Fitbit is reportedly buying Pebble for around $40M | Hacker News Reader

Fitbit is reportedly buying Pebble for around $40M

techcrunch.com

419 pointsDoubleguitars251 comments

I liked Pebble as a company because they knew how to make just the right engineering compromises to make their product work. The smartwatch everyone wants has a battery that lasts for weeks, a high contrast always-on color screen visible in daylight and total darkness, no bezel, and a round case only a few mm thick. That perfect watch is impossible to build, but Pebble found compromises that worked. They chose different compromises than those of Apple and Google, and IMHO better ones. The Pebble Time Round is a tiny little triumph of smart engineering compared with any other product on the market, including the Apple Watch.

In particular it's incredible what the Pebble firmware team was able to accomplish. They built a bespoke OS that's extremely reliable (certainly more reliable than Android Wear), with an app SDK and store, plus a well thought out user interface with a striking visual design and even fun little animated flourishes, despite running in a fraction of the power budget of Apple or Android smartwatches. How many companies could have done that? Fitbit is getting a bargain, if that team is still intact.

Indeed, 40M is astounding

"Our source said that Fitbit is now paying between $34 and $40 million for the company and is 'barely covering their debts.'"

After paying debt and preferred shareholders, I won't be surprised if the founders and employees see absolutely nothing (as in, absolutely $0), although employees will probably receive retention payouts.

Not selling to Citizen for 750M in 2015 was a hell of a mistake. I really would to be behind the rationale to say no to a deal like that, when the market was clearly seized by Apple and way richer competitors...

> (certainly more reliable than Android Wear)

weird. I stopped using AndroidWear, but only because I have no interest in wearables, the OS itself has worked like a charm for me.

> if that team is still intact

from what I understand, employees have been leaving from quite some time since pebble has been in the red for a while.

> In particular it's incredible what the Pebble firmware team was able to accomplish. They built a bespoke OS that's extremely reliable

That doesn't match my experience at all. A few months ago I was completely ready to jump on the smartwatch bandwagon so got a pebble. First of all, and somewhat unrelated, but the watch band itched and was uncomfortable and seemed to be low quality. More importantly, the Pebble randomly disconnected from my Android phone multiple times a day causing notifications not to show up. The watch would also crash occasionally, resetting to its homescreen and forgetting what I was doing.

I am now a happy Moto 360 user (gen 2).

Android Wear may have improved, but in my year or so of wearing a Moto 360 v1 I experienced such various bugs as showing the wrong time on the watch face (yes!), boot loops which were completely unrecoverable without the use of the charging dock, missing notifications due to silly Android permission issues, failure to turn the screen on for notifications, "Unfortunately, Android Wear has stopped", and plenty of bluetooth disconnects. All that among various hardware issues such as general slow performance, touchscreen unreliability that requires you to stare at the watch to confirm the receipt of each swipe, and a heart rate sensor that might as well be replaced with a random number generator.

Switching to Pebble Time Round after that was a revelation.

I actually have the 2nd generation Moto 360, and have not experienced any of those issues at all. The only thing I could complain about is how the watch face resets when the watch runs out of power. Not a big deal, the time is still shown correctly, and to set the correct watch face I'd just have to open the Wear app again and tap it. But still annoying.

The heart rate sensor also seems consistent at least, though I have nothing to compare it with.

Anyway, funny to see how these things go and how our experiences are basically opposites.

I know it probably doesn't matter to you now, but the M360v1 is widely regarded as one of the worst android wear watches.

It was built on a platform that the company making it left the business partially through it's development. It was made with a different screen type (and processor arch IIRC) than other watches, it was significantly slower than other watches, and has had some QC issues where batteries at this point are beginning to swell up and make the watch unusable (it seems to be hitting everyone, the only factor is how long it'll take).

I loved my v1 like how I loved my first shitty car, and that might just be a mix of stockholm syndrome and nostalgia (not sure if that's the right word there...), but I currently have a fossil founder that my wife got me as a gift and it clearly improves on the M360v1 in just about every way.

Obviously you do you, but if you ever end up wanting to take another look at the landscape, just know that your experience with android wear was probably the worse you could have had, and that things are all around much better now.

Which Pebble did you have? I had an original Kickstarter Pebble for years, and eventually replaced it with a Pebble Steel. It's been quite reliable for me. (I have had the "mystery disconnection" issue, but not as often as you, and have had it with other Bluetooth devices as well, so I didn't think it was Pebble-specific.)

The Pebble Time Round. I should note the random disconnects never happen for regular headphones or the Moto 360

> > so got a peddle.

Well there's your problem. That's the cheap knockoff brand.

Android phones seem to have issues with Bluetooth LE connections especially when other non-LE Bluetooth devices are connected to it. Listening to music on my Bluetooth headphones was impossible when my Pebble Time Round was paired with my old Galaxy S7 Edge or my Galaxy S6 Edge. Audio quality would degrade significantly.

Disabling LE on my Pebble worked (sort of) at the obvious expense of higher battery consumption.

This doesn't seem to be the case on the iPhones I've had, though my Pebble is much less useful on iOS than it is on Android.

Every smartwatch at the moment has compromises.

> That perfect watch is impossible to build

Do not compare to the Apple watch; have you looked at Garmin's Fenix 3? It has an always-on screen, a compass that works EVERYWHERE including indoors, on airplanes, in underground car parks, etc., a super-accurate GPS, and all the other functions you would need. Its battery lasts over a week when not using GPS, or 24hrs with GPS.

It doesn't need a phone to operate, it's very sturdy and what's more, it's round (square watches are ugly, how do makers of other "smart" watches not see that???)

It's a bit thick but not too heavy. I've had it for a year and couldn't live without it.

Could you say more about your use cases?

For me, the point of a smartwatch is that it serves as a secondary interface to my phone. I like that my phone stays in my pocket more, because then I'm less likely to be rude because of my phone, or to have to drag it out just to see what that notification was.

I've owned and used an earlier Garmin watch for running and I loved it, but eventually stopped using it because I just didn't need to maintain another separate device. But clearly you're up to something else than me.

Well, glancing at your watch when you receive a notification is even ruder, because then the other party thinks you're bored! ;-)

I really like having a compass, I'm not sure why but when I get lost in a town (at night) I usually can find my way back if I know where North is. Some people always know where North is -- not me, but I usually can figure out where everything else is, relative to the North.

I sometimes take walks in the woods with my kids and like to track where we've been. You can do this with a phone but then you have to have the proper app, launch it, etc. I don't like to use my phone for anything else but calls (I'm old). With the Fenix it's just the push of a button.

You can use GPS also to record where your car is, and it will direct you back to it; this is useful everywhere.

Also, as a photographer, if you record your tracks when shooting you can later import GPS data to photographs (some cameras have GPS but not all, it doesn't work too well and it drains the battery).

It remembers my sleeping patterns, which is completely useless but nice to look at, in a narcissistic kind of way.

Science is finding that sleep, and sleep patterns are very important to mental health and well-being. If you have trouble regulating your sleep, there's a bit more to the concept than "completely useless" and "narcissistic".

The primary benefit is for people who do a lot of distance-based athletics. I bought one recently because in addition to all the usual smart-phone/fitbit features, it works so well as a stand-alone athletic device. Now I can go running with just the watch for GPS+HR and a lightweight iPod shuffle clipped to my waistband for music. No more gigantic phone bouncing around in an armband. Plus the battery life is insanely good so you can easily track hours-long activities with plenty of juice to spare. It also can be used to track swimming and other water sports that you'd normally avoid using your phone for at all. I do some hunting, so I like that I can set a waypoint when I park and use the track-back feature in case I get turned around in the woods.

That thing is a brick compared to a Pebble Time Round and over twice the price. I don't need a GPS or compass in my watch, so it's not for me.

In regard to the compass aspect, why would the compass work mostly everywhere? Indoor is not a problem for the earth magnetic field, nor is a airplane.. The GPS not working everywhere (specially indoors) makes sense: it can't receive the satellites signals. But a compass is made with a magnetometer which works indoors and in airplanes, etc. Only problems will be in the poles and near objects producing strong magnetic fields..

Yeah I though about that when writing it. I don't know.

What I do know is I used to wear a Tissot T-Touch which has a compass, and it doesn't work everywhere. Not in underground car parks, and certainly not on airplanes.

