Pebble Round 2

Is the Round 2 also going to have screws to potentially replace the battery, like Time 2 does?

Also, while watching the announcement video, I noticed that the pixels are quite a bit more visible on the Round 2 on the same watchface, when compared to Time 2 — on the Time 2, the image is a lot more crisp. Is that a matter of adapting the watchfaces to the bigger screen?

This is awesome, congrats Eric. Almost makes me wish I hadn’t switched from Android -> iOS last year before the Pebble announcements started coming out. Any idea if we might see more compatibility with iOS in the near future as Apple is forced to open up the ecosystem a little due to EU regulations? I know they had to allow reading iMessages on 3rd party smartwatches recently which sounds promising for Pebble. Apologies if you already blogged about this and I missed it!

On the repebble compare chart the round is marked as having both a speaker and mic, that’s incorrect right?

Haven't watched the video yet, but I don't see the vibrating motor/linear actuator mentioned. I'm assuming this is still included? I'll be switching my Pebble Time 2 order over, these look fantastic.

Is the situation with Rebble solved?

Is a normal (non-rose) gold (or even a brass) color something we could look forward go in the future?

Was the decision to not sell that color based on expected demand for the color or did it not work for some other reason?

I pre-ordered because I loved the Pebble Round - especially the size and look. My intended use case is for formal dress codes and special events (weddings, new years, ...) wheretny fennix 51mm does not fit in (literally and figuratively).

That said: I can't find full dimensions for the new round 2. I can guesstimate that it should be 10-20% smaller in diameter and less than 2/3 the thickness.

Would you mind sharing full dimensions or even update the post?

And congratulations! I really like this. I hope there will be enough of a market to support this project long term.

What is the e-paper display part number / manufacturer?

I like everything about Pebble Round 2, except that it's round. I _HATE_ round watches with a passion, it's just form over function for electronic watches. Coincidentally, that's also why I still have an iWatch even though my phone is Android. There are _no_ good rectangular Android watches.

Are you planning something like this but with a rectangular screen? I have Time 2 on pre-order, but I'd love to buy a water-resistant watch.

How does the sleep tracking works on the Round? Is it reliable? I'm currently using a Mi Band 7 and it works great with gadgetbridge and it has a heart-rate monitor.

Hi erohead, the Round 2 looks beaut! But why on Earth doesn't it have a heart rate monitor?

What kind of “sleep tracking” can you really offer with no heart rate monitor?

@erohead: do the new Pebbles still support the strap interface? With the screen now being 1.5" and the resolution being much higher than the original ones, they would make great little retro gaming consoles with the control buttons on the strap. Similar to a funkey-s console.

Dude you are an inspiration. So amped on the Pebble 01 I sent a multi-paragraph screed to your team lol.

this is supposed to be the part where i say something about the smart watch. i own a $20 Casio F91 that should cost $3 at retail, which is to say, i'm not really your intended audience. is performative positivity an obligation for interesting questions? is it the only framework to figure out products? do you see?

is positivity the only valid emotion for a product launch?

how do you balance your experience with the rewards of taking risks?

As someone who had the original Pebble Steel, and then moved to the Pebble Round (20mm) until it literally stopped working, I'm super happy you've done this, and incredibly happy that you let me change my pre-order from my Time 2 to the Round 2. Can't wait!

The specs link directly to the Pebble Appstore, which showcases a bunch of really cool watchfaces that are... all for the square screen. I think it would be wonderful to land the user on a showcase of faces specifically adapted for the round screen.

I thought about it but didn't because the battery life difference is pretty big (10-14 vs 30), and according to his comment below, apparently the battery is not replaceable.

I assume it would actually be replaceable if one were sufficiently motivated, but the fact that it's not meant to be replaceable is not so great.

Honestly if the PT2 weren't replaceable I wouldn't mind so much, since starting of with 30 days of battery means it can degrade a lot before it hits a threshold I care about (1 week, roughly). But if the PR2 starts off around 10 days, it doesn't have far to fall before it hits that threshold.

Perhaps the biggest reason I didn't swap my order, though, is that I don't want to wait several more months to get my Pebble!

I think pretty much all watches have some sort of raised dial/edge in order to protect the glass. This one is not as small as some, but compared to the original round pebble, this is much, much smaller.

I don’t get why you’d want no bezel on a watch. Look how big the bezel is on a Rolex GMT Master 2, or an Omega Seamaster.

Yes, no more bezel cuts off the details. What is meant is that does not have the big bezel of the original Pebble Round.

The original round Pebble had an octogonal screen with a big chunky ring overlapping all the edges making it look round. I guess there are rounder display options now so the screen can go to the edge of the case.

