The ring sizing has been such a debacle, first with needing to buy (!) their special ring sizing kit because standard sizing wouldn’t be accurate they said, and now they say that the ring sizing kits weren’t true to size and suggest this:
> When in doubt, order a larger size. You can always adjust a larger Index 01 to feel smaller with a foam adhesive or clip but you can’t make it larger!
Pebble never said that anyone "needs" to buy the ring sizing kit. They did suggest that you buy the sizing kit from them for $10, OR 3D print it at home, OR visit a jeweler.
The ring has a button on it that you are going to press often, and you will likely wear it on a different finger than you would normally wear a ring on. That is/was the advantage of the sizing kit IMO: you can try the different sizes and wear the "dummy" ring for a couple of hours or a day and get a better idea of what size and finger will work best for you.
I think calling the ring sizing a "debacle" is being a little over-dramatic. It is a shame the ring kit is off on sizing, but how big of a problem it is, is kind of an unknown right now. It's a limited production product, there will be problems at the start, just like there have been with the Pebble Time 2.
I could be misremembering but I seem to recall them saying that their sizing (the reason you had to buy the special sizing kit) was slightly smaller than normal, and now it turns out the rings are coming out slightly bigger, could it be that all along we should've just used normal US ring sizing?
to be fair, most smart rings (oura, samsung, even the cheap chinese ones on aliexpress) use ring sizing kits. it seems to be standard practice in this space.
agree, not being able to guarantee or even know, it seems, how your sizing works is a deal breaker and i might have to cancel my order until i see how the first reviews come out :/
Yeah, this annoyed me. I live right next door to a jeweler who could have given me a standard sizing easily, but I bought the kit at their suggestion/mild insistence.
What's worse, I threw it out when I was done, given that it was a PLA sheet with no other apparent use, with it being nonstandard and all. So now I'm not even sure if I need to size up, because I'm not going to buy a second sizing kit to refresh myself on the fit.
> We considered this but decided not to for several reasons:
> You'd probably lose the charger before the battery runs out!
> Adding charge circuitry and including a charger would make the product larger and more expensive.
> You send it back to us to recycle.
I don't think this is true. The charging circuit could have been in the charger itself. To provide access to the battery, one of the terminals could be behind a transistor enabled by the micro. The charger could then send a signal to the ring to unlock the battery terminal. Then all you needed to do was expose two/three pads externally.
Exposed terminals would need a lot more than a single transistor. It would need ESD protection and it would change the outer case from being a complete sealed over mold into something that had to seal against two exposed terminals. That’s a big change.
They would also need to ship a separate charger device to go with it, which approaches the complexity of the simple ring product.
These are solvable problems, but it would increase the cost, decrease their margins, or both.
For a niche, low volume product with an unknown market demand I think making the simplest possible version of the product is a good idea to start, but at $99 it’s getting into the range where buyers don’t want to think of it as a disposable item.
The bigger problem is that the 2 year battery life depends on the device being used for only short notes like “Add milk to the grocery list”. The people who expect to use this for taking notes or thinking out loud could exhaust the battery in a couple months.
> Exposed terminals would need a lot more than a single transistor. It would need ESD protection and it would change the outer case from being a complete sealed over mold into something that had to seal against two exposed terminals. That’s a big change.
This is a solved problem though. Wireless earbuds can do it. We're probably just talking about a TVS diode.
> For a niche, low volume product with an unknown market demand I think making the simplest possible version of the product is a good idea to start, but at $99 it’s getting into the range where buyers don’t want to think of it as a disposable item.
> The bigger problem is that the 2 year battery life depends on the device being used for only short notes like “Add milk to the grocery list”. The people who expect to use this for taking notes or thinking out loud could exhaust the battery in a couple months.
$75 for a use once device that could last as little as a few months under normal usage, or $100 for something that could operate for 5+ years. Knowing whether there is a market is always difficult, but if you do crack a market you typically only get one chance to get people onboard.
> This is a solved problem though. Wireless earbuds can do it
They’re all solved problems!
That doesn’t change the fact that every additional complication adds cost, complexity, failure points, more warranty returns, and time to market.
Saying it’s just a transistor and a TVS ignores the hard parts like sealing the enclosure and building an entire second device to charge it.
Solvable, but less so for a low volume product with unproven demand. You have to be building a lot of a product to offset the costs of developing it.
> $75 for a use once device that could last as little as a few months under normal usage, or $100 for something that could operate for 5+ years.
The retail price of this device is $99. The $75 is only for the promotional preorder period.
