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Comment by mrinterweb | Hacker News Reader

Pebble seems to be the only watch company that I feel understands what a smartwatch should be. It feels like everyone else is trying to make a phone replacement. Pebbles are more of an extension to your phone. Sure it can do some things without the phone, but it isn't trying to make calls, access mobile data with its own sim, use GPS. Those kinds of watches feel like they are designed for athletes who want to leave their phone at home. I'm not that guy. My phone comes with me everywhere, so why would I want phone-light on my wrist when my phone in my pocket can do it better?

Pebble also gets battery life. Pebble's 2 weeks compared to 1 day on my pixel watch 3. Want to use that cool sleep tracking feature on your smartwatch? Guess what? Its on the charger.

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I'm a runner, so obviously biased, but I implore everyone (to the point of annoyance) to check out some of the cheaper Garmin smart watches. They use MIP displays so the battery life runs about 2 weeks, you get phone notifications, the ability to find your phone, sleep scoring, step counting, heart rate monitoring. Then there's the obvious GPS run recording which you don't have to use. There's more stuff as well but I don't really use that like NFC card payments, music controls, but overall it hits a nice balance of features versus battery life.

For the sake of fair comparison, my wife had an Apple watch, which looked better and had way more features, but the 1 day battery life became such a frustration it sat in a dresser drawer. My last Garmin lasted 5 years with daily use and sports, and only died because I took it into the sea on vacation after the waterproof seal failed on the screen. I replaced it the day I got back with the successor model and couldn't be happier.

I'm not shilling for Garmin (or at least not being paid to), I love the Pebbles and I'm very much looking forward to the launch as I want a more fashionable smartwatch. Apple, Samsung et al have kinda tainted the smartphone market with feature vomit, when in fact there's a lot of good stuff out there, it's just not as hip.

> check out some of the cheaper Garmin smart watches. They use MIP displays so the battery life runs about 2 weeks

Same deal with the watch of the article. It uses the same display: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46471292

The difference between such Garmin watches and Pebble Round 2 seems to be trading off hardware like built-in GPS and NFC for open source software and thinness. 100% worthwhile trade IMO.

No HRM on the pebble which makes it a totally separate use case and can't be compared at all with the Garmin ones.

The Pebble Time 2 has a heart rate monitor

Isn’t this thread about the pebble round 2 which is the closest from form factor to a garmin ? Moreover, GPS is lacking on any pebble anyhow which is also a major use case and again therefore, garmin’s and pebble’s can’t be compared, 2 different use cases for me.

The round 2 is round similar to a Garmin but the Garmin watches are significantly thicker,.more similar to the time 2.

Even the PT2 is significantly thinner than Garmins, roughly 2mm. That's about 15% thinner, which is a big deal in my book. Not as thin as AWs though, but not off by too much. Based on photos, it looks like the PR2 will be 2mm thinner than the PR2, which would make it thinner than AWs.

Even the OLED Garmin watches last much longer than a day. My Venu 3 lasts for about 4 days with me running every day.

Not a worthwhile trade if you want to run / exercise with metrics.

Seconding the Garmin watches, been using a Forerunner for years and the battery still lasts over a week with an always-on display. Does about as much as a Pebble and even has a documented SDK with sideloading. The refresh rate is very low but totally fine for a watch, I think newer models have much better displays. The only thing I wish were better is exporting all the tracked health data in a format I can use myself. Using the official tool for that I couldn't even get heart rate data.

Maybe the (partial) support of Gadgetbridge is sufficient: https://gadgetbridge.org/gadgets/wearables/garmin-watches/

> They use MIP displays so the battery life runs about 2 weeks

Double-check this because they have a lot of OLED models now alongside their MIP ones. Battery life is more or less the same either way with AOD off, but with AOD enabled the OLEDs fall behind the MIPs.

OLED is also a heck of a lot less readable in sunlight. They're constantly improving, but the brightness they need to pump out to actually compete is extreme and they're still nowhere near that.

Yes, and they are outright removing the LCD displays from some of their major lines, (e.g. Fenix 8 Pro). The writing is on the wall.

I find the Garmin UI to be awful, and the Pebble UI to be a breeze. Also, Garmins are pretty bulky compared to Pebbles, and many of them don't have buttons that can be used to control music, for those of us who find touchscreen interfaces to be lacking.

