I’ve been happy with my Garmin so far. I disabled the touchscreen on mine since my jacket kept triggering it. You can navigate the entire UI with the clicky buttons pretty well. The main thing I find annoying is that you can’t assign “hotkey” actions to the buttons on the cheaper models; that feature is only on the more expensive ones. I’d like quick access to the timer and stopwatch, right now I have to go through a menu to get to them. Other than that I’m pretty happy with the UI.
The Garmin Instinct series is a really good choice if you want a no-frills smartwatch. It feels like a G-Shock on steroids to me. No touchscreen, black and white MIP display, physical buttons, durable case. But it has almost all the functionality that the Epix has, including the hotkeys you mentioned, for a fraction of the price.
Nice. I went with a Forerunner because they were listed everywhere as being a good beginner runner’s watch. Garmin’s lineup is unfortunately comically stratified and trying to find a watch that matches the features you want is quite difficult.
I forgot one other downside that is mildly annoying, but not dealbreaking for me: Garmin Pay is supported by very few banks in Germany.
It’s great to see them coming back! I adored my Pebble(s). 2 fun stories:
Pebble supported 3rd party watch faces based on a file. There was a great little site that let you use a visual UI to build the file and, if done from your phone, upload it right to the watch. Once, when out at midnight beer launch, I made a custom face for the beer and won a little keychain from the brewery. My Apple watch could never.
Once time in 2014, I ran into some Pebble engineers at an ice cream shop in Palo Alto, they spotted my watch, they bought my scoop! Fun, weird little Silicon Valley moment.
This reminds me of when they released a free firmware update for Stadia controllers after they killed Stadia allowing them to continue working via Bluetooth. They also killed OnHub but the fact that you could enable developer mode on it and flash a new firmware allowed me to keep my units working. Google has a bad track record when it comes to software products, but they’ve been okay (not “good”, mind you) when it comes to hardware. (Of course, if you’re not a nerd capable of physically opening your device and flashing a new firmware, you might be more angry, and you have every right to be.)
I backed the original Pebble kickstarter and I loved that thing. I have fond memories of getting notifications of messages at the Scottish Ruby Conference and running around catching up with people.
However, while getting notifications of every email, tweet, and who knows what else beamed directly to my wrist was cool in 2013, I think it would actually be kind of awful and hellish today. I aggressively control what apps can send notifications on my iPhone because so many abuse it and most of the rest I’m better off not getting push notifications about anyway.
I guess post-original-Pebble watches had health tracker stuff, which I never got into caring about much. (I had a Nokia/Withings HR which had the benefit of looking like a normal watch with a small round screen for notifications, but at some point I stopped wearing it.)
For me the notifications integration was the coolest part of the Pebble (that and the turn-by-turn walking directions I got from some map app integration). If the health/fitness tracking is the main interest just buy a Fitbit/Fitbit clone, and if it’s about open hackability, the LILYGO T-Watch S3 exists, and can even have a LoRa radio if you want to use your watch to do grid-down communication with the four other people near you that use meshtastic.
So as cool as the Pebble was, and as much as I loved it, I just can’t think of a reason why I’d want one in 2025.
Giddy for this. Xe still have xir Kickstarter Pebble and another one still new in box. That was the only Pomodoro timer that ever worked for xe reliably.
Extra excited about this. If I recall correctly, back when I was on the Chrome team, someone gave a talk at Pebble and the Pebble team started using some of our build tools. Would be cool to hear how that worked out.
I’m the first generation pebble user who backed their Kickstarter project in 2012. I still agree with the founder that no other watch on the market can match pebble for the balance of usability, battery life and openness. I’m now using Amazfit bip 5 with GadgetBridge but I have to say it’s no match.
I had a Pebble from the other Kickstarter — the Reading Rainbow one! Which shipped pretty much at the end of Pebble’s (first) lifespan. Still a cool device, but unfortunately mine got lost in a house move.
Should I be excited about this development? I’ve never used Pebble but I’ve been looking for a smart watch that will give me control over BLE features of the watch and allow me to connect to other devices via BLE. Will this be possible with the new Pebble?
The founder is trying to start up a new production run thanks to this.
https://repebble.com/
I wish them all the best, the OG pebbles were pretty good devices.
I hope Pebble style smartwatches make a comeback. Smartwatch UX went downhill after pebble imo
I’ve been happy with my Garmin so far. I disabled the touchscreen on mine since my jacket kept triggering it. You can navigate the entire UI with the clicky buttons pretty well. The main thing I find annoying is that you can’t assign “hotkey” actions to the buttons on the cheaper models; that feature is only on the more expensive ones. I’d like quick access to the timer and stopwatch, right now I have to go through a menu to get to them. Other than that I’m pretty happy with the UI.
