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Comment by Zetaphor | Hacker News Reader

As someone who was a huge fan of the original Pebble series, it's hard to get excited about this offering when compared to the alternatives available today with more features and a cheaper price.

I'm currently wearing the BangleJS v2 [0] which has the following going for it, all for $90USD:

* 1.3 inch 176x176 always-on 3 bit colour LCD display (LPM013M126) with backlight

* Full touchscreen (6H hardness glass)

* GPS/Glonass receiver

* Heart rate monitor

* 3 Axis Accelerometer

* 3 Axis Magnetometer

* Air Pressure/Temperature sensor

* 175mAh battery, 4 week standby time

* Full SWD debug port on rear of watch

* The OS and every app are open source, all written in Javascript

In my experience it lasts over 2 weeks with multiple daily notifications and wearing it 24/7 for HR and sleep tracking.

The Pebble was a compelling offer when it came out, but I'll have to pass on this one.

[0] https://shop.espruino.com/banglejs2

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The original blog post for the revived Pebble was very clear about the design goals and it drove home something quite clearly: this is not going to deliver a laundry list of features or support all possible lifestyles. It will be focused on doing a few things well because there's a need for a modern Pebble not met by existing watches.

I have a Bangle2 and while it's super fun, I think it perfectly illustrates the point that simply having features isn't enough. I would not say my Bangle2 is the same as my OG Pebble.

As someone who only ever cared about a handful of features (HR, sleep, steps, notifications), the BangleJS is definitely the superior offering imo.

It does everything my Pebble did, it's cheaper, and it's been open source since day one rather than first requiring an acquisition and resurrection.

Obviously different strokes for different folks, Eric is great and I wish him and the team over at Rebble (hi ishot!) all the best, but the smartwatch landscape is very different from what it was in 2014

What's the software like? One of the biggest reasons I'm still using my pebbles is Notification Center, which has the most control over watch notifications that I've ever seen, likes being able to set regex filters and get very fine green control about what notifications get sent to my watch their vibration etc)

Unfortunately it's the software that determines how good such a device is to use. What's currently considered the best firmware for the Bangle?

I will also note that backlit LCD is vastly inferior to e-paper in smartwatches. Size of the watch also matters, there are some tradeoffs you have to make.

The official one, which runs great. And since it's all open JS there's even alternative app menus and launchers if you're not happy with the stock option

I forgot to add that this LCD screen is perfectly readable in direct sunlight, I wouldn't know it was not e-ink at a casual glance. Even at extreme angles the only thing that makes it difficult is the reflectivity of the front glass, but I have a large font watchface so even that is a minimal issue.

Pebble's display is also a backlit LCD. It is better than some backlit LCDs but the technology is not fundamentally different.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/pebble/comments/3i6mje/epaper_tech_...

It was e-paper (transreflective LCD), although it had a backlight it is vastly different to your usual backlit TFT.

Checking the datasheet for Bangle's display, it seems to also be a transflective LCD.

ohh, I always thought my Bangle had e-inc display because the clock will last several months on one charge, and the display is always on.

The second version seems to have something more sunlight readable but neither Bangle 1 or 2 seem to be neither transreflective LCDs (e-paper) or e-ink, seems to be just TFT LCDs. At least according to their homepage.

As a banglejs 2 wearer as well: I think it's the closest competitor by a very large margin, but I would absolutely not call it a polished experience. I've had intermittent (and persistent) connection failures (definitely improving over time), heartrate is all over the place and is almost totally unreliable (some weeks my resting heartrate is apparently >200bps, and some I never break 100), the gadgetbridge app has loads of minor wtfs, touches are not well aligned if you have a status bar visible, the UI is kinda laggy, it's not waterproof, and I can probably write up another couple dozen more OTOH if I try for a few minutes.

I consider myself a happy customer, and will definitely recommend it with caveats, there's a lot to like about the banglejs 2. But it's targeting a FAR more hacker-oriented crowd than Pebbles did - I would absolutely not suggest one to people who are not willing to debug their watch. It's quite simple to do so (really, I like it!), but it's not something I can recommend to the normies in my life.

I looked at a few Banglejs-in-action videos and the limitations look so bad that I'm not sure what you'd even build for it. The app store only seems to confirm this.

Here's someone showing what it's like to use the GPS system and lack of mapping: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtEdM2w1VDM

Pebble only has to be a little better to be 2x more usable. Looking at old videos from 8 years ago, the software was much, much better than anything I'm seeing on Banglejs today.

> all written in Javascript

Pass.

All I care about is battery life and level of friction to creating an app.

2+ weeks and extremely low, so language purism is irrelevant imo

Why?

Because dunking on Javascript is trendy

Pebble 's user created apps and watch faces are all JS.

As far as I remember it was either JS or C. cf. https://github.com/pebble-examples

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