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Comment by NewUser76312 | Hacker News Reader

I loved Pebble back in the day, and Eric is a great guy and friend to entrepreneurs trying to build cool things.

I do wonder how a modern revival of Pebble will compete from a product perspective within the current landscape. Obviously there's the high-end Apple Watches, but there's also incredibly cheap and long battery life products from China that you can see on Aliexpress and similar. Fitness tracking is another related niche that seems oversaturated, unless you do something really unique in biometrics sensing.

So it seems like a hard market to get back into, curious where they take things.

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I used a super-cheap Chinese smartwatch (Amazfit Bip S) for years and recently switched to the Pebble. The Bip's battery lasted forever and it did check a lot of feature boxes, but overall it was clunky to use and not in any way hackable.

I switched to a Pebble 2 Duo recently and while the features are comparable on paper (multi-week battery life, reflective display, basic health tracking, etc.), everything is just nicer on the Pebble. The software is thoughtful and fun and there are tons of third-party apps, so it can do all kinds of things the Bip could never do.

There really isn't a huge market for this kind of thing; most people, including nerds, want a watch with a brightly colored screen and tons of health metrics and service integrations. I imagine Pebble will stay a boutique brand this time around.

If there is market for long lasting watch, I think it is if it looks like a traditional round watch. Or if it can work as outdoors watch. Garmin is moving from transflective to AMOLED for better colors, and there might be spot for rugged, long-lasting, cheap watch.

I think Eric has more-or-less implied that they will probably make a Pebble Time Round successor (no doubt with worthwhile battery life this time, given how much more the Duo is)

They sold the whole production run of Pebble 2 Duos, and they are keeping the company small to be sustainable this time. I think they have a chance.

The Pebble software is second to none in nailing the basics. I'll definitely continue to choose Pebble over no-name brands on AliExpress.

> They sold the whole production run of Pebble 2 Duos,

They actually sold more than the whole run; I ordered one, and recently got an email informing me that they don't actually have the parts to fulfill the order.

The key value of Pebble to me was its incredible C SDK that made it super easy to write custom apps for it. I remember way back I got full turn-by-turn navigation working on it.

One thing I don't understand:

> Pebble 2 Duo is sold out! We are not making more. If you want a Pebble, I recommend pre-ordering a Pebble Time 2 soon.

Is this supposed to be a collector's item? I'm not sure I'd want to invest in an ecosystem where damaging the device means I'm out or stuck waiting in line for replacement - with no guarantee the new device will be similar enough.

Pebble 2 Duo were reusing the existing stock of Pebble 2 housings and displays. This model was intended as a limited run from the beginning.

Pebble Time 2 are designed from scratch and expected to be still available after the pre-order batches have been shipped out.

Thanks for the clarification.

I just hope supporting this limited run model will not consume too much resources.

I think they have a very clear niche: nerdy techies (like me).

The question is indeed if it's a big enough market to carry to the company. I hope so.

The Pebble brand name definitely helps them break back into the market. Even some of my non-techy friends recognize the name.

except for the apps for those cheap watches, all your data is uploaded to servers somewhere all the time I assume.

I heard that no one likes him because he has no morals, but that's just what i heard

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