Maybe it's specific to the Tissot, I'm not sure.

Maybe they are using GPS as a compass?

This. Many mobile, or even vehicle (GPS) compasses are not magnetic at all, but are doing point to point math on your GPS coordinates to "determine" your compass heading.

A compass is influenced by anything that disturbs the local magnetic field: magnets, metal objects, electrical currents, etc.

The magnetometer is always recalibrating itself, so changes to the local magnetic field can be cancelled out.

How? Sensor fusion with a gyroscope will help transient problems, like walking past some iron rebar, but would have to drift back to the magnetometer's reading if in a long-term situation. Using the GPS as a compass is pretty sketchy, too, AFAIK. Is there some smarter trick?

> and near objects producing strong magnetic fields.

Or any ferrous material that distorts magnetic fields locally, such as steel beams, rebar in concrete, electric cables, etc. You can map an office building by measuring the local magnetic field distortion.

Compass everywhere sounds easy until you try it.

The page for that watch hasn't been updated since 2011. I wouldn't put much faith in it.

I disagree about the style. A sleek square smartwatch is a lot less ugly than that bulky, messy Garmin. There's no reason to make it round, it's not analogue, it's digital, it displays text and images. Round displays just cut off text and anything that scrolls. Square is far more functional.

What page? I didn't point to any page. The Fenix 3 came out in March 2015 so I'm not sure what you're saying.

Regarding square vs round, if you look at the high-end watch market it's a ratio of maybe 1-10 in favor of the round watch. Why the makers of smart watches thought they could ignore this, I don't know.

Too bad it looks like you literally have a computer mounted to your wrist.

http://www.wareable.com/media/images/2015/04/uber-1428589196...

Good lord, that's hideous! I'd go for the Apple Watch over that, even though I also prefer round watch faces.

Better photo:

https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRP5vxx...

Lol nope.

> How many companies could have done that? Fitbit is getting a bargain, if that team is still intact.

There's been an exodus from Pebble for months now. Our team already picked up a few competent people. :( Sad because I really like Pebble's products.

I don't know why anyone cares about week long battery life. It would give me literally no advantage. I take my watch off when I go to sleep, so I simply put the charger on the table near my bed, and that's where I put it. It's no more effort to charge it than to not charge it.

I can understand 2 days since you might stay at your girlfriend's house or something, but mine already can do 2 days anyway.

I don't know for smartwatches in general, but for Fitbit people like to track their sleep and also not leave steps uncounted, so there's really no good time to recharge.

> battery life. It would give me literally no advantage. I take my watch off when I go to sleep

Can't do that if you're using the watch for sleep tracking.

I've got into the habit of putting mine (an Apple Watch Series 2) on charge when I get up and leaving it there till I'm about to leave.

Other than the odd top-up (if I've been using the Workout app and thus the heart rate sensor), no problems. More battery life would be good though - if it used to be worse with the original AW, it's not hard to see how that would be a problem.

One of the great functions of a smart watch (or other fitness wearable) is sleep tracking. If you have to take it off overnight, you can't do that.

I charge my Pebble once a week. Before that, wearing a bog-standard digital watch, I took it off ~never.

As a Pebble user, I sleep with my watch on as it wakes me up in a much gentler way than any audio alarm does.

However, having a week long charge is also about more than just being able to avoid charging it at night. It also means that the remaining battery capacity (wear, age) will matter less. Is your battery dying, with only 50% of the design capacity left? Who cares, the watch still lasts for days. Not only that - the slow discharge also means that the battery will take ages to even experience reduced capacity.

The Apple Watch, on the other hand, sprints through the battery charges, and will both be completely intolerant to reduced battery capacity and reach reduced battery capacity faster.

... So yeah. It matters.

I also sleep with my watch for alarm and the sleep tracking!

Uses case:

- you are often in different places from night to nigh (have a lot of friends, a scattered familly, a job on the move, etc).

- you have no brain and forget often to charge your stuff

- you are fed up (or too lazy, or both) to have a 6th stuff to put on your night stand every freaking day

- you want it to be still usable after the battery wears off, and not just half a day like most smart phones after 2 years

- you have a busy party night life

- you work night shifts, or several days in a row without going back home

- you want to put you watch in a drawer, forget about it, and get it back 2 days later, still usable.

You can manage all that with a little preparation, but the point is, you should not have to.

> I take my watch off when I go to sleep

This is where you differ from many (probably most?) watch wearers.

I think people of a certain age might prefer taking their watches off when they go to sleep because that's how it was supposed to be. Some watches are also heavy.. You can damage the watch if you wear it at night or accidentally wake your significant other.

How exactly does one damage a watch while wearing it in bed? Also not sure how wearing a Pebble would wake a spouse/SO. A heavy gold watch might, but Pebbles are very light and low-profile. And the fact that the alarm vibrates to wake you instead of beeping means you'll not wake anyone else up when your alarm goes off.

Exactly.

I have a Pebble. My SO also has a Pebble. We can sleep together just fine, without taking them off.

I would say the inverse. The only people I know that leave a "watch" on are sleep trackers.

Which is a tiny tiny niche

Really? That's surprising. Back when I wore a watch (over ten years ago), I only took it off for showers. Part of the appeal was being able to leave it on at all times and not have 'yet another device that needs special instructions before sleep'.

Yup, even the people who are "watch people" (ie - they think nothing of collecting expensive swiss hand-made ones) are the same.

shrug

You're ignoring that there are other watches besides smart watches.

My old non-smart watch had battery that lasted 2 years, and generally I never took it of for sleeping.

Nope, I'm including that. It's anecdotal obviously but I've only known one person - ever - who did that with a regular watch.

Was kind of gross tbh.

That's another strong point of Pebble, I can wash it :)

Well there you go. It's not a decider for you. But for me, I camp, hunt, hike, fish, and travel constantly.

I spend more often than not 3-4 days away from power in a given week.

Keep in mind that overall battery life will decline over time. I had a Moto 360 and after two years it could barely make it six hours on a charge. Even if my Pebble's battery life declines by 50% over the same two years, that's still 3.5 days on a charge!

Well I use the Sleep tracking feature which I find very interesting (though probably slightly inaccurate).

I find that the only time I don't wear my Pebble Time is when I am having a shower and in those 10-15 minutes I can fully top up the charge on the PT, which I find is a killer feature. Basically, its more/less constantly charged, I wish other Watches (Android, Apple) would implement 'fast charging' to replicate this feature, as I hate having to think about charging any device.

Can you admit there might be other use cases than yours?

I have a Fitbit and one of the biggest reasons for me is its sleep tracking, which totally doesn't work if, um, I take it off to sleep. As a result I usually end up charging mine while I'm showering.

Unfortunately, if I forget to do that when I hop into the shower in the morning (which easily happens when I haven't had enough sleep and pre-coffee), I very much appreciate that my Fitbit's battery lasts more than a single day.

I would vote for a Pebble or any smart watch which can charge with Body heat?

"I don't need it therefore no one else needs it"

I personally like watch that is low maintenance, I don't want to worry about having it charged. As others mentioned you can use watch to wake you up. I also use my pebble to track my sleep.

Another thing that is often ignored is that if battery doesn't need to be frequently charged it will also last longer (battery life is measured in charging cycles).

Sadly this might be the reason why Pebble has issues, their watch is quite good, so when they released second version of Pebble Time, I decided not to buy it because I was still happy with mine that I got 1.5 years ago.

I think Pebble benefitted a ton from being the first company in the space. There were definitely a ton of hiccups with the original Pebble watch. There was barely a store and when the store did come into being it was buggy as hell. The hardware design decisions have always been pretty great though. Even today, I'd probably take the original Pebble over an Apple watch or anything from Android wear for practicality.

I made the mistakes of backing a number of smartwatches on Kickstarter and IndieGoGo. The Pebble, for its faults, was still the most stable, polished item out of all the crowdfunded items I've ever back.

Separate note: I don't crowdfund anything anymore. Learned my lesson.

This comment perfectly describes Fitbit as well. They were able to take a huge chunk of market share by being the first mover. And they had their own issues with rashes etc.

I agree. I backed pebble each time on kickstarter, and bought some of them for friends, too.

They are by far and away my favorite smartwatch. The others have just no appeal to me at all.

