How To Build A Smartwatch: Software

They shipped hardware! They successfully open sourced a beloved platform and embraced the community ecosystem that sprung up around it. What more do you want?

They sold the whole production run of Pebble 2 Duos, and they are keeping the company small to be sustainable this time. I think they have a chance.

The Pebble software is second to none in nailing the basics. I'll definitely continue to choose Pebble over no-name brands on AliExpress.

I used a super-cheap Chinese smartwatch (Amazfit Bip S) for years and recently switched to the Pebble. The Bip's battery lasted forever and it did check a lot of feature boxes, but overall it was clunky to use and not in any way hackable.

I switched to a Pebble 2 Duo recently and while the features are comparable on paper (multi-week battery life, reflective display, basic health tracking, etc.), everything is just nicer on the Pebble. The software is thoughtful and fun and there are tons of third-party apps, so it can do all kinds of things the Bip could never do.

There really isn't a huge market for this kind of thing; most people, including nerds, want a watch with a brightly colored screen and tons of health metrics and service integrations. I imagine Pebble will stay a boutique brand this time around.

One thing I don't understand:

> Pebble 2 Duo is sold out! We are not making more. If you want a Pebble, I recommend pre-ordering a Pebble Time 2 soon.

Is this supposed to be a collector's item? I'm not sure I'd want to invest in an ecosystem where damaging the device means I'm out or stuck waiting in line for replacement - with no guarantee the new device will be similar enough.

except for the apps for those cheap watches, all your data is uploaded to servers somewhere all the time I assume.

I think they have a very clear niche: nerdy techies (like me).

The question is indeed if it's a big enough market to carry to the company. I hope so.

The key value of Pebble to me was its incredible C SDK that made it super easy to write custom apps for it. I remember way back I got full turn-by-turn navigation working on it.

The Pebble brand name definitely helps them break back into the market. Even some of my non-techy friends recognize the name.

I heard that no one likes him because he has no morals, but that's just what i heard

Yep, my duo arrived about two weeks ago at 76% charge and is currently at 18%; I've only ever plugged it in for a few seconds to verify that the charger works. Amazing battery life.

(The buttons, however, are atrocious - mushy, hard to press, and literally falling apart. I'll probably do the 3D-printed button mod but to advertise this watch as IPX8 water resistant is ludicrous. The first button press out of the box put a crack in the silicone.)

Connecting to a laptop isn't supported AFAIK. Personally I don't have any important notifications on my computer that don't come to my phone already. What would you use it for?

Can't be done, yet.

But I do want to dig into that, someday. There is an open source library in Kotlin multi-platform for building applications that interact with the watch (libpebble3) and, in theory, Bluetooth LE can connect to more than one device. But the PebbleOS probably restricts it.

My dream is to use the watch to authenticate to computers, websites and IoT devices.

Pebble watches can use Bluetooth LE and Bluetooth Classic connection profiles simultaneously. It's possible to pair two phones this way, but that's considered an undocumented hack. Also there's no ready-made desktop OS support, I'd look into forwarding your laptop notifications to a phone via KDE Connect or something like that instead.

This is a rather bizare take. Pebble turned down a massive deal to keep doing their own thing. They sold cheap after they were going down because they had too mich staff, and not enough sales. Which Eric has said many times, and can even be found on his blog.

Then, when they were being sold, instead of shutting down the Pebble store and basically bricking all Pebble watches, they intentionally opened it up to make it possible for community support. Which is where Rebble stepped in.

Bizarre and disingenuous take. That really doesn't take into account Pebble's actions, much less their words.

How exactly did you get "burned" ? I'm still wearing an original pebble. It's worked fine for years.

I was bummed to see recently that Amazfit has stopped making watches with reflective displays! They're all OLED now just like everyone else's.

Amazfit is closed, Pebble is open. That's reason enough for me to avoid the former.

As enshittification encroaches on every corner of the technology ecosystem, a company putting out products in 2025 in a way that embraces its community and works in the open is laudable.

Maybe Pebble will turn evil one day, but at least the watches we have today will still work until they physically wear out, not when the company decides they should die.

Having owned and worn Pebble watches for the lifetime of the original company and then some, I think you would be _stunned_ at how many little things Pebble got right that others didn't. Personally, nothing has come close to these devices since the release of the Pebble Time.

I do use pebble for (something like) that. I find that setting it up so they certain people can get to my wrist makes me check my phone less. So I get sucked in less.

I don't think being a phone-substitute in that way has ever been a goal for Pebble. It doesn't even have WiFi.

Its goals are battery life and a simple set of features including notifications from the phone via Bluetooth. You seem to have different needs, and there are other smartwatches being produced which attempt to address them.