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edejong

There still is no good replacement for these properties of the Pebble 2 smartwatch:

- > 7 days battery life

- HR monitor (useful as a sports watch)

- < 10 mm thickness

- toned down to fit different clothing styles

- hackable

- high-contrast, always-on screen

- buttons

I am currently wearing a Garmin Fenix 7 Sapphire sportswatch, which comes close.

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Just checked the Garmin Fenix 7 and now I want to add one missing point to your list:

- affordable

You can get a similar experience to the Fenix (but without the higher end sports features) with other Garmin sports watches. The Forerunner 255 is well reviewed and very similar to the Fenix for about half the price.

And there are other lines like Venu, that are more focused on the smart part and are more affordable.

I don't think the Venu line is "smarter" than the others. It's more every day watch design and has an AMOLED touch screen, but the functionality is nearly the same.

You're right, what I mean is it puts less emphasis on the sport and fitness tracking features, compared to Fenix and Forerunner lines, and hence lacks some of the more advanced features and metrics.

Or buying older, second-hand Garmins. There is really no point to having the latest and greatest and the price of last year's model is basically half.

Garmin has a wide range of watches, many of which meet most of those criteria. Except for hackable. I have a Vivoactive 4 and I've been very happy with it.

Are there projects reverse engineering them? Something like BangleJS?

Yeah, although the Garmin Fenix 7 is an awesome watch, especially as an amateur athlete, it is ** expensive.

Features from the Fenix 7 which I value over Pebble (apart from the obvious):

- Materials: titanium and sapphire. Means it is indestructible. Great for hiking expeditions.

- Garmin Connect (SaaS fitness community).

- HRV (Heart Rate Variability).

- Regular, well tested updates.

Stuff that I miss:

- Hackability (I want to transfer my data directly to InfluxDB)

- Thickness (14.5 mm, which is 5 mm more than the Pebble)

- Community

another advantage on fenix is that you can use totp 2fa without keeping the phone connected - if the time ever drifts you can always sync it from satellites

The Forerunner 255 fits that bill. Or the other cheaper Forerunners. The Fenix line is more akin to the iPhone Pro Max.

Amazfit Bip S - https://www.amazfit.com/uk/amazfit-bip-s.html

- 40 day battery life

- HR monitor

- 11.4mm thickness

- Always on transreflective screen

It's not hackable, is a bit thicker and only has one button but unlike the Fenix 7 it is very affordable.

Also, the Neo is worth looking at as you get four buttons https://www.amazfit.com/en/neo

A recent update nuked the battery life on mine. It went from 40 days to 10-15.

Not hackable but I replaced my Pebble Time with a Fossil Collider HR and was very happy until it broke 1 week ago. Now I'm in a different country trying to get a replacement.

It had a MONTH charge and it filled all my requirements which were mainly about getting notifications.

How did it break? I've read in forums that the screens go bad when exposed to to much sunlight, which seems like an odd weakness for a wearable.

I believe I bumped it one too many times and created a way for moisture to enter, but the first visible sign was that I had left it on the toilet to shower and it was a steamy shower so when I came out it had moisture inside the glass.

The moisture was stuck there for a day or two, came and went depending on temperature and outside climate. After about a week it became even worse and eventually it gave up and showed 0 charge.

I live in northern europe so too much sunlight would not affect it. I was so hyped for this watch that I actually had an american friend ship it to me before it was released here.

The "Venu" line of watches from Garmin are their "lifestyle" watches. They are more toned down from the more tactical look and feel of other Garmin watches.

The Venu Sq 2 was just recently released. I have the Venu 2, myself.