Fitbit, however, makes awful devices, IMO. I really hope they don't kill the Pebble magic.

I know almost nothing about Fitbit, but for the most part their image is positive. Could you elaborate on what's wrong with Fitbit devices?

I've been pretty happy with the devices, when they work. But they don't seem built to last. Of the 6 Fitbits I've had in the last 5 years (the original, 2 Fitbit Ultras, 3 Fitbit Zips), only one of them didn't fall apart or otherwise stop working .. and that one I lost. The Zip in particular seems to have an issue with the battery cover, where it wears out and becomes too loose and the device won't stay powered on.

Exactly. Build quality, reliability, etc. Very cheaply made in my experience.

Unless they've recently made changes, their OS firmware is actually built on top of FreeRTOS, with a bunch of backported features and memory optimizations for the lower-end and first-generation devices.

I think the most impressive engineering feat is what they're able to accomplish in their software, given their hardware limitations.

FreeRTOS (while being absolutely fantastic) is 'just' a series of low level primitives allowing task scheduling and so forth.

The Pebble platform is a much richer 'operating system' for pebble apps.

I'll be very sad, if not surprised, to see Pebble go. I backed the V1 Pebble on Kickstarter but gave up wearing it after a few months as it looked, well, not good[1]. Against my better judgement I threw caution to the wind and bought a Pebble Time Round[2] a while ago. It's fantastic. I get compliments on it before people even realise it's a smartwatch, and it does all I really need from one (notifications plus a little step tracking stuff).

Apple and Android watches have never appealed to me, but they have an obvious market advantage, so I suppose this was inevitable. But boy does it make me sad. The only upside is that I'm not really anticipating any new features on my Round and am content just as it is - it should continue to work as-is for a while yet.

[1] https://cnet3.cbsistatic.com/img/sF4gFNZCv6n7hNYYI2vb9J_n3do...

[2] https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/1.jpg?w...

(photos to illustrate the great progress they made in just a few years)

I still have the first gen Pebble Steel and I really like it. The display gets a little funky sometimes, but it's held up.

The problem with their model is they kept pushing newer watches. I'm fine with my black and white Pebble. It does everything I want. I mean the new ones look nice. I'd get one if I didn't have one already. I still like the design of the original Steel over most of the newer watches as well.

I hope it lasts several more years. They made a great product, and I'm glad they didn't depend on planned obsolescence like the cellphone manufactures that have left us in this Android mess. I wish that model wasn't required for growth.

They should had found some other means to support the company while keeping the wearables as just one of a larger line of products or services. Even something totally unrelated like professional grade home routers or garden watering systems or some other IoT crap.

Ditto on first gen Pebble, unfortuantely my battery is starting to wear after 2 years and once was 7 days, to only 3 days.

You probably tried this already, but for reference there is an easy fix for the screen issue which seems to work for most. Google "Pebble display fix", takes 5 minutes max.

"They should had found some other means to support the company while keeping the wearables as just one of a larger line of products or services."

Misfit tried this (beddit for sleep tracking, and smart lighting). They still got acquired by fossil (though for 240m)

The fix is identical to the OG Pebble. Contact them first and they might replace it -- but you'll still have the same issue.

1. Turn off your OG Pebble

2. Remove the rear panel, either with the proper screwdriver or a small precision flathead

3. Gently lift up the panel and move it to the side. The vibration is glued to this panel, so go slowly. You do not have to remove the vibration piece.

4. Cut two small pieces of paper to fit the side of the pebble with the board exposed. Cut a space for the wiring, then slip it in.

5. Reassemble the Pebble

6. Turn it on.

I did that, and it worked for a while, but then the issues were back something like a month later. Adding more padding causes the back panel not to close properly so that's not an option. I'm stuck with the display getting weird every once in a while now(replacement is not an option, the watch is almost 4 years old at this point).

contact them anyway. Before I discovered this fix, I had one replaced.

Its worth a shot. They'll give you a case number and ask you to take a photo of the screen tearing along with your case number. Pretty standard.

agreed, nephew got his pebble steel replaced no questions for serious screen issues. I have minor screen issues occasionally though have had mine for a couple of years. Might try for a replacement. Might they send me a fitbit now instead..?

Contact them. When you get the new one, try the fix above on the old one to see if you can get it fixed.

I'm concerned about this acquisition. The few people I know with Fitbits have had nothing but trouble with them.

It took significant fighting (my original Pebble was 6 days out of warranty), but they replaced mine too, since it was doing some terrible screen tearing. I've purchase the Kickstarter Time 2, so hopefully it won't have the same issues (screen tearing is so prevalent for users of Pebble Classic, it's kind of amazing that it hasn't turned into a bigger issue).

Yeah, the original steel is the nicest watch they've made. Some of the new ones are nice, but not as nice.

We were 5 colleagues that bought 5 watches from their first Kickstarter for the V1 Pebble.

Unlike you, I liked mine, but I didn't use it as a smart watch, but more as an alarm (it vibrates!), and it was a nice gimmick that you could flick your wrist to turn the backlight on.

I stopped used mine because the screen started tearing up like this: http://i.imgur.com/NsZKXDn.jpg and when I contacted their support, they couldn't do a thing about it.

My dad actually managed to get a hold of a V1 Pebble, and he is still using it every day.

That was a known defect for the V1/Kickstarter version. Support should have replaced it. Mine did it but I couldn't reliably reproduce it when support asked so I wrote it off. Haven't used another smartwatch since.

The charger and watch plug of my kickstarter version oxidized slightly few months ago, since then I am unable to charge it unfortunately. I was using it quite a lot

if you still have it. If you can crack it open, you can fix it by removing the zebra connector and spraying with a little contact cleaner on the contacts that connect to the zebra. had no problems since.

Same for me. Pebble did not provide any support for the screen tearing issue. I mostly use it as a fashion accessory. Pity!

They did for mine. I had to send some pictures in and they sent me a free replacement. It was a known issue with the kickstarter version.

Contact them immediately! I had this issue on two of them and fixed it -- but they're also replacing them.

1. Turn off your OG Pebble

2. Remove the rear panel, either with the proper screwdriver or a small precision flathead

3. Gently lift up the panel and move it to the side. The vibration is glued to this panel, so go slowly. You do not have to remove the vibration piece.

4. Cut two small pieces of paper to fit the side of the pebble with the board exposed. Cut a space for the wiring, then slip it in.

5. Reassemble the Pebble

6. Turn it on.

Thanks - I'm going to try this :)

My pebble steel also got this same tearing screen problem. Anyone have any tips how to solve this issue? Support doesn't do much of a help.

strange. they replaced mine no question asked (i had to send them picture of garbled screen and serial number). took a while to ship though - came from Singapore via container ship it seems.

I've had two v1 that had this problem. Pebble just send me a replacement. No problems.

I have got to admit : I would be tempted by a good looking smartwatch and the pebble time actually looks nice.

The market as a whole as been a bit underwhelming so far.

Next year might be a bit more exciting :

-so we already have the pebble time round

-the withings activité heart will go out soon

-google is reportedly working on 2 new 'pixel' smartwatches.

Things might finally get interesting in the smartwatch market.

Have to agree. I'm wearing a Pebble Time Steele and a lot of people like it but don't notice it to be a smartwatch at first sight (depending on the watch face of course).

However, it did not receive good reviews. I guess in part because it is widely accepted that smartwatches do not last more than a day or two and are not well readable outside. Customers and reviewers are blinded by super-high-resolution displays - although you won't watch YouTube on your wrist.

Pebble is functional, the world wants bling-bling.

You hit the nail on the head. People always assume my Pebble is just a watch. The absolute best reaction to a smartwatch, IMO.

It's just a watch. That does neat things if I ask it to. Period.

That's what Pebble delivered for me - the watch experience. I didn't want yet another OLED battery sucking device to monitor, I wanted a timex with adjustable features that I could code or change on the fly. If Pebble dies, that's probably what I'll go back to.

That's exactly the reason I've been a Pebble fan, I stuck to it over the years, and without it, I'll be off the wearables market - until someone else does a functional smartwatch, or I'll make myself a DIY one (after I figure out how to order two or three watch-sized e-ink screens cheap instead of doing a bulk order on Alibaba).

