The PalmOS powered wristwatch from Fossil | Hacker News Reader

The PalmOS powered wristwatch from Fossil

lunduke.substack.com

104 pointsWoodenChair75 comments

So I actually had one of these. I kept it for about a year.

The theory was good, but the screen was hard to read, required a stylus (a tiny one was hidden in the strap), and there's only so much you can do without a data connection. I used to HotSync news stories to it every morning but realistically a better source of up to date news was still a radio.

When I read articles like this one I always have to think about companies like Apple and Tesla.

Apple didn't invent smartphones or touchscreens but they started the revolution. Tesla didn't invent EVs but started the revolution.

What they have in common is that they pick the best of existing technologies and combine that into a product that is ahead of the competition. They don't invent new things but invent better things.

For me that means you can create better products than the competition by even using old (but good) tech. What matters most is how you apply the tech.

IMO, the original Nintendo DS made the concept of touch truly mainstream, but wasn't multitouch.

Yeah, touch was a total joke when the DS came out. It was ridiculed as a useless concept.

Just a few years later and people are more confused when their device has buttons instead of a touch screen.

It had a resistive touchscreen. What made you touchscreens truly mainstream were capacitive screens

I'd say the Apple Newton in 1993 made touch screens mainstream quite a bit earlier. And things like PalmOS were clearly based on the excitement that came from the Newton. The Newton itself wasn't that successful due to its reliance on writing recognition that didn't work that well (at least in the initial versions of NewtonOS) but that ironically added to its place in pop culture. Like in The Simpsons where one of the school bullies has a Newton and is trying to take a note reminding him to beat up the annoying teacher's pet Martin, only for the system to interpret "Beat up Martin" as "Eat up Martha".

I think they didn't start anything, rather, they jumped in to create a tipping point.

I don't know if that is true.

Tesla for example did become big because they had the best range. And they still have compared to most brands.

If Tesla failed to create cars with a great range they didn't become as big as they are now.

Yes, but that's what I mean - that category had existed for a while, they did a few things to make it viable. Same with watches, smartphones and eventually 3D.

> I think they didn't start anything, rather, they jumped in to create a tipping point.

To me this trivializes what Apple did, as if companies could just "create a tipping point" if only they liked money. I understand that from today's vantage point, what Apple did seems inevitable. At the time, it was a "bet the farm" move by a company which had never made a smartphone before.

> Apple didn't invent smartphones…

This is like saying "the Manhattan Project didn't invent atomic bombs". It's technically true, but doesn't capture the world-changing effects of the accomplishment.

You're making my case for me.

Other auto companies have been steadily innovating on electrics cars for a very long time and have consistently outsold Tesla until recently. It's unlikely that Tesla did much other than accelerate the process by a tiny bit by bring more public validation to the market. Tesla is not an outright innovator so much as created more public excitement.

The iPhone as 'world changing' is a bit of propaganda. Other platforms were moving forward, Nokia had some very cool and popular stuff. The iPhone was effectively 'a generation ahead' - as if a 'gaming console' magically came out one generation ahead of the others - but otherwise, it was all an 'inevitability'. All those things were coming in one way or another. GPS, full screen, apps, contactless payments etc. it was all well on it's way.

Agree. I can’t wait to get a hold of the Soli radar chip from Google and put it inside of a Loodio.

After a web search I came to the conclusion those are actual things. I honestly thought you just made those words up.

That's hard to read for a (once) die hard Pebble fan ... but it is also true.

It's also true that sometimes great products just fail for whatever reason.

Just like Apple and Tesla sometimes have products that just fail to become big.

It's largely about timing. the iPhone didn't come out until wifi and cellular data had become widely available. Even today, a modern smartphone is a pretty boring device if you put it in airplane mode.

Cellular data was technically widely available for years before iPhones (see e.g. GPRS for the tech, adopted in 2000), albeit very expensive.

