A decade ago, smartwatches were an unexplored avenue full of exotic promise. There were bleeding-edge and eye-wateringly expensive platforms from the likes of Samsung or Apple, but for the more experimental among technophiles there was the Pebble. Based on a microcontroller and with a relatively low-resolution display, it was the subject of a successful crowdfunding campaign and became quite the thing to have. Now long gone, it has survived in open-source form, and now if you’re a Pebble die-hard you can even buy a new Pebble. We’re not sure about their choice of name though, we think calling something the “Core 2 Duo” might attract the attention of Intel’s lawyers.
The idea is broadly the same as the original, and remains compatible with software from back in the day. New are some extra sensors, longer battery life, and an nRF52840 BLE microcontroller running the show. It certainly captures the original well, however we’re left wondering whether a 2013 experience still cuts it in 2025 at that price. We suspect in that vein it would be the ideal compliment to your game controller when playing Grand Theft Auto V, another evergreen 2013 hit.
We look forward to seeing where this goes, and we reported on the OS becoming open source earlier this year. Perhaps someone might produce a piece of open source hardware to do the same job?
maybe its just me but it doesnt seem that expensive considering how much most “smartwatches” cost and can’t even last more than a day or two without needing to be charged
Nearest competition is Bangle.js 2 which is already available for quite some time and costs much less. It has basically same internals and firmware is opensource too.
And other nrf52840 hackable watches from China cost even much less as even the Bangle price already includes custom firmware development and support. So IMO those Pebble watches are expensive, they could at least include newer nrf5340 which is dual core and supports LE audio (52840 is chip from 2017). But if the Pebble brand and PebbleOS ecosystem is worth it for you then fine, ‘expensive’ is relative term.
I had a couple of Bangle.js2s, the reason I’m not still using one is that its claims to any water resistance are greatly exaggerated, as in won’t stand up to hand washing or even some rain falling on the watch. I’ve gone back to the PineTime which is solidly water resistant as long as you remember that pushing the button can let water in.
I don’t get how some people are always complaining that modern devices need to be charged daily. I mean, sure it would be cool if you could get the processing power of a Desktop PC with the power usage of a plain-old digital watch but that’s not really a reasonable request now is it?
I just keep a charger on a stand next to my bed. It’s a pretty easy routine to keep, taking my watch off and setting it on the charger every night and my phone next to it is also my alarm clock.
I guess if you want to use your watch to track how much you toss and turn in your sleep or something that could be a problem. My Galaxy watch only really requires charging every few days though so if I wanted to do that I could on most nights.
“I guess if you want to use your watch to track how much you toss and turn in your sleep or something that could be a problem.” – one solution is another (possibly much lighter, thinner) device like fitness band or even a ring just for tracking sleep. You don’t wear your jeans or pajamas all day and night either.
Jeans and pajamas all day or night? Seriously? On that train of logic, you also don’t wear a condom very often.
Do you really wear a condom all day or night? 8-O
Sorry but I don’t see any logic in your train of condoms. Care to explain more?
The OnePlus Watch 2 is a great compromise without much in the way of compromises. It tracks sleep. I get a little over 2 days of battery life with always on display and heat rate tracking (if you don’t need those you can get 4-5 days). That is in full power mode. If you put it in the RTOS mode it will get nearly 2 weeks. I charge it in the morning while I get ready to head out. It automatically switches at 10% battery to low power mode and will get you another day or two. Also it runs full Wear OS when not in RTOS mode. It’s not even crazy expensive for a watch, especially if you go for the R variant.
I’m glad to see them back, I wore my Pebble Time from 2017 to 2024 with very few issues. Most of the issues I did have were just due to the app not getting updated after the buyout of Pebble (and thank goodness for rebble.io I was even able to use it as long as I wanted). I do hope they’ll do another case design to be a bit more like the Pebble Time but never the less I know what I’ll be shopping for when I get tired of or break the pixel watch.
same here
THIRTY DAYS
The price is too high. With the shipping and import taxes it makes no sense to buy it outside of the US.
I’m curious if there will be a watch that can do the health monitoring stuff without having to have all your data harvested by a big tech company – maybe a future Pebble could be the one?
There are plenty. The PineTime, this new Pebble watch too since it’s open source and the SDK is available. The Bangle JS too, the ZSWatch and so on. If you don’t like the open source design (or the missing feature), then you have the AsteroidOS project that’s providing an open source Linux firmware for commercial WearOS smartwatches.
HealthyPi Move on Crowd Supply looks promising. My only reservation is the very low battery life claimed, otherwise I’d have already pre-ordered one.
You can use Gatherbridge with a lot of devices that normally have their own apps.
checkout gadgetbridge, without gadgetbridge I wouldn’t have bought a smartwatch.
I’m playing with the PineTime but it’s too bulky for my wrist so I’ve mounted it to my keyboard for time and notiffications. I’ve been wearing a Withings Steel HR Sport for a few years and it still gives 4 weeks between charges. There’s no way I’m dropping $150 on a Pebble. $50? OK, I’d be tempted. Maybe #100 on the colour variant but the current pricing? Nope.
I wasn’t a Pebble enthusiast before but these did catch my interest. The idea of having watch straps that could add functionality was neat, but I think that has been dropped from the new incarnation. I justified getting a smartwatch for the primary purpose of tracking my runs, but neither of the Pebble offerings have support for GNSS; in other conversations online it was suggested that folks who wanted that could add it themselves. Given the capabilities of the RePebbles, would that mean finding a standalone GNSS that either:
A) supports Bluetooth, and adding support for pairing Bluetooth devices to RePebble
B) capturing the data separately and later recombining
Option A seems the best, but standalone devices with Bluetooth+GNSS seem pretty niche (aka expensive). I guess I’m not the market for these watches and that’s fine, it just seems like a segment they could have picked up without much added cost given how common it is to include GNSS in watches, but that’s just my armchair analysis.