For sure. I love my Time Round. It's almost exactly what I've been looking for in a smartwatch since day 1: round, light, reasonably long battery, supports rich notifications and is cross-platform. Nothing else on the market comes close to it. The Apple Watch is amazing but only works on iOS and the data it stores isn't easily exportable to other services. Android watches are still too beta for me and their round offerings are way too bulky. Both have pretty bad battery life; I was lucky to get a day out of either and have, more often than not, had them die on me mid-day.

I hope Fitbit releases something like this with their newly-acquired IP. I'm not counting on it, however.

You might want to check out the Samsung Gear S2. Round, stylish (I get comments on mine all the time), reasonably thin, ok battery life, runs Tizen OS, works with Android and iOS (official app isn't out yet but the beta is floating around). I got mine for $150 refurbished online and couldn't be happier.

Extremely sad. Especially when they were offered $750 million by Citizen not long ago.

I've found the watches to be a joy to use, to develop for and the community is sensational. I have no hopes it'll survive as is with Fitbit.

If you have a Pebble and are involved in any way in it's development, I strongly recommend you have a look at Gadgetbridge https://github.com/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge

> Extremely sad. Especially when they were offered $750 million by Citizen not long ago.

I couldn't seem to find a source for this claim. Source?

It's in the article...

As a Pebble and Citizen owner, disappointed this one didn't go through. There may have been more friction, but I think Citizen does a pretty great job of "making the right compromises" on their non-smart watches.

Having just recently bought Pebble 2 SE I have some things to say about the product. Unlike a smartphone Pebble has a benefit of staying always with you, thus it is better than a smartphone for things like habit tracking, habit reversal therapy, time tracking. It reduces friction from having to reach out for your phone because it is always on your wrist and it has this great feature of quick actions. Basically you can assign any or all of its 4 buttons to launch an app or perform an action on long-press. This is invaluable.

Another great feature is smart alarm. It works similarly to Sleep As Android and suchlike but you don't have to sleep with your smartphone on your bed.

Other than that it can do notifications, quick replies, music player remote control, show you two days of calendar appointments, weather, countdown to next Apple announcement and last but not least time and date.

What I'm missing is the ability to create voice notes or having a real smart voice assistant like Google Now. It has its alternatives which are IMHO not near as good. The hardware is not a limiting factor here - it has a microphone.

Always-on screen and at least 5 days of battery life with pretty fast charging are not bad things either.

The actual fitness-tracking thing, the step counter, is not very precise and it is only good to make sure that you get enough movement.

So all in all it is not a fitness tracker. It is more of a lifestyle companion that can help you to keep on schedule, form new habits and make better use of your time. It would be best marketed to GTD/time management crowd than to fitness enthusiast who have much much better fitness tracking devices.

> things like habit tracking, habit reversal therapy, time tracking

What apps do you recommend for these purposes?

"Habits" for habit tracking. "20 seconds timer" for a kind of habit reversal, "SciPomodoro" for pomodoro timer. "Job Timer" just to see where time went during the day.

They had an experimental week long mood tracking feature before. You would input your mood level and how you feel. And you could give a voice note to add on to what you were feeling. I really enjoyed doing those voice notes. Once the experiment was over though I couldn't find another app to record notes in that way. Too bad.

If you like Sleep as Android (which I do), the app supports using your Pebble instead of your phone to track your sleep. It can also export your sleep data to Samsung's health app, which Pebble doesn't do natively, so it's a nice workaround for that too.

I was a Fitbit user for 1 year: good functionalities but terrible hardware, the Fitbit Charge HR breaks in a matter of months. They replace it, and it breaks again. So switched to Pebble 2, pre-ordering it: for the same price point it's waterproof, has an always on display and notifications. However I've still to receive it... while it's already on Amazon: lame. Btw... I'm a bit concerned that what was good about Pebble could go away in this fusion between the companies. Sure Pebble could make Fitbit hardware better, but there are also issues in the way the company (Fitbit) presents itself and the kind of software/UI it presents. A random things: export of your data is limited.

Same here. I got a Fitbit Charge HR for father's day this year. It was broken 3 months later. I just haven't had time to deal with contacting them to get a replacement, so, like that, it was over.

Mine was broken for months and I finally just sent them a quick email. Try troubleshooting for 10 mins through email with tech support, then they will send you a new one. They just need your name and email you registered the account with. You don't even need to return the old one.

I'm also a Charge HR user; I fixed mine with superglue. My dream scenario would be if this merger produced a Pebble 3 with the excellent heart-rate and sleep tracking of the HR.

Same dream here. But was going to be true since Pebble 2 has the HR sensor, and to make an accurate sleep tracker once you also have HR data does not sound like too hard. So I hope Fitbit is not going to ruin the dream.

I've read that the heart rate sensor on the Pebble 2 isn't there yet. Hopefully that is just an algorithms problem though and will improve over time.

Don't remember seeing any reviews of the Pebble 2 from existing Fitbit Charge HR users, though.

I kept fixing my Fitbit with glue over and over until I couldn't. I will not buy another one.

Yup. Lots of superglue. Never again.

Your fitbit experience is very familiar, and I feel like the same issues plague most of their products.

I've been through 2 wristbands from them. I bought the weight scale, and it also has a serious issue: after the battery drains and you replace the batteries, it gets into a funky loop of calibration/sensing. This quickly runs out the batteries as well as lights up the house at night. There is no fix.

We've gone through several Fitbits in our family. The build quality is terrible and the bluetooth communications is very flaky. Not going to buy any more hardware from that company.

Perhaps Pebble can inject some quality into the Fitbit culture.

This makes me very sad. Pebble pretty much invented the smartwatch segment, yet didn't quite have the mass appeal or marketing muscle to make it really big.

Here's my personal account, nothing particularly interesting will follow so you may want to skip to the next post unless you're a fan like me:

Whilst I followed it closely, and was super intrigued by the concept, I wasn't able to get in on their first Kickstarter. However as soon as I saw that the Pebble Steel was announced I ordered it straight away in 2014.

I absolutely loved that watch. Being able receive notifications meant no more having to look at my phone every few minutes. There were some quality concerns - I had to get 2x Pebble Steel replacements, first due to the screen tearing issue, second due to non-functioning buttons - and then my 3rd one, was good until the day it sadly got stolen! (I was wondering, how are they making any money this way?)

I had switched to the Pebble Time Steel by then, as a Kickstarter backer, but still liked the OG Steel's somewhat more retro design. Unfortunately the Time Steel's contrast ratio was a bit of a downgrade, so as such I'm rather hopeful my Pebble Time 2 kickstarter will be delivered in the end.

Around this time, the Apple Watch got released. The display was off unless shaken / interacted with, didn't work with Android, and lasted less than a day (even with the display off most of the time). My Pebble Time Steel would do 10 days, before the fitness and sleep tracking update. After that it did 8-9, and still does.

Last month I received the Pebble 2, and am loving its display - it is even better than the Pebble Steel - and HRM. Seeing the announcement I'd like to get my wife a Pebble 2 as well, to upgrade her Pebble Time, before it's too late.

Lastly I'd like to give a huge kudos to the Pebble dev team for their constant updates. The past year has seen some fantastic developments; the Pebble OS just keeps on getting better. So, yes, that's quite a few Pebbles. I'm a fan, and I will greatly miss them.

To be fair, the Pebble watches weren't very smart. They were notification watches at best. What Google and Apple can do with their watches is leaps and bounds ahead of what Pebble can do. A bit like comparing the first home Pong gaming machine to an Atari 2600. I want the flexibility and feature-set of my Urbane and having it charge it more often to have these features and its gorgeous screen is more than worth it, at least to me.

True, but I always valued the constantly rendering screen and week long battery life far higher. If I needed to do something more complex than reply with an emoticon, after all a high powered, daily charged smartphone with a +5" screen is always in my pocket or nearby.

Having said that, the stop watch and timer apps, as well as music control all fit very nicely on the Pebble and I use them all the time.

A while back (~1.5 years), I learnt of a chip being developed that was under 80c in volume, came with BLE, buzzer, touch, flash, ram, built in power supplies, display and an 80MHz ARM plus included driver circuits for analog, segment digital and full LCD displays.

The play was "a watch can't afford not to be a smart watch" (from just vibrations and auto time sync/time zone updates etc... through to full app platform capability with a touch/LCD display).

I thought this was an obvious end game for smart watches if it got traction. This chip got canned after a giant semiconductor merger (as I heard it).

