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Comment by tekchip | Hacker News Reader

Surprised this hasn't been mentioned on this thread yet. Hardware wise the closest is probably the Pine Time from Pine64. Software and services wise this isn't on pebbles level though. https://www.pine64.org/pinetime/

As others mention hybrid watches are probably the closest alternative.

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Early PineTime adopter here. The lack of physical buttons is such a massive downgrade that I can't really bring myself to use mine anymore. The apps are also very lacking compared to the Pebble. Specifically timers, stopwatch, alarms. I have no other watch to recommend, I just stopped wearing one. I do occasionally update the firmware and see if things have improved, but they're still not as good as I'd like. I do support them and what they're doing. The hardware itself is maybe just too flawed. I hope that we see more stuff get support from the same OS. Something with more buttons.

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.

Pinetime can't hold a candle to the bangle.js: https://banglejs.com/

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

I have a bangle.js. It's... alright. Does the job. Feels cheap. OS is nightmarishly slow. Only one physical button, so annoying and fiddly to set with a touchscreen (interacts badly with the slow OS). Has GPS, but doesn't really work. Has heart monitor, but doesn't really work. Not terribly stable.

My Pebble Time Steel was vastly superior.

I wonder: could one possibly run a custom ROM like bangleJS on a Garmin?

Oh wow I did not realize they were just $35, I expected a price around $150. I've never been a smartwatch person because I couldn't see myself wearing one over some of my mechanical pieces, but for $35 i'm very tempted to try.

I own a Pinetime, and I agree it's close to the Pebble (I used to own a Pebble Steel). My Pinetime gets around 3ish days battery life, usage dependent.

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.

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