google (which bought Fitbit, which had bought Pebble’s IP) if they could open source PebbleOS. They said yes! Over the last year, a team inside Google (including some amazing ex-Pebblers turned Googlers) has been working on this. And today is the day – the source code for PebbleOS is now available at github.com/google/pebble (see their blog post).
↫ Eric Migicovsky
Of course, this is amazing news for the still-thriving community of Pebble users who have kept the platform and their devices going through sheer force of will, but it also means Pebble is going to making a comeback in a more official capacity: alongside the announcement of PebbleOS becoming open source, there’s also the unveiling of rePebble, a brand new Pebble watch that retains all of the popular features and specifications of the original devices. It’ll run the open source PebbleOS, of course, and will be compatible with the existing ecosystem of applications.
I’ve never had a Pebble, but there’s no denying the company hit on something valuable, and I know people who still rock their original Pebble devices to this day. The excitement about this announcement is palpable, and I’m pleasantly surprised Google cared enough to work on making an open source PebbleOS a reality (I know of quite a few other companies sitting on deeply loved code and IP rotting away in obscurity). I can’t wait to see what the new device will look like!
SO EXCITED! I loved my pebble, even after Fitbit bought them, it was great. Only after google got hold of fitbit and tried to unify services did it stop working. I’ll definitely be in line for the new edition
Had the original one. Turns out that I am just not much of a user of the “smart” part of a smartwatch.
When my pebble broke down I got a second hand solar powered “dumb” watch that requires no charging at all, at a tenth of the price, and it fits my use case better.
That being said, I may get the new one any ways for that one occasion per year when I’d like to be notified via my watch. I just hope they don’t overfancify the new model.
what use case do you have for a dumb-watch that is not covered by your cellphone?
Speaking strictly for myself here, but in between owning smartwatches I’ve always worn a classic wristwatch (either digital or analog depending on my mood) because I wore them long before cellphones were a thing everyone had, and I’m just used to looking at my wrist to see the time rather than digging in my pocket for my phone. I feel naked without my watch on my wrist, no matter if it just tells the time or does “smart” things. It takes less than a second to glance at my wrist to see the time, whereas I have to spend several seconds digging my phone out, looking at it, then putting it back in my pocket to accomplish the same act.
That quick glance response of a standard “dumb” watch is why I haven’t really loved screen based smart watches. I used a Fossil Hybrid HR for years though, for the health tracking, and the notifications on it’s behind the watch face e-paper display. It also had a 2 week battery, which is necessary for me. I hate having to charge a watch every 20 hours. I LOVED that thing, until it finally died… Fossil threw in the towel though, so I won’t be getting another one.
I’d love to see Pebble do something similar, with a hybrid approach. Real clock arms, with e-paper behind it for “smart” features. Such a great idea. But I’ll also take the nerdy thing they seem to intend to ship.
I doubt Pebble will do the health monitoring, but they have newer interesting things like those rings for that anyway.
I’m the same way. My Samsung watch is cool and all, but but for anything other than checking the time it’s easier and more convenient to do on my phone. I’d really like it to be able to control Spotify on my phone, but instead it only plays spotify on the watch, which isn’t very useful.
So, I wear a regular watch. Personally, I’m a fan of watches, and I’ve got a growing collection of a half dozen or so. My favorite is a manual wind waving Chairman Mao, exactly like in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnyiGvkPQqY
But, the one I wear most is also a solar powered watch.
I probably still have my kickstarter edition of the original pebble somewhere… the sharp memory LCDs have always been mesmerizing ! too bad they aren’t cheap and available in as many form factors as epd displays are, because they are way better in so many ways.
Good news and lets see on how new models will be, although again some proprietary parts are missing.
Pebble was the only smartwatch OS that could make a smartwatch last more than a day without charging. Android and iOS crammed into a smartwatch form-factor are like those attempts to cram full-fat Windows onto UMPC tablets, technically possible but slow and with an awful battery life. I hope rePebble becomes a real thing.
This is a custom RTOS, not just another Linux variant. Cool.
It says it’s partially open source, won’t compile as-is, and needs some binary-only components that seem quite large – a bit like OpenSolaris in the early days.
I had a couple of Pebble watches back when the company was around, and they remain exactly what I wanted in a smartwatch: Long battery life, outdoor readable display, rich notifications, and (with the Pebble Time Steel) an attractive design.
These days I have the Amazfit T-Rex 2 and it covers all of those wants for about the same price I paid for my Pebble watches back in the day (I get three weeks of battery life out of a fully capable fitness smartwatch, it’s unreal!). I doubt I will get rid of it any time soon, but I am curious to see the new Pebble and might just get one to play with, especially since the OS is open source now.