The miniscule ring? That size/time doesn't bother me. Now if it was something the size of a phone with that limited use, that would bother me.

If you've ever thrown out a single smartphone, by weight you've created more ewaste than a lifetime of those rings. There's more ewaste in a single AA battery, surely you must complain about those in every comment thread they're mentioned?

Totally agree even though it is apparently one of the better rings I can't understand why they don't have a mail-back-to-factory plan for battery service just on principal. It's stories like this that almost make the case for regulation if that wasn't such a slippery slope.

What's to hate about them?

I hear you, but the first new Pebble is getting good reviews. It's been out for months and I've not heard anything bad about it. While the upcoming models are a bit less derivative of past watches, they are still pretty well-grounded in prior Pebbles. The software is the same as the P2D, and the hardware is pretty similar to the prior rect/round Pebbles.

I believe things could go wrong, but I'm not sure what sort of latent errors would make sense to worry about. The battery life dropping precipitously? (Why would it do this?) Sensors breaking within a couple months? (Again, what would lead to this?).

I'm curious to know what you are concerned about. I agree that a year of track record would be great, but IMO a Pebble will be such a big upgrade over pretty much anything else out there (AWs etc. that need charging all the damn time), that I'd rather not wait a year for the additional data to come in.

hard to beat a solar quartz movement if those are the criteria! no need to charge or service it for up to 20 years.

My case full of mechanical watches need to be “charged” every 30-50 hours. At least they do indeed tell time.

If the production is similar to the PT2 watches, then there will be public beta testing before watches are shipped.

> works at Microsoft

> it is sad that most companies don't care about doing the right thing anymore

Throw rocks once you’ve stopped the windows 11 spam machine.

garmin is arguably one major smart watch vendor and has a great battery life

For what it does, the battery life of the Apple Watch 11 is not that bad. It typically lasts more than 48h for me and charges very quickly. Putting it to charge when taking a shower is enough to not have to think about battery life.

The Nothing CMF Watch has a true week-long battery life due to its RTOS, but it's kind of mediocre otherwise. More like a souped up Casio.

Withings smart watches are kind of insane with 30 day battery life, but the subscription farming in the app is infuriating.

All I want from a smart watch:

- Waterproof, wireless charging, at least a week of battery life

- Automatically track exercise and sleep, let me update the data if needed.

- Track my fitness overtime

- Optionally, learn a couple of recurring patterns to improve automatic exercise assignment. If I hike for twice a week and you see an exercise session with a consistent heart rate profile you better believe I am hiking

I can get days out of my Samsung Watch 7 if I turn off everything like the always on display, constant health tracking, Wifi, etc. But I don't.

Easy, as you point out, they are using the wrong OS stack.

My Amazfit lasts weeks on a single charge, and besides I don't need an app store on my phone.

Pixel fan here: I think the Pixel Watch 1, 2 and 3 were a big disappointment in terms of battery life. I was barely getting 1 day out of them, many times less than that. Pixel Watch 4 has significantly improved the situation. Now I routinely get at least 3 days out of it (and this is the 4G LTE variant). Still someways to go, I think the holy grail is one week, but at least it is now quite usable.

PS: why is this even an issue? How hard is it to make straps with batteries in them..

> Looks great, but a mere 30 day warranty for manufacturing defects is kind of insane.

It's illegal in advanced societies, but americans call these things "communism" (the rest of the world uses "regulations")

They'll likely be shipping to EU from outside, not selling them directly.

Just so I understand; this watch does not show notifications when paired with an iPhone?

Eric's answer is just don't buy it if you're not happy with the warranty [0].

I'm still willing to take the risk because Pebble smartwatches are the only ones I like and wear. I managed to give my OG Steel another life by replacing the battery. Unfortunately that seems to be harder with the Round 2 as there won't be any screws. I'm still a bit split on whether to change my Time 2 pre-order for a Round 2.

[0] https://bsky.app/profile/ericmigi.com/post/3maubss6mqc25

Here's my answer (as the founder of Pebble - both eras!) on this. We're a small company this time (standing on the shoulders of giants by using open source PebbleOS - thank you google!).

We are excited to make new devices, but wary about over-promising. We'd rather under-promise and over-deliver. So far, we have only received a few requests for warranty support for our first new watch (Pebble 2 Duo) and we have provided support for everyone who has asked.

oof, 30 days is not good. I had a couple early pebbles from a decade ago and both had various issues within 1-2 years of use. the first was the original pebble and the screen basically had broken lines of pixels. can't recall the second, newer one's issue.

You can get a Pebble Steal next time you see someone wearing one in public...