Apple changed that. They negotiated a special contract with AT&T and for a year or so the first iPhone was the only phone in the US with unlimited data plan.

Sprint had unlimited 2G “Vision” data as far back as 2001. You could “stream” live video from 10-12 cable channels at 1fps. By 2005 you could stream video at 15fps.

https://www.sprint.com/business/program/newsletter/march05/p...

I had unlimited 3G data on a phone on AT&T's network in 2006, and it was even cheaper than the special iPhone data plan. They didn't recognize my phone's IMEI as a "smart phone" or PDA despite running Symbian so adding unlimited data was $15/mo. Unlimited data on a smart phone or PDA was $30/mo additional on the line. It was there, it just wasn't popular.

Also capacitive touchscreens. The resitive ones of older Smartphones wouldn't have worked for the revolutinary UI

Bad resistive screens are bad, but good ones are better than capacitive because they work with styluses or when you're wearing gloves. The Nokia N900 had an absurdly good one.

Apple heavily marketed capacitive screens as an asset, so people who haven't every used a quality resistive screen still carry that around internally.

I had a Palm Pilot when they were the cool thing and connectivity was the biggest issue. Syncing had to be a deliberate process, which meant it didn't necessarily happen frequently, which meant that things like calendaring and even news weren't really all that useful.

The iPhone came out just as WiFi had become pretty ubiquitous and a reasonable data plan was something that could be negotiated. And, even so, you could argue that the iPhone didn't really take off for a few more years.

(The iPod before it had a somewhat similar trajectory. It wasn't obviously a game-changing device from day one.)

ADDED: Connectivity was an issue with the iPod too. It didn't matter that much for music. But anything that required timely updates, such as podcasts, didn't work as well.

In about 2002, I had a Handspring Visor Prism, running PalmOS. I bought the VisorPhone, which was a cellular phone add-on that plugged into the back. It was somewhat ungainly, and didn't work well as a voice phone. It also had a separate battery, so you had to charge it on its own. I could use it as a cellular modem, but there wasn't a good practical use case for it, because there were only half-baked web browsers and few apps that used data. You could dial in to your desktop computer over the modem and sync remotely. It was fairly useless, but was the early precursor of what eventually became the Treo, and showed that the combination of cell phone and PDA was a good idea.

What Apple did well was marry the full screen of the Palm with the connectivity of the blackberry. The Palm V with a cradle cell modem and battery was a niche attempt, but the OS didn't really natively support always-on internet and the apps didn't integrate it. Android and IOS both did and that was the difference, although Google had to play catch up because their first phone the HTC Dream had a slide out keyboard.

Pebble shutdown almost 8 years ago now and there does still not to be a replacement or alternative that can: last up to a week of battery life, do basic things like allow you to get and read notifications, and be a watch.

Garmin Vivoactive 4s ticks all the boxes that you mention

Are they community-programmable? SDK, etc ?

https://www.espruino.com/Bangle.js2 seems to be the closest to open and well finished at the same time.

There is a SDK that looks quite decent: https://developer.garmin.com/connect-iq/sdk/

22 days on my Garmin

I enjoyed my Pebble but most Garmins have all that and a whole lot more.

Do we trust them on the security, privacy side of things?

Mozilla gave them a thumbs up https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/garmin-...

What's your threat model?

I don't remember the brand, but a smartwatch brand's activity feed was public, and the some military personnel bought these, and trained around the military bases, leaving nice outlines secret bases, complete with their GPS coordinates.

Then that thing was banned, again IIRC.

That’s just what a default is. I think it was Fitbit? Fitbit got lame for me after. Every one’s feed was private even for basic info. It was unnecessary to make everything private by default for the average person except to combat all the blow back from the PR of that story and vocal people like many on here.

It’s not disssimilar to how Cambridge Analytica gave FB an excuse to clamp down on their API and put much more content even more in their control. The API for many things became useless after the clamp down. Not that a response wasn’t required.