If you don't want to use the touchscreen (I'm in the same boat, totally get it) you need to avoid their "lifestyle" ranges (Venu, Vivoactive, etc) and stick to the "outdoors"/"sport" ranges (Forerunner being the most entry-level of these), these have 5 side buttons (3 left/2 right) and the UI is designed around button-only use.

Man I wish the Garmin UI was better. I have a vivomove luxe that looks absolutely gorgeous (more hybrid smart watches PLEASE!) but the UI is so hard to navigate that I wear my ugly old Apple Watch much more.

Granted, the UI for Garmins is pretty clunky compared to the Pebble interface :(

Huh? Are you sure you aren’t thinking of another brand? Literally every garmin watch I can find on their site has buttons.

The size is also very much watch specific. They will all be thicker than a pebble, but they’ll also all have far more features. Like pulse ox, which is one of the main drivers of thickness.

Nope, some are touch screen only or with only 1-2 buttons. The Garmin's with 5 buttons (eg: Forerunner 55 at ~$170) are decent once you get used to the button-mechanisms, but pebble's UX for "productivity notifications" has always been top-tier.

I seriously cannot understand how to see old notifications on my Garmin. On the Pebble it was just "scroll up" (or down, I don't remember). But on the Garmin it's like multiple button pushes, and even then the list of notifications is not complete. I basically figure if I don't see a notification when it comes in I won't be able to find it in the Garmin's history.

Old notifications, assuming a 5 button watch, tap the middle button, then select notifications which on my watch is the first option in the list.

Appreciate the help! That contains some notifications, but not all. For example, none of my text messages or emails are there. It's mostly a bunch of alerts from my security system/cameras, for some reason.

> Nope, some are touch screen only

Which ones are touch screen only?

Garmin Lily 2 Classic (shazam!). Certain Venu and VivoActive seem like 1-button or 2-button.

And also by "touch screen only", I mean like: "can you set an alarm with the buttons like a CASIO from 1982?" ...if you have to use the touch-screen for swiping like a monkey in a one square inch area to set (or turn on) an alarm, then the watch "doesn't have buttons" IMHO.

Pebble had Up/Ok/Down on the right side, and "Android-Back" on the lower-left. So you just generally navigated tree-like menus, and you could set shortcuts to long-presses of up/ok/down (ie: start/request Uber, next train from nearest station, music controls).

I can't wait to have it again, as while Apple says "you don't need to be tied to your phone!" with their watches, Pebble actually delivered on it. You still needed your phone nearby or in bluetooth range, but you could comfortably "leave it" on the table, or in the bedroom or whatever and not worry about missing an important phone call, and still get "just enough" connectivity to drip out of the internet that you didn't need your phone unless you were transitioning into "using your phone for a task".

When I was looking a couple years ago, most Garmins had at least 2 buttons, but only those with 5 supported music control via buttons.

I think I have used the pulse oximeter maybe 1x/year, and that's counting during COVID shutdowns, when people talked about pulse ox more than in normal times.

I will keep my Garmin and will use it when exercising. But I would never buy another one as long as I can get Pebbles instead.

I've waited for years to get a Garmin, ever since Google started removing features from FitBit. The specs are great for many of the models.

But they were all ass ugly, too big, or both. I ended up buying a Pebble because Garmin just never made anything I actually wanted to put on my wrist.

I had two pebble watches, and I used them daily for years. I rarely use my pixel watch 3, mainly because of charging. I only have one proprietary charger for the watch and sometime it is on my desk, sometimes near my bed, sometimes somewhere I can't find. I don't need my watch, but I do need my phone, so I charge the phone, and forget that my watch exists for a few months at a time. I think the biggest hurdle for me and watches is daily charging. I will not buy another smartwatch unless the battery is at least a week. Pebble round 2 having two week battery is great!

I've looked at Garmin, because I have the fitbit sense 2 and was looking for something with a reasonable battery life.

However, I think Garmin has made the flaw of overcomplicating their product offerings. I ended up pre-ordering a pebble because I implicitly don't like a company that tries to segment their market that hard on smart watches.

Every Garmin I've tried has been a complete mess, laggy, and deeply unstable in its connection and what notifications it supported (if any), whether it was cheap or expensive.

I'd love an alternative, but from the models I've tried I don't think Garmin is anywhere near what I liked about Pebbles. Closer than some brands, but not anywhere near what I'd consider "close". Bangle.js is closer, for all its (many) flaws.