The Garmin Instinct series is a really good choice if you want a no-frills smartwatch. It feels like a G-Shock on steroids to me. No touchscreen, black and white MIP display, physical buttons, durable case. But it has almost all the functionality that the Epix has, including the hotkeys you mentioned, for a fraction of the price.
Nice. I went with a Forerunner because they were listed everywhere as being a good beginner runner’s watch. Garmin’s lineup is unfortunately comically stratified and trying to find a watch that matches the features you want is quite difficult.
I forgot one other downside that is mildly annoying, but not dealbreaking for me: Garmin Pay is supported by very few banks in Germany.
Yeah the Garmin watch lineup is ridiculously confusing, it’s overwhelming.
(Link has an extra L at the end, should be https://opensource.googleblog.com/2025/01/see-code-that-powered-pebble-smartwatches.html )
It’s great to see them coming back! I adored my Pebble(s). 2 fun stories:
Pebble supported 3rd party watch faces based on a file. There was a great little site that let you use a visual UI to build the file and, if done from your phone, upload it right to the watch. Once, when out at midnight beer launch, I made a custom face for the beer and won a little keychain from the brewery. My Apple watch could never.
Once time in 2014, I ran into some Pebble engineers at an ice cream shop in Palo Alto, they spotted my watch, they bought my scoop! Fun, weird little Silicon Valley moment.
This reminds me of when they released a free firmware update for Stadia controllers after they killed Stadia allowing them to continue working via Bluetooth. They also killed OnHub but the fact that you could enable developer mode on it and flash a new firmware allowed me to keep my units working. Google has a bad track record when it comes to software products, but they’ve been okay (not “good”, mind you) when it comes to hardware. (Of course, if you’re not a nerd capable of physically opening your device and flashing a new firmware, you might be more angry, and you have every right to be.)
I’m still itchy about the nest thermostat mic drop from google.
Seeing this pebble code drop, there’s hope, but my nest has been a real let down since they bought the company.
I backed the original Pebble kickstarter and I loved that thing. I have fond memories of getting notifications of messages at the Scottish Ruby Conference and running around catching up with people.
However, while getting notifications of every email, tweet, and who knows what else beamed directly to my wrist was cool in 2013, I think it would actually be kind of awful and hellish today. I aggressively control what apps can send notifications on my iPhone because so many abuse it and most of the rest I’m better off not getting push notifications about anyway.
I guess post-original-Pebble watches had health tracker stuff, which I never got into caring about much. (I had a Nokia/Withings HR which had the benefit of looking like a normal watch with a small round screen for notifications, but at some point I stopped wearing it.)
For me the notifications integration was the coolest part of the Pebble (that and the turn-by-turn walking directions I got from some map app integration). If the health/fitness tracking is the main interest just buy a Fitbit/Fitbit clone, and if it’s about open hackability, the LILYGO T-Watch S3 exists, and can even have a LoRa radio if you want to use your watch to do grid-down communication with the four other people near you that use meshtastic.
So as cool as the Pebble was, and as much as I loved it, I just can’t think of a reason why I’d want one in 2025.
Giddy for this. Xe still have xir Kickstarter Pebble and another one still new in box. That was the only Pomodoro timer that ever worked for xe reliably.
Dupe of https://lobste.rs/s/yqx2sx/pebble_smartwatches_open_sourced - though that has an incorrect URL (extraneous ‘l’ on the end.)
Oops i didn’t see that. Should I delete this?
No worries, merged.
Extra excited about this. If I recall correctly, back when I was on the Chrome team, someone gave a talk at Pebble and the Pebble team started using some of our build tools. Would be cool to hear how that worked out.
I’m the first generation pebble user who backed their Kickstarter project in 2012. I still agree with the founder that no other watch on the market can match pebble for the balance of usability, battery life and openness. I’m now using Amazfit bip 5 with GadgetBridge but I have to say it’s no match.
I had a Pebble from the other Kickstarter — the Reading Rainbow one! Which shipped pretty much at the end of Pebble’s (first) lifespan. Still a cool device, but unfortunately mine got lost in a house move.
[Comment removed by author]
Should I be excited about this development? I’ve never used Pebble but I’ve been looking for a smart watch that will give me control over BLE features of the watch and allow me to connect to other devices via BLE. Will this be possible with the new Pebble?