It’s already a $100 product. Adding charging ports and a separate charger is going to be even more expensive unless they start shipping 100,000s of these to build at scale.
Not only that, the charger thing also implies charging it weekly if not more often. I got a pebble watch because I can wear it for 2 weeks without charging. Would hate to have to charge a ring.
I don't think I've ever heard anyone complain about that, and I know a good amount of people who use Garmin watches. My own forerunner is still going strong after 5 (I think) years of use, with multiple runs a week for most of that time.
I've had my Fenix 5 Plus swapped once during warranty because of this. And the replacement's contacts started to corrode again when I sold the watch. It might not happen to all models, but some are very prone to it.
I know someone whose garmin watch refused to charge after a few years, not sure if it was caused by sweat. Mine is starting to get wonky after a few years. I keep worrying I'll plug in some time and it will stop. anec-data is not that reliable of course.
Yeah, that's really not great at all! From their website:
> Wait, it's single use?
Yes. We know this sounds a bit odd, but in this particular circumstance we believe it's the best solution to the given set of constraints
I don't want to be too harsh, since it seems like the pebble team are working hard at producing some exciting tech. But intentionally making a single use device is phenomenally irresponsible in today's climate.
I know they say they'll recycle them, but it'd be naive to expect anything other than a tonne of these becoming e-waste.
I was initially put off by the lack of recharging too, but I've changed my mind a bit.
I think the amount of ewaste is pretty small. My uneducated guess is that it's probably about the same as a musical birthday card. And unlike a singing card that probably gets used a dozen times and thrown away, the Index can be used >10,000 times before it's time to recycle it (assuming it lives up to the specs)
For comparison, check out the rechargable Stream ring. It's bulkier, costs >2x as much (before including subscription... The sub alone costs more than buying an index every 2 years), and needs to be recharged every night. It's sort of in line with Pebbles advantage over other smart watches- doesn't need to sleep on a charger every night
The ring can record for 12-15 hours before it's empty. I'd guess it's incredibly rare that people throw away their phone before reaching 15h * 20 = 12.5 days of active screen time.
- Human impact on the environment, which e-waste is a big part of, is causing damage to wildlife, and serious climate change.
- There's huge awareness of and push back against bad hardware practices (often around non-replacable batteries) so they must have at least considered this.
> Roughly 12 to 15 hours of recording. On average, I use it 10-20 times per day to record 3-6 second thoughts. That's up to 2 years of usage.
2 years is optimistic I think. 3-6 second thoughts is not much, most ideas I'm having past TODOs are >15 seconds. Plus this would definitely depend also on how regularly you sync to the app.
Bare in mind, these devices have not yet been used in the wild on people outside of the product creator. Maybe one of the use cases is to note down monologues, or to easily record conversations with clients for later review.
1 month battery life is also highly usable, but there at least should be a way to charge it.
Seeing the index in action next to an oura I appreciate how much smaller/thinner the index is (or at least how much less it seems to “spread” my fingers apart with of a width of 6.5mm vs 8mm).
It’s effectively a regular ring with a button on it that’s smaller than a typical 1ct engagement ring. The oura by contrast (even the 4) is a chonker compared to “regular” wedding bands. I’ve tried in the past but personally a very thick ring is a non-starter for me. Might just be a personal sensitivity thing. Clearly the oura sells.
From a V1/MVP/founder lens I am sensitive to the value in shipping a product that just works rather than doubling the complexity with a bms, custom charger, wrap around flex pcb, and associated engineering effort to mitigate ignition hazards. Especially when there’s platform risk in seeing if this thing even gets used. There’s no platform risk on the watch side which has comes miles from my first pebble/Alerta that was one day charge and blackberry phone compatible only.
As for the ewaste argument? If the market demands a rechargeable product then that’s the right move. But from a weight perspective? This feels performative. Even pessimistically three-four 5g device that are 0% recyclable will generate less ewaste than a 200g phone with 55% recovery and a 5% recapture rate of obsolete devices thats turn over every 3.5 years. It’s like 10x less and probably in the ballpark of what a hypothetical “rechargeable” index would look like.
A piezo button would be neat, might be able to generate enough electricity for each use without having to rely on a battery at all. Not sure about the form factor here though.
Or even a thin-film amorphous silicon solar panel + capacitor.
Assuming most of the weight of that ring is the battery, it appears to be storing around 0.5Wh, so two years of operation should amount to approximately 30uW of power.
It should be possible to squeeze this much from a 0.5mm2 amorphous cell in direct sunlight. Considering the ring is 6.6mm wide at the widest point, they could get orders of magnitude more power even in poor lighting conditions, by just wrapping a thin-film solar panel around the ring.