I switched over to Coros devices and have been fairly impressed with the performance over the last 5 months. Excellent battery life on the APEX series.

> For the sake of fair comparison, my wife had an Apple watch, which looked better and had way more features, but the 1 day battery life became such a frustration it sat in a dresser drawer.

To each their own, but it sounds like your wife just couldn't get into the "happy path" routine of an Apple Watch user.

I've been using an Apple Watch since Series 5 introduced the always-on display. I wear it for roughly 23 hours a day, and charge it whenever I'm in the bathroom. I'm fine with this routine 99% of the time, but I'm also not someone who'd camp or stay outdoors for more than a night.

Before that, I was using a Amazfit Bip and was really proud of its 30+ day battery life. I very much prefer the features the Apple Watch has.

That happy path works okay for a while but provides very little margin for when the battery inevitably starts to degrade. I’m a few years in and now every few days it’s started to die at around 8pm (yet claims the battery health is still just barely outside replacement range which is … quite convenient for Apple).

as someone who only recharges their garmin watch maybe once a month(with dozens of hours of activity tracking), lol at daily recharging of a watch. that completely eliminates it as a possible product for me.

even after a few years with battery degradation I rarely recharge my watch more than once every 2-3 weeks.

it's kind of wild to me that folks would daily recharge a watch.

As a reluctant runner, I still don't see any value in a smartwatch. I just use my phone and it does everything I want, which is basically, play podcasts and record my run for Strava.

I did previously have a smartwatch which did heart rate monitoring, but really, once I'd confirmed that when I exercised harder my heart rate went up, I lost interest in it.

I dont see the point of smart watches either. I wear a casio / gshock with the backlight button that sticks right up on the front of the watch. i am on my second watch now cz my sister gifted it to me. the first is ticking away happy with 0 charging , battery changes to date.

0 reasons to change.

my sister otoh has an apple watch that she never charges, lies in a drawer which i hear about when she's trying to find her phone. conversation ends with "eh i should charge it maybe"

if i ever buy a smart watch, will likely be the pebble

I tried a Garmin for a while but the UI bugs/inconsistencies/onboarding process put me off a lot so I eventually got rid of it. Using an old Apple watch SE at the moment and apart from the minor inconvenience of charging it overnight (no need for sleep tracking) it does everything better.

not defending garmin, but they completely redid the onboarding process last year. watch data and everything transfers right over to new devices now. I took me like 10 minutes to setup my new fenix a few months ago.

The problem I have with Garmin is lack of support for older devices. They practically bricked my old bike computer. Unfortunately it's been awhile and I can't recall the details of the issue. I have since switched to Wahoo but have only had it for about 3-4 years now.

Can you get turn-by-turn navigation with Google Maps on these watches?

Exactly this. Pebbles feel like they were built from the ground up to be a watch, whereas the Apple Watch and Android Wear feel like they started from a phone and stripped things away until it became a watch.

Separately, it baffles me that Garmin, despite them having also built a watch OS from the ground up, never understood watch/limited-button UX. Their Instinct and Forerunner watches have all sorts of wonky, hidden and arcane interactions with buttons (long press this to X, press this here to Y). Pebble proves that a simple, shallow, and linear menu system works great!

> Pebble proves that a simple, shallow, and linear menu system works great!

Hard to say this is true when Garmin watches are far more successful than Pebble. That aside, the forerunner is a sports watch first where you want lots of physical buttons that don't get bothered by sweat. The better Garmin comparison is the Venu series which only have two buttons https://www.garmin.com/en-US/c/wearables-smartwatches/?serie....

I'm making a subjective comparison here, true. But spend fifteen minutes with each company's watches and you'll see what I mean.

> Hard to say this is true when Garmin watches are far more successful than Pebble.

A company's success != UX efficacy. That's like saying Apple's products had terrible UX in 1997 because they were flailing up against their Microsoft counterparts of the same era, despite the fact that Apple's UX guidelines of the nineties are regularly raised here as a rubric for UX evaluation, even against Apple's own modern products!

> The better Garmin comparison is the Venu series which only have two buttons

I'm not sure you've ever used a Pebble, but Pebble OS is entirely button-driven with four buttons, whereas the Forerunner and Instinct have five. I've never used a Venu, but isn't it primarily touchscreen-driven?