My two cents on smart watches: If you already wear a watch, and if you regularly check your phone for notifications, a smart watch is perfect for you (contingent on price and look). If you never wore a watch before then maybe not so.

I finally decided to buy a Moto 360 about a year ago, my main reasons for choosing it:

   * it looked like a normal watch (has a round face, and I use a minimal digital watch face, I don't like the fake analog ones)
   * at the time it cost about the same as a normal (nice) watch $150, I waited for the 1st gen price to go down from $300

It's actually gotten to the point where if I'm not wearing my watch I get that "naked" feeling as if forgot my phone at home. Wearing the watch makes it way easier to check messages, and dismiss those which aren't important. The only time I don't wear it is when running (I think it's too fragile) or at nicer events like weddings where I'll substitute it for a nice "real" watch (plus I shouldn't be checking notifications anyway).

Edit: I also have never used the fitness tracker features, I personally don't see the point of them. Either I went running or exercised that day or I didn't, I don't think number of steps really or my heart rate tells me more than I already know. Again, my two cents...

As someone who never wore a watch before I got a Pebble, I have to disagree with your first statement.

I bought mine (and a subsequent Pebble Time) specifically because I wanted a less obtrusive way of checking messages and controlling my music, and it's filled the role superbly.

I don't generally need nor want fitness trackers either, but the accelerometer does come in handy for use with sleep tracking programs.

Why can't they just be a niche company that sells niche products? I like my pebble and I want(ed) the pebble time 2.

Can a company really not exist without growth? Or do they just don't want to?

> Can a company really not exist without growth? Or do they just don't want to?

Certainly not if you have investors who want competitive returns, unfortunately.

Or workers that got shares as compensation, at least until you grow enough for them to cash in.

I think the problem was that Pebble had a very high headcount, and not enough money coming in to satisfy that. And, of course, VCs breathing down their neck.

No, I think this is impossible in tech. If you fall asleep at the wheel you'll get blackberryed/nokiaed. You can't run a lifestyle business in tech (unless you find a niche area with very little revenue)

Counter-examples abound.

> Can a company really not exist without growth? Or do they just don't want to?

This is the devil's bargain when you take VC money. You basically rule out the "small success" option. VC is a hit-driven business, so they will push you to go big. And neither they nor their LPs (whose money it really is) are in the business of owning small, modestly successful, privately held companies. You need to go public or get acquired by somebody who can provide a return to the LPs.

Aside from knowing the Pebble team (I've been to their office a couple times; Eric gave me great advice when I was looking at building hardware and doing Kickstarter), I selfishly hope Pebble Core ships -- I'm not really that into smartwatches, but the Core is going to be transformative, at least as much as RPi and Alexa/Echo have been. It might be a great fit with Fitbit.

I would without hesitation bet on the Pebble team on whatever they do next.

What was the advice Eric gave you?

Eric was a great help with our crowdfunding campaign too! Here is what he sent me as his best advice:

https://plus.google.com/+PeterHDiamandis/posts/Aoimkh9tnCG https://plus.google.com/102564912330648182355/posts/HCR6LMkH...

I bought a secondhand Pebble Classic last year. I think they really hit the sweet spot in the market - the battery life is a key feature for me as I don't want to be forever charging my watch the same way I charge my smartphone. Taking it off for an hour to do dishes or something is long enough to charge it up for a week.

The screen is surprisingly crisp and runs at a high enough frame rate for animations. And it's always on, so unlike many watches you don't have to move your wrist at all to wake it up. The vibrating alert is brilliant, and I have a watch face that buzzes whenever bluetooth disconnects, which has stopped me leaving home without my phone many times.

I like the square shape of the Classic watch, since it doesn't draw much attention and can be passed off as just another digital watch. Sure, it looks a lot cheaper than it actually is, but if you're concerned about your stuff being stolen, this is a great thing.

I like the Pebble most because it does what a smartwatch should do, which is extend the smartphone - it doesn't try to be a phone on its own. The hardware is great. The haptic motor failed after about a year, but the watch wasn't new when I bought it, and when I enquired about repairs, Pebble replaced the whole watch free of charge.

I'm very impressed with Pebble as a company and as a product, so I'm really disappointed and concerned about their future reading this article. For Fitbit to basically buy up Pebble for their software and patents smacks of gutting the company and discarding the shell. By discontinuing the watch itself, they're probably going at it backwards. I've had more problems with the software and the watch faces than I've ever had with the hardware - part of this was down to Android, but the Pebble app store used to be hideous even on a top-model phone. As ever, excellent hardware, abysmal software, but it's only the software that people (particularly other companies) care about. I'll be sad if Fitbit do follow through with their plans as detailed here.

As a Pebble customer (have a Time Steel, waiting on a Time Steel 2), I'm disappointed to hear this. I'd like to think that there will be synergies here, and that Fitbit will use Pebble's IP to build in the many great Pebble features.

Unfortunately, I've heard so many reliability complaints about Fitbits. So even if we get the best of both worlds in terms of features, I doubt the new products will be as reliable as Pebbles have been. It's not like Fitbit is going to retool their manufacturing process based on the know-how of the much-smaller company they're acquiring.

So the thing surprising about this is that Fitbit's stock just took a nosedive, their financials are questionable (but maybe the holidays will be good to them again) and they're acquiring a company in a market where there is a clear leader (Apple) but as whole, the market itself appears to have hit a peak or is in decline.

Even if they got a steal the whole things seems like a bizarre move. At best they integrate Pebble into their lineup, get some good brain power in SV (they are HQed in MA I believe) and build out their future products with Pebble's finely tuned developer ecosystem (their opensource SDK is amazing). At worst, they go down in flames and in the fire sale they fetch a little more for owning Pebble IP.

> and they're acquiring a company in a market where there is a clear leader (Apple)

If you have to spell it out, they might not be the clear leader. The Apple watch is missing a glaring feature - compatibility with Android phones (Android Wear has the reverse issue). That alone makes it the Apple watch a non-starter for a large number of people with smartphones, and "people with smartphones" is the target market. Fitbit and Pebble are the biggest two smartphone OS-independent smartwatch producers that spring to my mind.

Android Wear works with iPhones, Apple watch does not work with Android

I can't comment on most of this for obvious reasons, but our HQ is in SF. We do have a Boston office, and it's our second largest, but we have two other offices too. Of course everyone is looking to hire more talent, whether it's in SV or elsewhere.

Fitbit will get sold soon, as far as I can tell.

I had a Fitbit before and therefore had a chance ot compare it with Pebble. Pebble was superior in nearly every way. Therefore it seems too low a price in my eyes.

Or Fitbit was too expensive for what they were offering. The only thing Fitbit had going was brand recognition.

Pebble is a company I would have invested in if I were a VC. It seemed like such a great idea. Didn't they raise $10 million on kickstarter? what went wrong?

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/pebble#/entity

Over 40mil in three crowdfunding campaigns (I backed all three of those Kickstarters) plus a $375k angel round (which included YC) and a $15mil series A.

That they kept going back on Kickstarter remains a mystery to me. Once you have to an extent established a brand and customer base, do you sufficiently benefit from Kickstarter to justify the 10% haircut on what you earn? Plus the overhead of dealing with the campaign and backers.

Their second campaign ($20 mil) happened RIGHT before the Apple Watch launched, and they promised full refunds up until the product shipped. I wonder how many people took them up on that once they saw what Apple was up to.

I bet that "10% haircut" is _way_ better a deal than if they tried to sell them through traditional bricks-n-mortar watch stores... I'd be quite surprised if there's not a standard 100% retail markup for watches in this category.

I'm guessing Pebble chose to use Kickstarter as a distribution channel - much like Apples AppStore - which was a way easier and cheaper way for them to retail their product that cutting global retail distribution deals. The "get your hands on the money before you ship the product" would have just been icing on the cake (at least after their first unexpected Kickstarter success...)

I'm sure you're right. Retail stores, and specialty watch shops in particular, will want more than 10%. Although I don't know if Pebble ever sold outside of places like Best Buy.

I was thinking more of using their own sales channel. They have sold through their own website since their first batch of products started shipping. They would still need to get the word out and everything, but there are lots of ways to do that via PR.

