First steps forward with Fitbit | Hacker News Reader

First steps forward with Fitbit

developer.pebble.com

82 pointsantouank47 comments

I'm a backer of the Pebble Time 2. I got my refund, so I went to Best Buy (Canada) to pick up a Pebble 2. But they refused to sell me one even though they had some in stock. Super pissed. My original pebble is basically dead with the glitching issue, so now I'm SOL.

But they refused to sell me one even though they had some in stock.

Why would they do that?

Warranty reasons perhaps?

They didn't let you buy the item for which there will no longer be updates or warranty support. Why would you be angry?

It sounds like the poster was angry because Best Buy wouldn't let the poster exchange their money for the watch that Best Buy had in stock. I can understand that, it would be pretty annoying to go to a store, they have something in stock, but won't sell it to you.

That sounds like most normal Best Buy / Office Depot / Microcenter deals.

Because he told the store that he didn't care and just wanted the hardware.

Which is a perfectly valid and understandable viewpoint.

As is the store's viewpoint that no matter what is said now, the average consumer (not GP poster) is an asshole and will try to bring their purchase back a week from now citing all of the problems that they just said would not be a problem.

In Germany, they sometimes sell you stuff for much cheaper, especially display items, if you let go of the warranty by having a stamp on your invoice. I bought a 1440p display from Media Markt around 120 Euros, which was normally sold for 240.

You can still find them online. I ordered one off Amazon after the acquisition.

Amazon.ca doesn't have the Pebble 2, and amazon.com won't ship the Pebble 2 to Canada.

FYI, I was able to add the Pebble 2 to my cart and get to the order confirmation page (I didn't click confirm though; still deciding if I want to buy it).

I added it to my cart from this page: https://www.amazon.com/Pebble-Heart-Smart-Watch-Black/dp/B01... (the white one)

Thanks! I tried pretty much all of the sellers for the black watch, but none of them would ship to me. This one did. Not my preferred colour, but oh well.

The white one is directly from Amazon, so I suspect that's why they sell to Canada.

So was the black one the first time I tried.

Same here. Despite the fact it may no longer be supported I wanted one because there is nothing else in the market I want to buy to replace my Fitbit. With Amazon it costs a zillion to ship here in Italy and the only seller that ships has it white which is a problem for somebody that almost solely wears black clothes... On Ebay they started to sell it like if it was a greek repert of 500 AC. Too bad.

I'm thinking of trying to get a Pebble Time Steel now; I have a Time and had backed the Time 2. So far it seems very difficult to find a new one in Canada. I wonder what is going to happen to all that Bestbuy stock.

Try Target, the one in my area still has them on the shelf.

Best Buy had an exclusive on the Pebble 2 in Canada, so no other retailers has them.

From my experience, fixing the glitching issue is relatively easy. Took me about 5 minutes last time. I did it twice already. Only 4 screws have to be removed. Check youtube for tutorials.

After quickly reading this, it looks like fitbit is really keen into having the pebble not cut ties with their large and active community.

And apparently there is a whole team that " is responsible for a smooth and positive Pebble transition. "

Let'shope for the best, maybe the increase in fitbits brand value is worth the effort out into supporting a dead piece of hardware (no offense).

More likely is that Fitbit want to keep the Pebble development community working on apps for their platform, rather than migrating to Apple or Android. I expect we'll see Fitbit put a lot of effort into making the transition as smooth as possible.

Really? My reading was "we're shutting everything down, we just won't tell you the date yet."

my interpretation is quite the opposite. this "at this time" tells me that it will all go down the toilet soon when this time ends:

"The Pebble SDK, CloudPebble, Timeline APIs, firmware availability, mobile apps, developer portal, and Pebble appstore are all elements of the Pebble ecosystem that will remain in service at this time."

Shutting down the product and cancelling my order seems like a poor way to conduct a "smooth and positive" transition".

Does anyone know of a fitness tracker that doesn't push data to a backend service operated by a for-profit organization? I'm searching for a device that:

* Has decent battery life (at least better than the Fitbit Charge 2)

* Performs heart monitoring, activity reminders, sleep and steps tracking

* Has iOS and Android apps that let you push collected metrics to a backend service that you can host yourself

The misfit has the best battery life of any fitness/sleep tracker I know.

Points 1 and 2 aren't met though.

Apple has one of the strongest commitments to privacy that I've seen. All the Apple Watch health data is stored encrypted on your iPhone directly. The Battery life is only 1 day though.

What kind of encryption?

256-bit SSL ;)

SSL isn't an encryption algorithm.

I was making a lame joke in the vein of sites that advertise "secure transactions protected by Military Grade 256-bit SSL".

now I get it ;)

SSL... Encryption... Ok

That's fairly restrictive in terms of getting the client app approved by Apple but I guess their watch is the only available off-the-shelf solution that doesn't ship user data exclusively to a proprietary cloud. I'll take a look at this once they address sleep tracking, sounds like they're working on it. And hopefully the battery life won't be abysmal in the future. Thanks.

There are good 3rd party apps for sleep tracking, and they can store the data in Apple Health. They left everything except basic exercise tracking up to 3rd parties with apps (that exists in 3rd party apps as well).

If you care about privacy, I'd imagine it's the best solution in the market.

As for battery life: I have a new Series 2. I wore it yesterday for about 16 hours of normal use (some Siri, looked at an app or two a few times to check something), and did 90m of exercise. When I took it off battery was 70-75%.

They charge up pretty fast. I know of people who use them all day and sleep track with them. Depending on the battery life (model, size, age, your usage, etc) you can just charge it once or twice a day on it's charger (such as when you're in the shower) and that could be enough to keep it full. It doesn't take long to change since it's battery isn't that big.

I'm not going to say it's perfect, but I've found it to be non-issue. I know that workouts are one of the things that can be hard on the battery, along with GPS.

Oh, I know of a watch that has all of that!

Oh wait...

Withings Steel HR gets the first two:

http://www.withings.com/us/en/store/details/steel-hr

At what point does the Fitbit privacy policy with regards to user data take over from the Pebble privacy policy? After a quick read through, the Fitbit policy seems pretty reasonable, and doesn't contain terms that (for instance) let them track personally identifiable data for later sale. Once the Fitbit policy is in effect I'd even half consider using the official Pebble app.

I was looking into buying a pebble... but not now. Fitbits are absolute garbage. I had to buy them (went through several -- they kept falling apart on me) when working at my previous employer so I could participate in their 'vitality' program in order to get a discount on my health insurance. I'll never buy another fitbit product again.

I hope you did not buy multiple ones when they broke! They send them out like candies if you can prove yours is broken! I have 3 surges (2 with broken bands) thanks to this policy!

I found it very interesting they're committing to keep Apple Health integration when FitBit themselves don't provide it.

I believe they will update this soon

Offtopic:

               [photo]

    Me at Angelhack Mumbai 2016

That was fun. 40 people, only one Caucasian. It's like an edgy version of [2].

[1] https://developer.pebble.com/assets/images/blog/2016-12-14-m...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_Three_Children_puzzle

At first I thought he was the Sikh who does the Vulcan greeting, but then I noticed the one white guy and thought "No, that's him!".

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