However, in both situations, it was like throwing the baby out with the bath water

While I'm by no means an absolutist about not sharing personal information, I disagree in this case. Location data can be pretty sensitive and defaults are powerful. I don't want my location being shared by some device or website unless I've explicitly given it permission to do so.

It can be a tricky tradeoff. For example, I think the blowback around Apple AirTags and Find My Network is way overblown. But I do draw the line at sharing my location tracks and related absent checking a box somewhere in a menu.

The response wasn’t to not share location or specific detailed info. It was to set everything to private by default. The actual issue was not the only thing fixed with the response. Everything was taken away. That’s why I said baby with the bath water. Facebook did a similar thing when they reduced what their APIs could do and what any normal user could do using FB themselves. In both cases, the actual issue could have been solved without the amt of stuff they did.

Once Fitbit hid basically everything by default and almost no one changes defaults, it was hard to know if a user was even using Fitbit or not without already being friends with them.

Edit: I agree whole heartedly. Whatever specifics were done with location sharing is not good and shouldn’t be done by default. I am pretty open with my location, but it’s under my control and I’m usually actively opening up my privacy and location. 100% agree there and also agree over the excessive reactions to AirTags

Can't speak for the online side of things, but it's possible to use most Garmin watches fully offline.

I'm not talking about a reduced functionality style offline mode either; the watch computes all metrics locally, you can load OSM for navigation, copy MP3 files to it and copy GPX traces off of it.

Do you have one? From the pictures of them the screens seem really small and therefor not really apt for more "finnicky" things like reading mails, planning routes etc.

I know someone who has one. It's surprisingly good and can display a few lines of text at once. It's not as big as the pebble but it seems like enough.

Amazfit Bip lasts 4-6 weeks on single charge with always on transreflective display with readability improving with more sunlight (opposite of useless OLED power hungry displays) and I use it exactly just to check time and read notifications, I also use it to track my sleep, step counts and heart rate, plus one of the most used features in my night apartment is using display backlight (necessary only in dark) as flashlight

it's also very small, light and thin, pretty much impossible to find such compact watch since I don't want to carry bulky brick on my wrist (so no thanks expensive Garmin bricks with shorter battery life)

I'm now on my 2nd one, first I had brand new, it fell apart just before end of 2y warranty (basically the body inserted in frame without gluing, it felt outside, I could put it back and connect, just display colors were reversed but since it was in warranty I just used warranty to get money back, they improved gluing with newer versions), then went for OLED watch and gave up after maybe half year, gave new OLED watch which need to be charged at least twice a week to wife, it has unreadable AOD in sunlight (beause you need full brightness in sunlight or very least B&W AOD display instead other useless color combinations) and just bought second hand Bip for 20USD and I couldn't be happier, I'm thinking I could stock few of them into drawer in case something will happen to this one

plus for people with too much spare time Bip firmware is somewhat hackable with extended functionality

I ordered a Bip U, they just sent me a Bip U Pro for the same price stating it is better and the Bip U is discontinued. I cried a little because the Pro has an lcd screen. Are there really so little people that want a Pebble like experience?

BTW TBH I don’t really like Amazfit/Xiaomi, their terms tell you they can get basically all your data. With Pebble I felt a sort of trust, which I also have with Apple (but sleep tracking on a 1 day battery smart watch is bit of a bad joke).

I used the Bip U Pro on Android with GadgetBridge which is really amazing and perfectly privacy focused. Sadly when I switched to iOS I found nothing equivalent.

I want Pebble back.

that's not really Bip though, only original Bip, Bip S and Bip Lite have transreflective displays with battery life in 4+ weeks and display readable in sunlight, any other Bip is just regular power hungry watch.

Bip U has already just regular TFT display with poor battery life, maybe a better readability than OLED, but not comparable with transreflective displays and their battery life.

As you said you can use Gadgetbridge if you don't trust them, though I find GB experience very poor always losing connection compared to their own app, not sure if you can disable internet connection for the app to keep using it which would resolve privacy issues (I use also GBoard without internet access).