Kickstarter campaigns typically sell the product for less than retail. In the case of Pebble's second campaign they went for a 5-15% discount over retail. They had clearly already completed almost all of the design and manufacturing work by the time they launched the campaign, so that makes it more mysterious to me.

Discounting a product before launch is something you do when you have to -- your product is unproven, you really need the money, or you need to build a community day 1 -- it isn't something you want to do regularly throughout the life of the company.

The 10% overhead is largely advertising and a way to get preorders (after you are established)

But, while software (gaming), take a look at some interviews with Larian and Obsidian/inExile (I forget which one of those... probably both). They keep returning to the KS for fundraising and a large part of it is that even a successful campaign and perfect release doesn't necessarily give them the capital to start the next project without investors.

Personally: I backed the first pebble KS and got an okay product (looked like crap and not a lot of utility, but what it did, it did well). But I definitely got turned off by the multiple campaign thing (and the frequency of them) as it suggested a lack of long term support for the product.

Kickstarter money is not same as investment money. Most/all of it gets used up in fulfilling the orders

KS is definitely friends/fools pre-seed.

They fell victim to their own early success. The huge reception for their original smartwatch lead to them expanding massively and trying to pump out a new model every six months. If they'd been content with being a $10million company, they'd still be happily trucking along.

That's not something that VCs want their portfolio companies to settle for. If you would have invested, you wouldn't have seen much of a return at all if they would have been content with staying a $10M company (which is only a TAD more than the valuation that most YC companies have when they raise their Demo Day seed rounds).

Yeah, I definitely understand why VCs would be pushing them to expand fast. I mean, that's basically the name of the game for VCs; pick a startup, pump them full of cash, push them to scale as fast as possible, and hope they turn into a unicorn.

What's in the best interests of the VC isn't always in the best interests of the company, however, and in this case I think the VC influence was toxic. If they'd stayed small and kept sustainable (remember, their original kickstarter alone pretty much had them funded) then they would still be around.

> "What's in the best interests of the VC isn't always in the best interests of the company"

Don't get me wrong, I definitely agree with you there, just pointing out the reality of the situation!

This is terrible news. I'm a happy owner of Pebble Time and was just waiting for PT2 to hit the stores.

Now it's probably not going to happen.

Same here, except I backed PT2 on KickStarter. I'm not having high hopes I'll receive it now.

Same for me, didn't see that coming.

In hindsight, what would have been the best path for Pebble? Did they grow too quickly, too fast?

Seems they have a really great product and team.

> Did they grow too quickly, too fast?

...surely those are the same thing? And I'd argue it's quite the reverse - Pebble were one of the first smartwatches out in the market but they never managed to capitalize on that lead. I suspect their fate was sealed the day the Apple Watch was released.

They should have gotten into totally different sustainable product lines that still fell in the IoT realm. Maybe home routers for geeks, with upgradable Wi-Fi M.2 cards? Many of their backers were nerds, engineers, etc.

There are a lot of products they could have attempted that customers might have wanted. I think they maxed out how many watches they could push to their target audience. Everyone else just went with Apple/Google.

But there was nowhere to grow. Smartwatches have always been a niche product for people who like gizmos. If Pebble had stayed small and focused on their original "watch with apps" market instead of chasing the "phone on your wrist" market it'd still be business as usual.

When you raise a big chunk of institutional money though from VCs, the pressure is to grow fast and capture as much market share as possible though.

There was definitely a lot of sense behind the bet that they made.

The article seems to suggest that their best path would have been getting acquired by Citizen last year. According to the article:

* Citizen was interested in purchasing them for $740 million in 2015

* Intel was interested in purchasing them for $70 million "before the launch of the Pebble 2" (which was the first half of 2016)

* Now they're apparently getting acquired for $34-40 million

I have an outstanding kickstarter order for their Pebble Core, which I really think was an interesting step to a post-phone world. It's a real shame. I love the platform, the devices, and the dev community. I hope they will be able to fulfill orders with the funds, but I imagine that it's pretty low on the priority list for fitbit.

Pebble Core[1]

3G, GPS, screen-less, wireless charging, keyfob gadget.

[1]: http://help.getpebble.com/customer/en/portal/articles/243992...

The Core is really a unique device. A small computer with 3G that fits anywhere. a logical extension of the RasPi.

Still looking forwards to mine

Even if they ship the Pebble Core, would it become a paper weight if the platform is canned?

Pebble Core has a chance to survive as long as the hardware specs are released, because it's supposed to run vanilla, pure Android 5.

I can see why Pebble would sell, can't see why Fitbit would buy. What am I missing?

Well, lets hope fitbit is trying to do something about the bigger wearable market.

I have had a fitbit charge hr and liked it. (Got money back after a forgivable issue, rubber band stared peeling off.) Reasons for not getting a new one was because I rather want a waterproof device with more features.

I'm saving for a pebble now, but ideally a steel (looks best) with time interface (sounds really intuitive) and hr monitoring.

So please please please pebble don't go out of business!

(Like others have mentioned it is less about displaying time though and more about silent notifications so I don't have to pull my giant phone in a meeting to see who is trying to contact me, getting a reminder when I need to run for the train etc.)

> Got money back after a forgivable issue, rubber band stared peeling off.

They replaced mine when that started happening about three months in. Now, four months later, it's happening again. Maybe they'll send me another replacement, but it does seem like just switching to Pebble is a sensible idea, if those products remain available and supported.

Fitbit offers crap in the $100 tier,

Pebble offers a smartwatch with a heart rate monitor.

They didn't want competition in the low price tier, that's it.

Pebble was also dying, hence they snatched them cheap.

Though there's a decent argument that Fitbit is suffering a lot right now too.

I can only hope that Pebble itself will be leveraged. Their products are way better than that smartwatch Fitbit released. Maybe getting Pebbles into more brick-and-mortars

I have experience of fitbit and pebble and of the two I much prefer pebble. But I guess success is not always about the quality of the product.

Success is rarely about quality of product these days. What matters is marketing efforts and, with startups, playing the VC game well.

Still not gonna buy a FitBit, so I hope their acquisition turns out disastrous if they don't plan on supporting it.

I was on the market for a smart-watch recently.

I didn't get one because we basically have 3 options:

- Super expensive (more than a smart-phone), 'full-featured" models.

- Mid-range, not-that-useful models.

- Crappy and cheap Chinese products

Needless to say I didn't buy a smart-watch. And I feel that this is the same experience a lot of people around me are having.

I'm curious, what were the "mid-range, not-that-useful" models (which I assume includes the Pebble) missing for you?

I'm not the parent, but I'm in the market for a new fitness based smartwatch to use with an Android phone. To date, I've had

- MS Band and MS Band 2:

   + HRM, GPS,  Always-connected Bluetooth usable for Android Smart Unlock. Decent Web interface for fitness tracking. Syncing more-or-less works.  Build-in sleep tracking.  Decent screen.

   - Mediocre battery life (24-36 hrs).   Touch-to-see screen (or < 24hrs battery life with always-on setting).  Is now abandoned.  No music storage on watch, so I need to carry my phone.

- Moto360 sport

   + HRM, GPS. Android Wear always connected, so Android Smart Unlock works. Music on watch, so I can run w/o phone.  Always on screen.

   - Horrendous battery life (12-18hrs), MotoBody is a dumpster fire.   There is no web interface, and the calorie tracking is inconsistent.   I can do the same 6 mile run in the same time with the same average heart rate, and one day it will say I've burned 350 Kcal and the next day it will say 1100Kcal.   And Google Fit is even worse.   There is effectively no sleep tracking, since the battery will be dead by the end of the day.

I've ruled out the fitbits because they do some funky bluetooth thing which is not usable for Android Smart Unlock, and because they don't offer a model with HRM, GPS and BT Music playback (AFAICT). Even if I could forgive that, my wife has a Charge HR, and she has horrible issues with sync.

I was thinking about a Pebble Core + Pebble Time 2. The core would be an added device to carry in order to get GPS and music, but it is at least smaller than my Nexus 6p. I wonder what will happen with the core now that they've been acquired.

I was also thinking about the Polar M600. But the Moto360 has scared me off a bit from AndroidWear, so I've been waiting for my Band2 to die.

