Although 2 million might not be such a high number for giant companies like Apple or Samsung, it was a pretty important amount for a startup like Pebble. Fast forward more than a decade and Eric Migicovsky, Pebble’s founder, announced plans to revive the company’s e-ink smartwatch, but with some fun fun improvements and, of course, new hardware.
According to Migicovsky, although smartwatches have somewhat evolved since 2021, not one of these smartwatches is doing it for him because no company makes a smartwatch with the core set features he wants.
Migicovsky believes that the core set of features of a modern smartwatch should look like this:
Always-on e-paper screen (it’s reflective rather than emissive. Sunlight readable. Glanceable. Not distracting to others like a bright wrist)
Long battery life (one less thing to charge. It’s annoying to need extra cables when traveling)
Simple and beautiful user experience around a core set of features I use regularly (telling time, notifications, music control, alarms, weather, calendar, sleep/step tracking)
Buttons! (to play/pause/skip music on my phone without looking at the screen)
Hackable (apparently you can’t even write your own watchfaces for Apple Watch? That is wild. There were >16k watchfaces on the Pebble appstore!)
Pebble Time | Image credit: Pebble
Fortunately, manufacturing hardware for a smartwatch like Pebble has become cheaper over the years, so the only challenge remaining was the software it would run on the new smartwatch. The original wearable device was powered by PebbleOS, an ecosystem that took Pebble’s engineers more than 4 years to develop, but that operating system was sold along with the IP.
Thankfully, the folks over at Google have agreed to open source PebbleOS, and after working on it last year, the source code for Pebble OS is now available at Github, thus making the revival of the Pebble smartwatch much easier.
In a long blog post, Migicovsky explains that he and a small team will be “diving back in the world of hardware to bring Pebble back.” This time around he promises to keep things simple. The next Pebble smartwatch will have the same specs and features as the original, “though with some fun new stuff as well.”
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Cosmin, a tech journalist with a career spanning over a decade, brings a wealth of experience to PhoneArena. His expertise lies in brands like Samsung and Nokia, and he has a keen interest in innovative technologies. After a brief stint in PR, Cosmin returned to tech journalism in 2016, committed to delivering clear and objective news. When he's not writing or appearing as a guest on TV and radio shows, Cosmin enjoys playing RPGs, watching Netflix, and nurturing his passion for history and travel.
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