Oh yes, you are right, I ordered a Bip S, apologies.

Do you trust Amazfit with your data? I can't trust such a Chinese entity with so much personal data.

I have a Bip and absolutely do not trust Amazfit with my data, which is fine because I don't use their app.

I use the open source Gadgetbridge app instead and it works well: https://gadgetbridge.org/

This is great! Finally I will be able to use a Xiaomi Fit band I have.

I've got Huawei Watch GT2 and it feels like I recharge it once a month. I was honestly quite positively surprised by it, having expected having to recharge every 2-3 days.

They advertise a two week battery life so you are probably having to charge it more frequently.

I am not wearing it every day, so it probably conserves energy when it's idle.

The Fossil Hybrid[1] series with the E-ink screens is by far my favorite "smartwatch" right now, and has a ~10 days battery (claimed 2 weeks). Does basic sports, heart and sleep tracking, shows notifications, customisable watchfaces and a bunch of other stuff I don't really care about.

[1] https://www.fossil.com/en-ch/smartwatches/hybrid-smartwatche...

Edit: it shows the time using physical arrows, so you have it accessible 24/24 (they glow at night).

Another great option, the Garmin's Vivoactive line (and some other models) isn't e-ink, it's a transflective LCD(? they call it Memory-In-Pixels (MIP)), that's always on. It's a great display that's usable in any light-level other than dark. Also a pretty good purpose-driven smart watch, especially if you want your smart watch to do things like have GPS and HR recording and integration with sports peripherals (like bike power meters, etc). Doesn't have great "apps", though. Battery life isn't two weeks, but it can easily last a week if you don't record any GPS, and a few days of normal wear + 6-8 hours of GPS recording during that period if you use it normally + exercise.

Unfortunately, the Vivoactive line seems to lag behind in tech from the product lines with the more traiditonal displays. So I've moved to the Venu line, which has an "always off" AMOLED display and better sensors. The display is also much more vibrant, but at the cost of being a lot harder to just glance at since it's usually off.

If they can bring the better sensors to a Vivoactive, I'd definitely go back to the always-on display it offers. I miss that always-on and much closer to e-ink style feel the transflective display has.

A big downside is that in order to use the phone app, you need an online account with Fossil. Not sure if it is the same case with Garmin.

You can use some features with GadgetBridge, but you still need the account to initiate the server-based pairing.

There are in fact a lot of watches that can do this. Fitbit Charge 5 for example

> last up to a week of battery life, do basic things like allow you to get and read notifications, and be a watch.

Actually there is something that does that, my favorite watch: https://www.withings.com/us/en/steel-hr

The battery lasts a month. The only thing which would improve it would be NFC payments, but one can't have it all.

Also looks good IMO.

I lost mine unfortunately and got a "normal" smartwatch with a touchscreen and all. I don't use 90% of the features and it doesn't look nearly as class as the Steel one.

Dang that is an attractive watch, how open is the communication protocol and how much does it report to home? I'm not a watch-wearer but it could make for a nice gift, especially with such a reasonable price.

I don't think it's open. Looking on the web page it reports all fitness data, but not notifications, but one can't be sure without checking the actual communication.

Citizen developed a fantastic-looking, bluetooth-connected mechanical watch called the Proximity using its Eco-drive solar tech:

https://www.citizenwatch.com/us/en/product/BZ1005-51E.html

https://www.citizenwatch.com/us/en/product/BZ1000-54E.html

In theory, its capabilities included phone search/filter and visual/vibration alerts. Not quite a smartwatch, but at least some connection to the digital ecosystem.

I was excited when I heard about this, particularly the Eco-drive, as it meant no charging would ever be necessary. I have one non-Bluetooth Eco-drive which has been running continuously for 12 years without changing the battery.