(yes, the upcoming pebble watches do have touchscreens, but I believe that's just for use in apps and watchfaces, not navigating the system)

> Hard to say this is true when Garmin watches are far more successful than Pebble

This may not be true for long, honestly. Pebble hasn't made watches in years, and I wouldn't be surprised if within 2-4 years they were selling more units than Garmin. The Pebble UI is a dream, especially compared to Garmin. I could never get my parents to get a Garmin, but a Pebble could totally work for them. Super intuitive, hardly needs charging, gives them notifications when they're in a different room than their phone, always-on/always-readable screen.

Very unlikely. The reason Garmin watches are successful is because they've carved out an audience (athletes, health and exercise focused). Pebble might have a nice UI but most people would be better off with an Apple Watch or whatever the current flavour of the week is on Android

I think a lot of people bought AWs because they seemed like the right thing to get, integrated easily, and were more or less easy to use.

But most people I know who have AWs don't use most of the functionalities they provide. If you went up to 20 random AW wearers and ask them if they would give up a bunch of features they don't use (like the awful Siri assistant) in exchange for 15-30x the battery life, I think a lot of them would say yes.

Add onto that the fact that Pebbles are cheaper than AWs, and I think we're going to see a non-trivial number of people "upgrading" from AWs to Pebbles when the batteries start to degrade.

> like the awful Siri assistant

Ironically, I just talked to all my mates about our Apple Watches, and universally Siri on your wrist for setting timers and replying to messages with voice, completely hands free, was the killer app that everyone agreed on.

Setting a timer is as simple as bringing your wrist to your face and saying the amount of time.

I literally only use Siri on my Apple Watch, I’ve only triggered it accidentally on my iPhone and have the hot word disabled on all my other devices. Of course, all I ever use it for is setting timers and alarms on the watch, but still…

Well, Garmin is a GPS company, not a watch company. The watch is simply the most popular form factor.

Pebbles were originally built to be bicyclist accessories but they pivoted to smart watches when they realized that the market opportunity was larger.

You might be talking about Garmin now-smartwatch devices. The first Forerunners look like something you'd strap on a bike's handlebars. They weren't referred to as smartwatches, but as "personal trainers" and didn't seem to display the time-of-day to classify as a watch. Pebbles and the predecessor InPulse seem to always have been smartwatches, though the need seems to have started by wanting to avoid taking out one's phone while on the bike. Garmin pivoted, but I don't think Pebble did.

How was the Pebble born? - Twitch https://share.google/jEulfpqJNh6S5yBuL

What I want is a smart watch that lets me map hardware buttons and rotary knobs to arbitrary actions on my Android phone. For example I want to be able to use the knob to control the volume of whatever I'm listening to on my phone.

I worked on a prototype of this idea back in school[0]

Does Pebble support this?

[0]: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lTOxHxHFjwJXeCLROAPf6OJD...

No rotary dial, and... I think no, the closest you'd get is to run an app on the watch (so you can capture the three not-"back" buttons) plus a companion app on your phone to receive events from it and do [stuff]. But that'd mean you'd have to open the app on your watch to control what's on your phone.

The media controls might be able to do the volume part automatically out of the box though? I forget exactly what their UI did when I had music playing, but I think it had volume and skip controls. That's nowhere near arbitrary control though.

I love the bells and whistles watches and I'm not an athlete. I love it in case I forget my phone, I still get all the notifications. I can pay with it. I can watch my home security. Something like the pebble wouldn't work for me anymore. Despite being a first day Kickstarter backer. The charging doesn't bother me because for me a watch is mainly for when I'm not home.

Garmin has been doing this for years now. The watches are built incredibly well and are well worth the cost.

I use a Fenix 7x pro solar and it's one of my favorite pieces of hardware right now. I dread having yet another item to charge and keep track of, but this thing lasts a full month if I'm not actively tracking workouts. My only complaint is it's not hackable like a pebble, but honestly I'm not sure what functionality I'd add to it, other than Doom for lols. I really just use it to tell the time, see phone notifications as they arrive, altitude/baro/compass when outdoorsing, and for heart rate tracking. Works great with Gadgetbridge, handles the abuse of my physical job, and doesn't get in my way like other smart watches I've tried, where I had to remember to charge it every other day or I couldn't track my sleep. This watch lives on my wrist and tells me days in advance when it needs a charge!