I bought one of the blackberry only models from their show HN post way back when [1]. Glad to see they made it this far.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2221579

The smart move would be to continue Pebble as a brand - Fitbit Pebble. From a pure business perspective, they wouldn't even have to continue the platform, just slap Pebble on some Fitbits with a display. But I hope they do continue the Pebble hardware, and maybe improve it with their manufacturing capabilities and economies of scale.

One other good asset they are buying is the OS, I believe Fitbit has nothing similar and it could be adopted for higher-level Fitbits (more smartwatch-like). And maybe the Stone can be reworked into a Fitbit product.

But realistically, this is just them stomping out the competition.

I'm not so optimistic. FitBit's business model is to distinguish price bands by software features like printer manufacturers. Pebble's is to provide the same experience, enhanced by better hardware to everyone. Pebble still do this at a pricepoint near the entry-level FitBits.

I can't imagine FitBit wanting to continue to keep a competitor that would let third parties de-value the premium features with an open SDK.

Err? Fwiw we put every feature we can in every device we can. There are often hardware limitations and of course we care about margins so there is hardware we could put on a cheaper band, but then it wouldn't be a cheaper band.

Once you get past hardware, almost all of our software feature decisions come down to battery life. The cheaper bands are smaller, and have smaller batteries, and compromising on battery life wouldn't serve our customers very well.

cough cough show current battery level on charge hr w/o plugging it in cough cough

Yeah, without revealing too much of our secret sauce (such as it is), that's not as simple as just turning on a feature that we've flagged off in that device. The devices that have that feature run a different OS.

Speaking of "cheaper bands" I don't think you could get a much cheaper band than on the Charge HR.

As evinced by myself and many people in this thread alone, you'd better buy yourself some Gorilla Glue if you're buying a Charge HR, because the band is useless, to the point of being "not fit for purpose". Not that FitBit will accept a return, of course...

"We can give you 25% off a new FitBit!" hahaha. No. I'll lament my purchase, apply more glue to keep the band even slightly attached, until it finally gives up the ghost, and then I'll never buy another FitBit product again.

https://www.google.com/search?q=charge+hr+band+broken

I'm curious, because my friends routinely tell me stories about how easy our returns are. I had someone I had just met tell me that they accidentally drove their car over their device and we shipped them a new one, even after they told us that.

What are the circumstances for yours? Maybe with the Charge 2 out they're offering you 25% off that?

My assumption is based on the differences between the Charge (non-HR) and the Alta I was given after 4 Charge replacements. The Alta does text alerts but doesn't do stair counting. Assuming the latter only needs an accelerometer there isn't anything obvious in the hardware that might other be missing to make it impossible.

The Alta is missing an altimeter.

Bad news. I backed them on all their Kickstarter campaigns and like my current Pebble Time mainly because of notifications, non-disturbing alarms, battery life and for the fact it pushes me to walk more.

I have a fitbit charge HR and I've had it for some time now.. it is kind of good but since they updated the software about a year ago it has been really buggy. For example, if the battery runs out I have to reset my fitbit and reinstall it.

It wouldn't sync at all for a couple of months (loads of people had this problem) so neither me or my gf used it for that period of time.

The app isn't that good and I STILL have syncing issues. For example, I cannot set a new timer on my fitbit which sucks.

Next time I will probably buy stuff from Withings or something else.

" UPDATE – Pebble’s official Twitter account seems to confirm the news.

    ¯_(ツ)_/¯

    — Pebble (@Pebble) December 1, 2016

how is that tweet confirming the news? am I missing something?

The timing is everything. I read it as a "whatever" in response to the news.

Note that that tweet has since been deleted and so it probably shouldn't be considered an official statement of the company. My guess is that the employee in charge of the twitter account did a bit of a 'yolo'.

In case they get acquired and the product line gets shut down, do you believe there's a chance that the community would be able to keep the devices alive working on alternative firmwares?

Maybe - at least until the hardware inevitably fails. With FitBit buying the IP, I don't expect the community to get any help with keeping the devices alive.

Fuck it, we need an open source / open hardware Pebble clone.

This absolutely friggin sucks. I love my pebble, and I have no faith in fitbit at all. I'm sure they will shut down the product and throw the team on the next useless activity tracker.

They may be shutting down the product lines, but I wouldn't be surprised to see some elements of it come out in future Fitbit products. One of the differentiating elements between Fitbit and Garmin is the Garmin ConnectIQ ecosystem - it's not smartwatch apps, it's apps and customizations that run on not-dumb watches that also have battery life measured in full days not fractions of a day.

I think it's unlikely that Fitbit will do well over the next few years. They sell in markets where the hardware is commoditized, just like GoPro. Razor-thin profit margins and increasingly interchangeable competing products are the future of that industry.

I guess this is an acquihire, which is fine, because Pebble was selling in a commoditized market and didn't have much of a future either.

If only Fitbit's products had a longer lasting battery. I bought the Charge HR and it lasts for maybe 3 days.

Bad news. The main reason I wouldn't even consider a Fitbit was because the data is locked in the Fitbit 'ecosystem' and there is no Google Fit integration. Pebble was the opposite. An open platform for people to use and tinker with. You will be missed, Pebble.

740mil for a watch product - should have taken it and maybe stayed on in technical role. Not very smart move on CEOs part. Partnership with citizen would have been beneficial to both companies. 740mil.... FB glory clearly fogged many founders minds...

Interesting part here is: "...the acquisition is a “small amount” but there’s no word on exactly how much, or indeed how little. Further, The Information said that the deal will see Pebble and its products closed down over time..."

This is a bit shocking, as I feel it indicates that Fitbit felt a significant threat from Pebble, which feels like it would have been misplaced.

Looks to me as if was just an acqui-hire.

Yup. Fitbit said they will shutdown the product line

Bummer. I've got a Pebble Time and it's a great watch. Not any smarter than I want it to be.

Lame. Love my pebble. Original Kickstarter backer. Currently rocking the pebble time steel.

And Pebble Time Steel seems to be out of stock on their website.

I wonder if Fitbit will keep the platform going, or if it will just be abandoned.

Time Steel is out of stock, but only because the Steel Pebble Time 2 is available for pre-order and delivery in January. (Does look like the extra steel bands are out of stock though.)

https://www.pebble.com/buy-pebble-time-2-smartwatch

Literally everything is out of stock or in pre-order mode ("Ships in November!" oh wait, what month is it?). Even their USB cables!

Not a good look, and with this news I wouldn't expect stock to ever re-appear.

I try to refrain from comments like these, but I'll make an exception here.

For that very decision - shutting down the product line - fuck you, FitBit, and fuck the horse you ride on.

And you'd better make sure those last Kickstarter rewards are shipping out soon.

Man, that's the crap Yahoo pulls. The Astrid task app was the only to-do list I actually used until Yahoo killed it. I wonder what percentage of devs actually stay and how many just bail.

"A source close to the company told TechCrunch that watch maker Citizen was interested in purchasing Pebble for $740 million in 2015. This deal failed and before the launch of the Pebble 2 Intel made an offer for $70 million. The CEO, Eric Migicovsky refused both offers. Our source said that Fitbit is now paying between $34 and $40 million for the company and is barely covering their debts."

wow! from $740 million to $40 m. Kinda similar to what happened to yahoo's valuation

To be fair, also:

>Fitbit, too, has experienced its own challenges. The company priced its shares at $50 a go when it listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2015, but today it is trading at $8.40. That depression is largely down to less-than-impressive financial results.

It seems like the values atributed to these companies/assets are random numbers.

I can understand that in technology related companies even a strong appreciation (or depreciation) is possible in a short period of time, but there must have been some initial overestimation in these cases.

I could pay for coffee and 2FA my googles like a boss on my Pebble.

On the Apple Watch it's a chore, but as a fashion accessory it's no comparison.

Plus both my pebbles developed screen issues, shame Apple drank their milkshake.

It's way easier to do both of those things on an Apple Watch.

Starbucks POS's accept Apple Pay; invoking it on the Watch is really easy (double tap the side button; hold near screen). Authy 2FA works well on the Watch as well; app-based 2FA like LastPass Authenticator and Okta work EXTREMELY well on it (better than the Pebble, at least on iOS). Google app 2FA sucks on iOS; I'm assuming it's better on Android.

Oh nooo I hope they are not closing down the products of pebble to fast. I like the Pebble Time a lot more then my Moto 360 that I had before.

The article says that Pebble was offered $750M by Citizen in 2015. Is that realistic considering Citizen's market cap is (only) $2B ?