What benefit does the watch having GNSS have if you could already bring your phone with and leave it in a pocket?
I’m asking seriously because I don’t know. I would’ve thought that most bring their phones already and that could handle tracking the route.
Often sports folks prefer to keep the phone at home, and just run with a watch. Less weight bouncing around and getting sweaty.
I don’t know what Nick’s running preferences are, but, when I was running I preferred loose clothing and my cell phone would bounce around and annoy me. I bought a Garmin Forerunner to track my runs and love it. It isn’t close to an Apple or Samsung as a smart watch though. At the time they retailed for $250, but I got mine on a black Friday sale for $150. Not pairing it to my phone solved the data harvesting issue.
Little surprised by this, though it’s an obvious answer.
Would’ve thought there would enough value on keeping access to communication to override that. That and phones are good for listening sources so you don’t have to run in silence.
Pretty much all major smartwatches can serve as audio sources these days, and watches with sim cards/esim are generally only $50-100 more, plus a $5 wearable line with your carrier, so you can call and answer with your Bluetooth headphones, too.
So even for those things, you don’t need a phone. 😁
I have a Pebble Time Steel and use it occasionally. Thanks to Rebble (or whatever the project is called right now), I can always add an app to my smartwatch.
Back then, Pebble smartwatches only supported eight apps, or rather, only eight additional apps could be installed. Is this still the case with the new version of the smartwatch?
Sincerely,
Ronny from Germany
i’m kind of bummed by the discourse here around price and competitors, “a 2013 experience.” it reminds me of how foreignly people think about laptops and palmtops and all that.
having a palmtop that lasts a month of heavy usage between charges is “a 2001 experience”, i guess, because nothing i’ve bought since the palm vx comes close to that. i’d like a 2001 experience out of my smartphone. yeah, my smartphone rewards me with more CPU power and RAM and megapixels (coming and going) than my 2020 budget laptop. perhaps lousey battery life is a small price to pay for those things…if you want them at all.
the pebble has features, unique features like an epaper always on display combined with month long battery. if you value these features, you can’t get them from apple even if you fork over $1000. if you don’t want these features, why would you even consider buying this product?
I have a mechanical watch. It tells the time. I wind it up and it tells the time some more. If it stops telling me the time, then I’ve forgotten to wind it up. Which isn’t often anyway. It’s a nice watch and it deserves to tell the time.
But it doesn’t light up. But that’s ok – it sort of glows a little in the dark.
And it will last forever, so long as I wind it up so it can continue to tell the time.
So whilst all these e-paper watches and “smart” watches are cool… I just want to know the time and off you go with all that other crap I’ll never use :)
This is my main issue with smartwatches– I like mechanical watches. There something extremely cool about a device that keeps time so precisely with absolutely no electronics. I will say I’m a step ahead in one aspect: I wear an automatic, so as long as I wear it regularly, it winds itself!
30 days? Bah! My watch gets essentially unlimited battery life!
…
I did pre-order the new Pebble though.
Well, it still needs to be serviced every few years and, for a nicer watch, it can easily cost as much as a new smartwatch every time.
i agree with the pragmatic mentality but if you want something that tells the time you absolutely cannot beat the casio f91w. you’re probably losing more seconds per day than the digital casio loses per year.
The Pebble is closer to your watch than an Apple or Samsung “phone extension”.
To wit, it can be set and used as a watch without any phone. I found that impressive. I picked up a Pebble Steel for $26 on eBay with a dead battery. 2 batteries was ~$8 from AliExpress (in case one arrived bad, or I broke it whle installing).
I used Gadgetbridge (with only permission needed to communicate to watch) to update the watch firmware and upload new watch faces, also seems I can get an environment up to write my own apps.
I’m still wearing mine as I write this. Since 2016. I think the price per year is pretty cheap compared to most smartwatches I’ve seen. The battery still lasts a couple of days or three, I can change the Spotify song and turn the volume up and down and it notifies me when I receive a WhatsApp message or a phone call. I’m happy to read this kind of news.
There are many reasons to love the Pebble. Other than Bezel size/general appearance, I think the Pebble is still among the best smart watches. The reasons can all be distilled down to one basic idea: the Pebble is a watch that connects to your phone, not a phone that connects to your phone.
If I pretty much always have a nice big screen on my phone in my pocket, why the heck would I want an app on my watch’s tiny screen?? Instead of that, Pebble focuses on helping you decide if your phones better functionality is necessary.
You can surreptitiously glance at the easy-to-read-in direct-sunlight-screen when a message or call comes in, then using the physical buttons you can silence the call without looking.
I also have pretty severe inattentive ADHD, and so when I’m focused on something, I’ve missed dozens of phone calls just from not noticing. Having something buzzing directly on my wrist really helps me notice that my phone is going off.
The designer has said that he’s not doing this to make it his business again. There were a few things he wanted to address before his company was bought, so he decided to make himself a watch with those tweaks for himself. He just decided others might want one, too. If you don’t want one, that’s totally cool.
But there’s quite a few people who still think Pebble was the first device to get it right and want one that fixes some of the problems it still had while still being true to the idea that a smart watch primarily exists to tell time and augment your phone.
And I’m one of them!
+1
It’s good to see them again. Loved the long battery life
Nostalgia doesn’t worth that money: I had a couple of peeble and unfortunately both had the same issue with display internal connection a design flaw known and not addressed (and maybe still present since the new is assembled with old hardware leftover)
I will wait a second batch, or cheaper smartwatch based on the pebbleOS
this is better https://hackaday.io/project/193509-smartwatch-10-years-ultra-long-battery-life
but not open source