Not sure that would work. Charging is not 100% efficient, and if I remember correctly most batteries need to reach a minimum current to start actual charging. When you're talking micro or pico amps, it barely registers as a signal in most cases.
I’m also baffled that they didn’t do this. If I am buying something that becomes so precious to my workflow then I don’t want a hardware subscription. I also want peace of mind that the company will not be gone, or the product discontinued in a few years.
I dunno. If you need to record your thoughts often enough that you're wearing a smart-ring to do it, then it seems like you're going to burn through the 12 hours of recording time pretty quick.
IIRC EU markets now mandate the USB-C charger for devices (which is not a bad thing, too many throwaway custom chargers....). Adding the port, the USB-C PD circuitry may take up too much room. I think this approach would require some kind of custom charging cradle (probably usb-c connected..). Is having a custom usb-c adapter to charge a device allowed under the rules?
I think the "dock" itself could be USB C easily, it would probably also significantly reduce the cost of the dock.
> Adding the port, the USB-C PD circuitry may take up too much room.
You don't need PD circuitry for this. 5V 500mA over USB2 is more than enough. But the actual port and battery charging circuit is a bit ridiculous at this size.
I'm not sure precisely what the EU rules are, but the requirement should really depend on the dimensions/power of the device.
The index is a ludicrous product. The battery life, they claim, is 2 years. This is one heck of a misrepresentation. It is actually 12-15 hours. They get the 2 years because its meant to be used around 10-20 times a day, in *3-6 second* recordings.
The device is being marketed as external memory for your brain. I'm hardly a philosopher, but I don't have many useful thoughts that are 3-6 seconds in length. heck, when i try to voice record a thought, i'm uhming and erring for the at least 3 seconds.
Even if it was really 2 years, that really doesn’t sound great IMHO. I personally keep my devices a very long time, and given there is no reasons for such a simple device to become obsolete I wouldn’t want to replace it after only 2 years
That discrepancy isn't explainable given a change in daily use. 12hrs vs 2 years is a 1000x difference. You're saying they expected people to use it 1000x less than they actually are? That's them expecting people to use it for 1 min per day, and people actually are using it for 16 hours per day
Low power electronics are all about low duty cycles: if it can be worn but asleep and drawing next to no power for 15 hours and 59 minutes, and recording audio for 60 seconds, they only need enough battery to run the processor for 60 seconds.
No one is using the thing like a dedicated microphone to record their entire day's audio, it's a note-taking tool.
Yeah I know. I misunderstood the 12-15hr battery life comment. They're saying the battery lasts for 12-15hrs *of recording*. Very different statements.
Honestly not sure how this is legal given that the software is not fully baked when the devices ship. That is, people were getting PT2s when there was no way to test the touchscreen because the OS didn't support it yet. Same for speaker.
My guess is that if you got a bad unit and discovered it later when the software was updated, they'd probably swap the unit for you. That seems like more of a no-brainer than the screen crack replacements they're apparently doing.
> most frequent are problems with the touch panel. At first, we thought this could be a hardware problem and replaced around 70 watches. After reviewing the units with our factory, we now believe this could be a software bug. We’re working to fix these issues with a software update - if we can’t, we’ll replace the affected watches (regardless of your warranty eligibility).
EU doesn't impose a minimum manufacturer warranty period. What it imposes is a _seller_ guarantee, for which the manufacturer's limited warranty conditions don't really apply directly anyway. Many companies will offer a 2-year warranty because they know that's how long they need to support the buyer anyway, but I've often seen conditions like "2 year warranty for EU, 1yr in US".
Anyway, iiuc pebble is not doing anything illegal as long as they don't refuse seller warranty for these 2 years
In this case the seller is American and shipping from Asia, so while the warranty should be 2 years in the EU, there is no way to force them as they have no presence in the EU.
They are selling it though. If I (from the EU) buy something directly from the US (or China), I don't expect EU conditions to apply. It's quite common and it's fine if both sides of the transaction understand the deal.
Interdiction at the ports is the buyer's problem, not the seller's. Kidnapping people because of their employer sounds like a great way to lose tourism permanently.
I'm not quite sure what that implies. That they have to support EU customers (since they sell directly to them) for 2 years and their "30 day warranty claim" is overridden?
I think its the same as the UK. The person who sells to the customer is responsible, so if they sell to a retailer who sells to users then the retailer is responsible. If they sell directly the warranty terms cannot override the law so they are responsible.
