In the meantime, I'm wearing a Withings ScanWatch [0]. Not as extendable as a Pebble, but it has some features I care about and doesn't distract me.
For years, I used my steel HR (got a weird one branded Nokia because they had purchased Withings only to resell Withings to the founder a year later), loved the sleep tracking, health report etc... But the activity tracking wasn't the best, especially running.
However the battery's life is out of this world. I loved the mix between tech and good old watch.
The Fitbit Alta HR and the Apple Watch are worth mentioning for tracking sleep time and wake ups fairly accurately.
As others mention hybrid watches are probably the closest alternative.
With the Pebble I had app shortcuts on the long press of most of the buttons and could pretty much navigate it blind to start a stopwatch ASAP and lap as needed without looking. I had tons of saved timer presets. The alarms could actually wake me up (before the vibration motor broke). PineTime won't let me save timer presets, set timers over an hour or so long, and it's not obvious enough when the timer ends. I think it vibrates once instead of doing it until dismissed. These are basic things, and to me they matter even more than seeing notifications from my phone appear. I even used my Pebble without a phone for months at a time before.
The bangle.js: - ships significantly faster - has an always-on display with similar 4 week maximum battery life - can be updated without flashing - has a thriving app ecosystem
My Pebble Time Steel was vastly superior.
I wanted a watch that I could control my media player on my phone with, gave me notifications, and didn't cost me an appendage. The Pinetime was $35USD shipped (IIRC), and while I can't dismiss phone notifications from my watch, it does at least show me the notifications from my wrist. I'm very happy with mine.
I've found an Amazfit Bip to be a totally satisfactory replacement for my Pebble Time, but it doesn't cover every single usecase. It does have a battery life measured in weeks though (usually 3-4 for me, less if I use the GPS to track a bunch of exercise), which is a pretty nice selling point.
I like mine, except for the fact that the front fell off and I had to glue it back on. The battery lasts for 3 or 4 weeks, you can receive notifications (but not respond to them) and it looks fairly stylish.
I want my watch to have time/date, alarms, timers/stopwatches, the ability to read phone notifications, always-on screen, and battery life measured on the scale of weeks. Step and heartrate tracking are also nice perks that the Amazfit Bip also includes.
https://github.com/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge/wiki/Amazfit-...
It's elegant, and the smartwatch features are unobtrusive, but I wouldn't trust it for any precise tracking, or even time tracking.
I wish that hadn't been the case, but after replacing the battery 3x in one month because I swapped out watches occasionally, it went into retirement.
It's totally usable, but it doesn't have a vibrant app store like Pebble did for example.
These are marketed as fitness devices first, which they are, but the smart watch features are comparable to the Pebbles. The lack of a touchscreen, the long battery life, and the epaper-like display are all there.
However it looks like Google is killing that in newer iterations...
I've enjoyed it, although I am really missing the ability to write my own apps. Everything else is great.
I understand that the Versa 4 is generally worse than the 3. Insane, why would you remove music controls?
The notification functionality is not as customizable, but otherwise I haven't really been missing the Pebble much.
I’ve used a few Fossil watches and found the battery to be very good, but the software to be lacking. One example is that if you receive a notification, you have to click the center button to select it, and then the down button to scroll down. The buttons on some models are quite mushy, which makes navigation even more frustrating. The light is also unimpressive and hard to trigger.
I don’t love the styling of the current Fossil models. The Skagen version looks nicer to me, but sadly the software forced you to display a Skagen logo instead of one of the four complications that’s available on the Fossil-branded version.
I don’t know what I’m going to do when my Fossil dies. The battery is down to 4 days if I remember to put it in airplane mode every night. I’m considering the Apple Watch Ultra, which should get around 5 days of battery in low power mode but I don’t love the styling, don’t need the sporty features, and don’t love the price.
I miss the simplicity, yet the huge amount possibilities (via their store and SDK) and watch faces the Pebble had. They still managed to keep the device distraction free along with a good battery life. I'm all ears for any good Pebble-like smartwatch if anyone knows one.