Missing from your list: * <10mm thickness - it appears to be a smidge over * hackable - You have a Fenix 7 so you're familiar with the ecosystem * always-on screen - it's OLED and not always on, but works well enough - there is an always on mode but it's not recommended for OLED

As for the rest: * >7 days battery life - Venu 2 is rated up to 12 days, I charge about once a week * HR monitor - it's there, works reasonably well * toned down - as a lifestyle type, it's a bit more toned down * high-contrast - it's as high contrast as any OLED, and clearly visible in sunlight * buttons - 2 of them

I'd throw in cost as a valid metric. The Pebble watches were really inexpensive and I think that's what brought more broad appeal to them early on. My Venu 2 was $400. That's a tough pill for some to swallow.

There still isn’t any watch that comes close to the quality and number of watch faces Pebble had right? Aside from battery life, that’s why I kept mine. It’s really cool to see Mario hit a block to update the time on mine.

The watch faces were something else indeed. Creative, funny and very geeky.

Garmin Instinct 2. Unlimited battery life, never needs charging. It is thicker than 10mm but it is nearly indestructible.

No needs hacking because it would take all day to use all features it brings. It is nearly the perfect smartwatch.

Came here to say the same thing. It's still hackable to some degree with Monkey C:

https://developer.garmin.com/connect-iq/reference-guides/mon...

That one fails the "toned down" aspect. It looks like one of those old G-Shock monstrosities. Definitely not the same aesthetic as the Pebble.

Just to clarify, you're talking about the version that was never released — the one with the Kickstarter that was cancelled? All of the above features except the HR monitor exist on my PTS, I think.

The Pebble 2 was released to the backers of the Kickstarter campaign. I've had 3 different ones over the years (all of them eventually broke down)...

(correction, I lost one because the band snapped and the watch dropped into the sea).

The second (or third?) kickstarter was for the Pebble (and Time) 2, which was cancelled after Pebble was purchased by FitBit. They still release the base Pebble 2 with the heart rate monitor.

I bought that after the Kickstarter fell through. I loved it until the plastic membrane over the buttons degraded, rendering it open to the elements. It didn't last long after that.

This thread brought back so much nostalgia for me. The Pebble was one of the greatest recent examples of "less is more" in tech design. Mine sadly died not long after they were discontinued, but I loved it. Since then, I got a Huawei watch (I forget which model) and I currently have an Apple Watch, but neither has ever really felt as useful to me. It's funny, they're capable of doing a lot more, but somehow they don't feel as fun or desirable to use as the Pebble did.

Another Garmin Fenix user here - the screen is what separates it from being a Pebble replacement the most. Most Garmin watches use a screen that is roughly on par with the Pebble Time, not the superior high-contrast Pebble 2. And if you get a higher-end Garmin with sapphire, the screen gets even more washed out.

Never tried the Garmin Instinct though - its monochrome screen looks better, but the rest of the watch has a distinctly downmarket feel.

Can the Garmin control music playback from your smartphone?

Yes for Android.

And iPhone. So basically the answer is just "yes".

Yes. I had to look it up, because I always control my music via the headphones. https://www8.garmin.com/manuals/webhelp/fenix66s6xpro/EN-US/...

(and confirmed for iPhone)

Yes, and better than that, most new Garmin watches can also store several GB of music on the device itself and play it over Bluetooth headphones, no need to carry your phone with you.

Watches are a strange sort of luxury good, where some people will pay thousands of dollars, and Garmin aggressively price-segments their products. Use this comparison tool to see the different features:

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/product-comparison-calculator

When people pay large amounts of money for watches, they are doing so for premium materials and exquisite workmanship (brand is often a large factor too, of course). It's not obvious that the same value proposition applies to mass-produced electronics, even if they also tell the time and sit on the wrist.

The materials and workmanship in a Forerunner 955 are almost the same as those in a Forerunner 255.

The latter disables the NFC payments radio on the same radio IC, disables recording power meter and etap/DI2 gear-shift data from bikes even though it has ANT+ radio, disables open-water swim mode, disables multi-sport (triathlon) tracking, disables maps (even though it has the same memory capacity), and doesn't implement the running dynamics/running power software.

It's like a premium printer that's identical to the cheap printer, with the speed inhibitor turned off:

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-rubber-...

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