Their market cap is more like $235B

https://www.google.com/finance?q=TYO%3A7762&ei=2kdAWJHcJc_Be...

Edit: oops, that's JPY, not USD.

Listed values are in JPY, so ‎¥235B -- about $2B.

No, that is $235B in JPY. It converts to $1.9B USD.

Since this is just rumor, we probably don't know what the actual deal amount would have been after said and done, but probably more than they are getting with Fitbit.

I tell you, I feel for their CEO Eric Migicovsky.

SV lore is strong on how Mark and Larry&Sergey turned down offer after offer that in retrospect makes them look like prescient leaders and underdogs-turned-heroes. These are the stories that movies are made out of.

And how can you not want to follow in those footsteps?

And then you hand your company over at a fire-sale price, and for the rest of your life keep thinking... 700M... 700M... ugg it hurts.

It feels like a bit of an echo chamber in here.

From what I can tell, outside of the extremely tech-centric realms of society, smartwatches like pebble will not find any success.

Watches are both a utility device, as well as a fashion accessory. For most people, it has become mostly a fashion accessory first, a utility device second. Pebbles really don't look fashionable to most people, both on style, and on brand perception. People will put up with a bit of questionable styling if the brand signaling is good enough, but the reality is, the vast majority of people will not recognize a pebble, and instead will just see a not very stylish device on your wrist. As a fashion accessory, the pebble fails incredibly, and to build a scalable standalone watch company around watches which don't pass as fashion accessories is just a recipe for failure. Even the pebble steel isn't good enough.

So while people claim that the idea is good, the product is good, my opinion is that the product fails to do what most consumers actually need it to do. Sure, it had a big presence on paper because it was one of the first to bring the concept of smart watches to many people on kickstarter, but like that cooler which had a boom box, charging ports, and a blender, sometimes what gets people excited when they first see an idea online, doesn't actually translate to a product that fits their actual needs.

I think this may be why almost all the smartwatches are transitioning to fitness tracking as the main feature - the idea of what a fitness tracker is, looks like, and signals is very different from a smartwatch. Additionally, it's helpful that fitness tracking is actually a utility that generally can't be done well in other devices (smartphones).

Have you seen Fossil's smartwatch line[0]? Quite stylish, in my opinion.

[0] https://www.fossil.com/us/en/wearable-technology.html?gclid=...

Their touch ones still look bad to me. I don't want featureless glass on my wrist when the screen's off and the screen looks worse than a real watch face when it's on (while not, IMO, being more useful than just grabbing the phone in my pocket). The hybrid ones look OK (not great, but that is to some degree a taste thing), but they're not what I think most people would call smartwatches.

But at the end of the day, it's still a Fossil.

I don't mean to disparage the company, but in the watch world a Fossil (or Timex, Nixon, Citizen) will never be worth a glance. This is a market where low-end examples cost as much as a Honda.

> Fossil will never be worth a glance

said no one ever.

Upvoted because it serves as a very helpful illustration of how awfully disconnected subcultures can be.

They're super nice. Also, Fossil owns Misfit, who make some pretty fashionable fitness widgets.

I generally agree. However I have a Pebble Time Round (awful name) and people are consistently surprised when I mention that it's a smart watch as it does look as good as any other similarly priced watch (noticeably everyone knows what a smart watch is).

I completely agree. They were all tech and no fashion.

The Pebble is a bit like a calculator watch in the early 80's: terribly exciting to those of us who like 7-8 year old me thought the idea of having something hi-tech on my wrist was awesomely cool, and a big, flashing sign saying "geek" (and not in fashionable hipster-playing-geek kind of way, but in the "badly dressed and socially awkward" kind of way) to people who are fashion conscious.

It's almost even worse than that: I don't care much about fashion, and I'm a big geek, but I still kinda judge the few of my friends and colleagues I see wearing smart watches. Watches have transitioned so strongly from "utility" to "fashion" with the rise of smart watches that anything that doesn't clearly look like it's intended to be a fashion accessory first or "ironic" and retro (like a cheap, low end, dumb digital watch) very easily ends up looking out of place and try-hard.

It's like my mind goes "No! you're not that important!" whenever I see someone receive a notification on one - it feels like it's a sign of obsession of self-importance that just steps over the line into caricature.

The difficult, of course, is that cellphones felt like that too - when I got my first cell phone in the mid 90's, it made me feel like now we were "properly doing business", while at the same time certain people definitively were judging.

So it's hard to tell if this is just because it's new, and whether - if it changes - it will change because companies bring out models that satisfies the fashion conscious, or if it will become more acceptable to wear a watch that looks utilitarian again.

You kinda sounds like a jerk, to be honest.

I'm perfectly fine with being called a jerk by someone who by judging me on the basis of a single comment demonstrates they're not worth paying attention to.

Yup. I often wish my FitBit had a few more smartwatch-like features, like Apple Pay.

Yet I have no desire to buy a bulky Apple Watch with its short battery life and a bunch of features I'll never use.

Given the buying price is reported as 40 million, I think you could have run a very nice early adopter focused business in that range. No need to cross the chasm...focus on your real customers first. Battery life is a great selling point for example. They could have been fine if they'd delayed the crossing until later with say a "Pebble Style" line.

Possibly, but it would've taken a lot longer to get there without the VC that demands continued growth. Fast followers might've hurt them sooner if they didn't have the resources to quickly iterate the product. It is interesting to examine the strategies by which you can stay small and focused in a tech hardware market — capital requirements make it difficult or at least slow to do without that fundraising millstone.

I got an extra Pebble Time so I gave it my wife and she absolutely loves it. I think you're right about negative perception but I believe, in terms of utility, that smart watches do not need to be a niche as they are.

I pretty much can't live without my Pebble; going back to getting notifications on my phone seems like a big step backwards.

Agree on the first gen pebble.

I don't own one, but the pebble round looks like it could pass as a 'regualar' watch.

Same thing for the moto 360 and other android smartwatches.

Actually, Android smartwatches are interesting since there are already quite a few.

It seems to me that more and more Android smartwatches look like regular watches.

IMO, they still miss a killer app that will make them truly useful. Or maybe smartwatches are just not for me.

Right now, I am wearing an automatic (dumb) watch. It is just a fashion accessory that happens to tell what time it is.

Does this mean Pebble watches will stop working? I wouldn't mind buying Pebble now, especially if they discount it, and use it. If I get 2 yrs out of it, it will be more then enough.

I use to have Basis Peak and was super happy with it, but they shut it down and told us it will stop working, so I had to return it.

They should still work, but we can pretty much forget about firmware updates and phone app updates. The latter is a problem, because when the new generation of phones comes out and suddenly they can't talk to your watch, there ain't gonna be anyone to fix it.

Yes, there is Gadgetbridge, but I doubt they have enough manpower to keep compatibility with every new phone/OS version out there.

Noo! This makes me so sad. I love my Pebble Time. Fitbit :( I don't want to own a FitBit. People should be snapping these watches up they make your life better. For example: no more ringing phones. No more pulling phones out of pockets. Sleep tracking. Tracks activity...

As a Fitbit employee and a huge Pebble fan, I feel conflicted... I hope the fantastic engineering put into the Pebble OS and hardware will be put to good use.

and there is mi band, which seems like a perfect balance of simplicity, ease of use, functionality (step counter, heartrate sensor, time) and price.

+1 for the mi band! I think for me the version with the small display is the perfect smart watch:

http://www.mi.com/en/miband2/

It has basically all I need (30+ days battery life, display time, step and distance counter) plus very few stuff I don't need that can be turned off easily (notifications, wake up alarm, heart rate monitor, ios and android app).

It is also fairly cheap at $25-35, but look out for the fake ones on ebay!

FUCK, not this way..

My thoughts exactly. This whole situation feels like a very bad joke.

I was waiting for my Pebble Time 2 from Kickstarter, but seeing the comments there I guess I'll never get it

Bit of weird news.

/r/pebble posted an archive of mostly all Pebble Apps though, which is kinda neat.

Wow, just $40mil? Does anyone know what went wrong? As a fellow UW alum, this makes me sad.

What is the point of buying them to shut them down? How does that make any sense?

I imagined Pebble being worth more.

I suppose either the brand or the whole smartwatch market is in pretty bad shape.

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