In practice, the Proximity was a disaster. Owners reported dropped connections, late notifications, and a terrible iOS and Android app. The first two problems, from what I read, related to insufficient power. It wasn't enough to maintain a Bluetooth connection. The third issue is common to many companies that do not have mobile app engineering in their wheelhouse.

Citizen discontinued the models. They have a real smartwatch now (https://www.citizenwatch.com/us/en/product/MX0008-56X.html) but it is not Eco-drive.

Well, that made me want one! These look pretty impressive.

Here you go: https://pine64.org/pinetime.

The specs of the device linked in OP aren't that far off the PineTime. Maybe if we ask very nicely we can get the source code and begin work on a PalmOS port!

Unfortunately "asking nicely for source code" almost never works. I would prefer supporting companies which intentionally collaborate with the FLOSS community.

Remarkably, source may not be needed: https://pmig96.wordpress.com/2021/09/08/pumpkin-os/

Check out the Wyze Watch, it's surprisingly good for the price, and battery life is great

GPS is the real killer for battery life. If you turn the GPS off, there are a fair number of watches from companies like Garmin that probably fit the bill.

TicWatch Pro (I do not own it) has a 2nd layer screen that uses very little power and can last many days. However the watch is too big for my taste, but always on is a must.

I purchased a refurbished Samsung Galaxy 42mm. I can last well into 1.5 days without charging (it usually gets topped off). The newer Samsungs can barely last a day.

I was still in school in the first half of the 2000s and spent a lot of my hard earned money on more or less useful and smart hardware, especially smartphones (mostly called PDA-phones in the pre-iPhone era) and with hardware keyboard. I think my first device was the HTC Blue Angel. I also had a Treo 600 and the Palm Abacus. Those were really nice devices, PalmOS was way better than Windows Mobile and worlds better than Symbian UIQ.

Fun times.

Right there with you.

Palm was fun to use. To be fair, by the time HTC started releasing cool looking PDA's, Microsoft did ok, just slow and buggy. Symbian was cobblers ... the worst.

I miss that primordial soup of those times.

Weird laptops, crazy PDA ideas, etc. Utterly boring now, despite being exponentially more useful.

I do nostalgically miss the one PalmOS and one Windows Mobile 6 device I had of each. That might be mostly nostalgia though. Not sure. My love for webOS OTOH is still being sad it didn’t become a distant 3rd mobile OS. I’d likely be rocking a webOS phone. Possibly tablet right now. Instead of going from Windows Mobile 6 -> iPhone -> webOS -> Windows Phone 7 -> Samsung Galaxy Note -> iPhones since then. I used to mess up or break my phones frequently so some of the switches were because of that.

—- Related. I have a lot of nostalgia and actual usefulness from jailbreaking iPhones too. That seems like it may barely be a thing now with iOS 15 changes.

Even an M1 Mac won’t run iOS/iPadOS apps if any of the SIP securities are disabled.

Through middle school and high school I lived on my Palm devices. I carried them to class, broke out the portable keyboard, and did all my notes and assignments on them, then spent the breaks between classes beaming Strategic Commander game turns between my friends.

My teachers loved that I did this, because when you printed out notes from the Memos app it put a big white-on-black header at the top of the page. So teachers put my assignments front-of-line in their paper stacks and treated them as dividers between assignments.

Working this way was great for my ADHD brain. My elementary school gave me an AlphaSmart, speculating that I performed poorly or acted out in class because I got bored in the time it took to handwrite a sentence. Using Palm devices worked great because I could capture more of what was in my brain, and could edit and reorder my scattered, disorganized thoughts.

Those devices were excellent for what they were. I like what modern devices can do, but Palm devices felt like an extension of myself in a way modern smartphones don't.

The mention of the IR port brought me back. As a kid I'd get hand-me-down palm pilots and find programmable remote apps to control the TV and other things with.

I’ve started referring to my “phone” as a “palm pilot” because, well, it’s hardly a “phone.” Long live the PalmPilot!

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