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I've said it for years on Reddit and I will continue saying it here on lemmy. I miss Pebble.
I use a galaxy watch 4 now but while it can do some more thing it still doesn't fully match the functionality of my pebble time. So many stupid software limitations that shouldn't exist.
If the battery hadn't degraded I'd still be using it.
I've looked at fossil multiple times and they've never matched the functionality I need. No current watches really do.
I upgraded from a Pebble Time to a Garmin Vivoactive 4. Quite a bit more expensive but I'm really liking it.
I'm just sad that Garmin is slowly replacing their Memory-in-pixel display in favor of AMOLED screens. MIP displays seemed to me to be the next best thing to e-ink type displays - always on with minimal battery drain.
I'll just need to keep my watch for as long as I can.
Garmin is making the best smartwatches by far and has been for a while. Iβve been through Samsung, Google, and Apple offerings and Iβm not leaving the Garmin lineup for the foreseeable future.
Yes but I'm sad they are moving away from MIP and switching to AMOLED. That said, I recently discovered Coros smartwatches and they are still using "memory LCD". Only time will tell if they'll stick to it or transition to AMOLED as many others have.
PineTime, ~25$, is the spirit child of Peeble. Its OS InfiniTime is on github. And boy that battery, I can go way past 1 week, close to 2 weeks.
I have a Garmin Forerunner 55. It's light on my wrist and the battery lasts 2 weeks. I don't think it's lacking any functionality I had on my OG pebble, but it's got a few more bells and whistles.
I'm still using my Pebble Time. I've tried the Apple watch during my IPhone experiment, a fitbit, and a Garmin. Honestly the pebble is head and shoulders above any of them.
x
Second the hybrid. I had a nice one - bronze face and the gold hands would move to indicate notification type etc. had some complications for step count etc. It looked great, I reckon it'd be even better with a small eink screen to show who the message was from etc. Kind of like the withings
Their 6th gen hybrid does indeed have a 1.1in 240x240 E-ink display that can display the message! :)
I loved the design of their watches, they looked like a watch first and foremost, but their speed and battery life was atrocious and I owned 3 generations of them before switching to Apple.
That's the story of Fossil: great looking watches, that are subpar quality. I've owned 4 Fossil watches over the past 30+ years and I've regretted each one. The last was the Carlisle smartwatch, and that will be my last a Fossil.
Exactly why I never pulled the trigger on them. They always looked so nice, but they just couldn't get the tech to match. I'm not going to wear a watch that doesn't even make it through a workday.
With the state of wearos where both the os maker and the chipset maker aren't believing in the platform, it's difficult to blame them.
The best way to do a smartwatch is using an embedded dedicated os that uses minimal resources to save battery. It's the reason a ten year old pebble smartwatch with 128k of ram and a 64 MHz CPU feels faster than a brand new wearos smartwatch with 2gb of ram and a 2 GHz CPU.
If for example you want to show a barcode for a membership card on the watch screen, you shouldn't run a full 100mb app on your watch with a database, internet connection, 2mb high res PNG files for icons and other shit. There's a powerful smartphone in the pocket that can do all the hard work like syncing, adding, editing or deleting cards and so on, and when a card need to be showed on the screen the phone just tells the watch "ok so using the embedded library just show this barcode, and to make it fancier use a green border because it's Starbucks"
But when people are purchasing it they're directly comparing it to the Apple Watch with beautiful display, fancy animations, and the numbers on the spec. "What? This watch only has 128k of RAM? LOL this other one with 16000 times more memory gonna be much better"
So, instead of doing it the right way and investing millions on an embedded os with fancy animations everyone took the shortcut of using wearos. "The chipset and the operating system is already done for us, just need to customize it!" And spend millions in customizing it.
But then, those Qualcomm "smartwatch" chipset are just ten year old smartphone CPUs in disguise and the operating system it's the full android os with a different skin. Congratulations, you got a ten year old smartwatch sized smartphone with bad performance and short battery life! Good luck selling that shit. Ah, forgot to mention that the company that is selling you the operating system is directly competing with your sales and at the same time it's holding exclusive features for themselves and/or delaying them for months. And they're using an exclusive chipset that's way better than whatever you can get. Yeah, customers gonna be pissed that your expensive smartwatch sized smartphone doesn't have all the features of the pixel watch.
My pebble was the only "smart" watch I've had that I liked. I've given up on wearing a watch for now.
I should introduce you to the Bangle.js 2
Oh wow. How had I not seen this before? This looks super fun. Thanks for the link.
You can even submit PR if you think you can improve the apps or even the OS on GitHub :D
Good. They fucking sucked, and they never supported them.
