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Comment by tlrobinson | Hacker News Reader

Agreed. 3G, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, 4GB storage, wireless charging, buttons + expansion port, runs Android... for $70. Not bad.

I love that they're marketing it as hackable. I wish more companies would do that.

I wonder what kind of interface the expansion port is.

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USB pins are exposed through a removable backplate (next to the SIM slot). We'll release 3D Cad next week or so.

That's fantastic. You guys are serious about hack-ability.

I seriously love that you provide your CAD files. This is the next generation of developer evangelism. Kudos!

Cool. I imagine someone will make a GPIO "backpack", but it would have been nice to have a few out of the box.

Agree, but in a device in a minimal form factor it's probably better to have a single high speed bus exposed as opposed to trying to break out everything.

Would those pins be 3.3v, 5v or something else?

You can see 3D renders for existing products and the B/W Pebble 2 at https://github.com/pebble/pebble-3d. I'd assume that's where the rest of the renders will go.

USB pins? I'm salivating.

Well that's great but let's talk about the previous Time, it also has some exposed pins. I don't recall anything ever happening with these except for vapor-product talk online. I'm a second time backer but since the previous stuff seemed to just get lost and forgotten about I've given up on wanting to chase this.

Is it free 3G? I wonder what the (if any) catch is, and I don't see any place to pop in a sim card. Looks awesome.

Pebble is so underrated. I've tried out so many smartwatches and activity trackers and always come back to the Pebble Time. It just keeps getting better and better! Kudos!

> 3G Connection: Streaming over 3G, sending emergency SOS messages over 3G, or any other 3G-enabled features will require a data-enabled SIM card from a supported cellular carrier.

Still not bad! Nicely packaged 3G device.

Love it, but I can't imagine battery life would be too good. With the small form factor, the only way I can see it lasting longer than a few hours is to have the 3G off most of the time, and turn it on periodically.

Thanks. Now to find the cheapest data only supported service. A company I worked at used to pay $4/mo per device to Sprint for something like this.

Ting (choice of Sprint or T-Mobile) is $6/line, plus usage. Google Fi (uses both Sprint and T-Mobile) allows subscribers to add data-only SIMs to their existing plans at no additional charge (other than data usage).

Looks like this was just announced today from Twilio: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11763067

Could be a great pairing.

In Canada, FWIW, you can get tranched plans from most carriers starting at $5 month (it is their "tablet" option). The bills go up pretty quickly if you use it much, but still a decent option.

Check out charge.co. Discussion from a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11744875

> I don't see any place to pop in a sim card

Well there aren't any pictures of the bottom, or very good pictures of any of the sides either. I would guess it has a similar sim tray on one of the sides as many phones do.

Just this afternoon there was a consumer magazine making a full section on faked non user repairable claims from manufacturer. I agree with you, the core appeals to me much more thinking I can tweak it if needed.

It's a pitty that it does not include a barometer to track altitude but well.. not everyone lives in the alps.

Atleast 2 or 4 GPIO Ports would have been killer.

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