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Comment by cbsks | Hacker News Reader

What’s the maximum range to your phone to get notifications? I’ve been trying to cut back on my reflex to look at my phone every few minutes. It’d be great if I could keep my phone on a charging stand and be able to walk around my house and still get notifications.

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Exactly the killer use-case for pebble! It's "blue-toothy" range, so it'll mostly work in adjacent rooms but might have difficulty going diagonally upstairs v. downstairs, or ranging too far outside.

IIRC, pebble had a "vibrate on BT-loss", which could remind you to go retrieve the phone when ranging outside to rake leaves (or forgetting your phone in a restaurant or something).

I think Eric posted about this, and it was an impressive distance. Obviously YMMV based on the size of your house and how thick the walls are, but my old Pebble worked in much of my house and I would expect that as BT has gotten better (on both the phone and watch) in the last decade, the new versions will have even more range.

also probably depends on the building you live in.

not trying to start a flame-war, but i can imagine that you get quite some range in the US, if you live in one of those cardboard-inner-walls houses.

in the 30cm thick solid wall apartment i live in my pebble looses connection the next room over, i almost need line-of-sight for it to work. working at my desk, get up, walk 5 meters to the bathroom, watch looses connection.

maybe my smartphone has a weak bluetooth receiver, compared to other models, who knows...

Is this an old Pebble or a new one?

One of the new ones. Or I guess old ones? I mean I bought it new from Core Devices / RePebble, but it's the OG model. Pebble 2 Duo.

Huh interesting, those have new BT guts, so should have as good of performance as any. I guess 30cm thick solid walls are not common enough for BT to be designed to go through them?

i think it's the by now internet-meme worthy difference between walls in the US compared to most of Europe. i've never lived somewhere which didn't have thick brick or concrete walls. 30cm was a bit high, more like 20cm.

i've seen tons of americans making holes in their walls by punching or falling into them. could never relate myself, i'd have a broken hand or concussion :D

my phone is not very powerful, maybe that's a factor.

bluetooth is 2.4ghz so if you're in a super congested area(lots of wifi) bluetooth can often struggle.

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