We bought 2 of their watches, brand new. The gen 4 literally had like 6 months of life in it before they stopped supporting it, and apps stopped working on it.
It had abysmal battery life and performance, basically unusable.
We also had the Sport. The front fell off. Which is not very typical, I'd like to make that point. The screen kinda opened up, flopped over and ripped itself off when going to bed. We got a replacement, horrible customer service, we had to hunt down a store that had the watch in stock, and then argue with them to make them understand that we're here for a warranty replacement, and they didn't know what to do.
That watch then proceeded to live for 3 months before they suddenly cut support and new apps stopped running on it.
I had one that also had some sort of charging reliability issue, and I decided to return, so I agree it isn't a huge loss. Still, a lack of competition is usually bad in terms of prices for the rest of us. And WearOS getting even smaller means even narrower dev community. Easier to fully wall off the garden and close the OS when there are fewer and fewer people in it
Ah yes, the famous charging ring getting unglued issue.
I think they picked subpar glue for the whole unit tbh.
I personally quit smart watches. I owned an Apple Watch 2 and 'downgraded' to a Garmin Instinct. Couldn't be happier.
Honestly all I want from my "smart watch" is to see notifications as they come in, and to see my upcoming events from my calendar(s) from a quick glance. That doesn't require a powerful CPU or an hi-res LCD display.
I don't want to do voice commands either.
Damn straight! I miss pebble. :(
I keep buying used ones. The problem is they're starting to get harder to find and the price it's going up.
Love my Pebbles! Thank goodness for Rebble.
You and me, comrade.
I went with the Amazfit Bip because it had a similar form factor and there were alternative firmwares for it, but after growing tired of fiddling with what is a hack-ish workaround, I decided to switch to the BangleJS2 when it came out. It's not as polished as the Pebble Timeline UI, but it works well enough and it's open-source.
You want a hybrid watch. I had one, a withings for a couple of years before it decided to stop charging (completely unrepairable of course). Does precisely what you describe and lasts for a month on a single charge
Agreed. Got the instinct 2 Solar. It does everything I realistically use a smartwatch for, the battery lasts 2+ weeks, and no fiddly little touchscreen to fuck out if I have water or grease on my fingers. Had it longer than I've kept any other smartwatch.
Not surprising. Their watches weren't really priced well enough for a product that has such a short lifespan. They were charging as much as an actual designer watch which would otherwise last decades, for a product whose non-replaceable battery has a lifespan of only a few years.
I can't imagine they had many repeat customers, as a result.
My first smartwatch was a fossil and it almost made me give up on smart watches entirely. It was pretty nice for the first 6 or so months but the battery deteriorated quickly and it only lasted like half the day. I didn't even last a whole year before I gave up on it and just assumed Android smartwatches were kinda trash.
I actually got the free pixel watch 2 promo deal for preordering the pixel 8 pro thinking I could just sell it, but I decided to give it a shot and I actually really like it.
I had a Fossil Wear OS smartwatch, I liked it but I barely used any of its features. Basically, I'd use it to notify me of messages and then I could see whether or not to pick up my phone.
I sold it and bought a Fossil hybrid (Collider HR) and I love that thing. The battery lasts about 2 weeks and people always think it's so cool that it has physical hands.
It shows me whenever I get a message or calendar notification (or whatever notifications I want) and that's all I care about.
I haven't looked at the newer generation of watches, but I don't think I'd upgrade or anything.
I also have other Fossil stuff, like belts. They make cool stuff, but they've always been a fashion brand first before a tech brand.
If they stop making smartwatches, are there any other brands that make good hybrid, eink watches?
Also, the article just mentioned they'd stop making Wear OS devices so maybe they'll still make the hybrid watches?
Not hybrid watches but Garmin watches have a passive LCD screen that is readable under reflected light and the app is excellent, albeit proprietary.
I have a Fossil hybrid and Garmin Instinct and wear the instinct most of the time. I find the Fossil app too basic and it drains battery. I have heard about an open source app that can sync to them however.
I recently switched to using GadgetBridge with my Fossil Hybrid. It was a little annoying to set up, but it works.
That's the one, thanks! I better get to it before Fossil pulls the app. You need to extract a private key from the paired app correct?
Sad, but I guess somewhat understandable given the R&D competitors are putting in.
Loved owning Fossil watches growing up and when I discovered that they came out with smartwatch, I decided that I should try the Carlyle the had. Unfortunately, the charging connection stopped working after a year and then the watch itself got kinda bugged. Turned me off from owning a smartwatch all together tbh.