I started working on Pebble in 2008 to create the product of my dreams. Smartwatches didn’t exist, so I set out to build one. I’m extraordinarily happy I was able to help bring Pebble to life, alongside the core team and community. The companybehind it failed but millions of Pebbles in the world kept going, many of them still to this day. (View Highlight)
I wear my Pebble every day. It’s been great (and I’m astounded it’s lasted 10 years!), but the time has come for new hardware. (View Highlight)
You’d imagine that smartwatches have evolved considerably since 2012. I’ve tried every single smart watch out there, but none do it for me. No one makes a smartwatch with the core set of features I want:
• 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!) (View Highlight)
Over the years, we’ve thought about making a new smartwatch. Manufacturing hardware for a product like Pebble is infinitely easier now than 10 years ago. There are plenty of capable factories and Bluetooth chips are cheaper, more powerful and energy efficient. (View Highlight)
PebbleOS took dozens of engineers working over 4 years to build, alongside our fantastic product and QA teams. Reproducing that for new hardware would take a long time. (View Highlight)
Instead, we took a more direct route - I asked friends at Google (which bought Fitbit, which had bought Pebble’s IP) if they could open source PebbleOS. They said yes! Over the last year, a team inside Google (including some amazing ex-Pebblers turned Googlers) has been working on this. And today is the day - the source code for PebbleOS is now available at github.com/google/pebble (see their blog post). (View Highlight)
In addition to PebbleOS, we’ve been supporting development of Cobble, an open source Pebble-compatible app for iOS (soon) and Android (works great today, it’s my daily driver). (View Highlight)
I had really, really,really hoped that someone else would come along and build a Pebble replacement. But no one has. So… a small team and I are diving back into the world of hardware to bring Pebble back! (View Highlight)
This time round, we’re keeping things simple. Lessons were learned last time! I’m building a small, narrowly focused company to make these watches. I don’t envision raising money from investors, or hiring a big team. The emphasis is on sustainability. I want to keep making cool gadgets and keep Pebble going long into the future. (View Highlight)
The new watch we’re building basically has the same specs and features as Pebble, though with some fun new stuff as well 😉 It runs open source PebbleOS, and it’s compatible with all Pebble apps and watchfaces. If you had a Pebble and loved it…this is the smartwatch for you. (View Highlight)