I've never tried Pebbles but Huawei also has the same philosophy, mine has 2 weeks battery life and does all I need (which also doesn't include replacing the phone). I don't understand why people would buy watches with 1 or 2 days of battery life.

I would say Amazfit are great, I don't need an app store and a programmable watch to do cool stuff in whatever programming language on weekends.

The set of pre-installed apps, integration with watch messages, call notifications and media controls are enough.

However maybe I am old fashioned, the oldie Timex and Casio smartwatches were also good enough for me.

I like Amazfit well enough but I found the UI to be English-second and therefore a bit confusing. Also, I don't trust a company like Amazfit to have my GPS location at all times.

It works alright for me.

I would rather not trust non-European companies with my data, given current geopolitics, but here we are.

> Pebble seems to be the only watch company that I feel understands what a smartwatch should be.

So, why do you think Pebble didn’t succeed? I think that’s because you’re a minority, and demand for a Pebble-like product is too low at the price point where it would be a viable business.

IIRC they got out over their skis financially. Eric did a podcast interview where he talked about what went wrong, I think it was this one. [1]

He's self-funding this company and doing pre-orders, which means that risk should not exist this time around.

But to GP's point, I agree that Pebble knows what smartwatches are, and they make the best ones. But it turns out that lots of people want (or have been convinced by marketing that they want) a wrist-worn computer, which has been a boon for Apple/Google.

I think the new Pebbles will convert a lot of people because the battery life skips two orders of magnitude (in the time sense), going from ~1 day to ~1 month. That and the slick user interface should be attractive to folks who are considering upgrading their AWs as the battery degrades. Some will realize that they don't need all the computer-y functionality that the AW provides and just go with a Pebble. The fact that they're a bit cheaper, and available in a nice-looking round case is an added bonus.

Like a lot of people, I assumed I would like AWs, and that they would continue to evolve to better and better battery life. But they haven't approached Pebble territory and I can see that the functionality they provide is not worth the tradeoff for me. I just don't care to tap at a computer on my wrist. Maybe other people do, but I'd bet that Eric's going to win over a lot of AW users who realized they are overkill.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc5I0rM2ORc

The finance comments may be right. Another factor would be marketing budgets and existing brand recognition. The watches are marketed as having all of these features, and I think customers got lost in the feature comparison instead of thinking if they really want a smart watch to do that. Many customers aren't thinking if they really want to pay another monthly for a watch data SIM. I think people lost sight that their phone can do all that stuff, and they are going to be bringing their phone with them so why would they need redundant functionality generally worse than than what their phone can do. If pebble gets a marketing budget, I would hope they focus on messaging of what makes their watches stand out.

Google bought them and killed them. The same thing is happening to Fitbit

Google did not buy and kill them. They died (for financial reasons) before they were sold for parts to Fitbit, who were later bought by Google.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_(watch)#Closing_of_Pebb...:

“On December 7, 2016, Pebble Technology filed for insolvency[82] with Fitbit acquiring much of the company's assets and some employees.”

Love my core 2 duo. I’m a light user so my battery pulls almost 3 weeks. It’s fun to use too tbh

I'm not much of an athlete, and I don't have a smartwatch, but the idea of leaving my phone at home sometimes without being totally disconnected from comms does appeal to me somewhat.

Would that not just be replacing a phone with another smaller phone strapped to your wrist?

Doesn't the fact that you are connected and communicable make whatever device you choose to use essentially a phone?

I will say, if it is possible, going out without any form of internet/comms enabled device can be very liberating. We all used to do it, and I think many of us have gotten used to the idea that we need to be on call or have some sort of utility in case of emergencies that are very unlikely to happen.

Google has really stepped up their game with the Pixel Watch 4 in terms of battery life. I easily get at least 3 days, compared to < 1 day for my Pixel Watch 3.

exactly this. My Galaxy Wear sits in a drawer 10 months per year, as I only use it as a wrist-strapped mini-smartphone when I go to the beach. It's too bulky and cumbersome to wear every day. The Pebble Time 2 I plan to use every day, as it does exactly what I want in a smartwatch sans wireless payments

If it doesn't tell me distance to the hole, then its just a pretty bracelet.

How far can you stretch your arm?

Garmin does this too, but for a completely different demographic

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