You realize the EU let Chinese sellers sell lead-containing painted toys to EU babies for 12 years despite endless warnings, right? They will not act unless forced or it's easy enough.
The EU came from the "European Union of coal and steel". It's a business first, not a government. And yes, they've really deceived a lot of people about this.
That's why we have the DMA ... except for Apple ... except for Google, as if that doesn't negate the entire law.
That's why we have the GPDR, except for (just for the Netherlands) any company the government wants https://www.avgregisterrijksoverheid.nl/ (specifically this negates the purpose of the GPDR. The first purpose of it was to protect your medical data from insurers, taxes, police and courts, so the insurer cannot decide you're committing fraud based on your medical data, or raise prices for you, or ... for example) well "ministerie-van-sociale-zaken-en-werkgelegenheid" has a specific exemption so they can regulate whether unemployment money can be used for medical treatment, and which ones ... And that's just one example.
> The EU came from the "European Union of coal and steel". It's a business first, not a government. And yes, they've really deceived a lot of people about this.
That is true, but omits an important part of the motive for that. The aim was to tie France and Germany together economically to discourage them from going to war again.
It became irrelevant quite quickly due to the cold war and NATO, but it was an important part of what was intended.
Feels so fresh to hear their CEO talk so openly and transparently of all the flaws their products still have. Sounds like he's someone very fun to work with.
Nirav from Framework is similar, he speaks openly about compromises they make with their designs and why they make them.
When leaders are both technical and open about these sorts of things it makes me feel like I can trust that they are invested in supporting and improving their products.
The failure rate waving is quite a stretch though. If you take into account reporting rates and time (since most people do not have the watch for long) I'm quite concerned. And I own a PT2. The "look big number, it's not a problem" does not translate to actual sensible failure rates.
To be clear: 51 broken screens in less than two months results in a yearly failure rate of over 1% which is find quite high for a watch.
The fact that he's putting his money where his mouth is (replacing all broken screen PT2s for the foreseeable future) is what gives me confidence that the rate is very low, even if his number is not quite right for the reasons you indicate.
I'm super excited about the Index. All the time, I feel like I go "oh, I need to buy this thing" or "I should message that person about this" but I'm in the middle of a task and then I forget. (Or I have to get out my phone or a notepad to write it down - the phone is distracting and the notepad needs to be synced manually later, which I won't do.) I think my main use case is probably going to be adding stuff to my grocery list while I'm cooking, but I'm also excited about the webhooks integrations - I can pipe my idle while-driving questions to an agent and read the report later, for example. Or maybe I'll connect it to home assistant - "It's cold, turn down the AC please" or "hey can you play some music" without having to break focus. If this all works alright, I'm thinking about figuring out audio-out, so I can ask "what's on my calendar for tomorrow" and get a verbal answer. (Or maybe, putting this+todo lists on e-ink displays in physical space.)
I think the reason this is so exciting to me is that it's a way to interact with technology that's a lot less "evil" feeling. I am at my best when I'm not looking at screens all day, and the index provides an off-ramp that can potentially move several common workflows off those screens. I think even on my technology-off days, using the ring would still be fine. It also looks cool, and speaking into a ring to make things happen is much more aesthetically pleasing to me than "ok google." I really think you can't discount the cool factor here.
I disagree with the super limited warranty terms and the lack of charger for the Index 01, but I am happy to give Eric and the Pebble Team a pass this time while their company is in this stage. I really hope they adopt stronger pro-consumer practices as the company finds its footing, but if they don't the good thing about their watches is how durable they are. I kept my Pebble Time on wrist through 2023, and by then I only stopped because I got sick of trying to repair the adhesive connecting the front bezel(?) to the back case. The PT2 is already a marked improvement over that watch's build quality so I figure I'll be good for at least eight years of daily use.
I don't know if I would count durability as one of Pebble's strengths. The Pebble 2's silicone buttons often failed, and the bezel of the Time scratched if you looked at it wrong. There's also the whole thing with the company failing and only being propped up by Rebble to restore functionality.
I am so excited for my Round 2. The original Pebble Time Round (20mm w/ brown leather strap) is the single best smartwatch I've ever owned. Can't wait to relive it today haha
The original Time was my first smartwatch, which I used for maybe 7 years, until decided to sell it after briefly switching to iphone.
Since then I was constantly looking for something similar in terms of capabilities and battery life.
I pre-ordered my Time 2 immediately after it opened, but since then I started regretting my decision. It's quite an expensive watch, and I got used to living without it, so it the spending seemed unjustified.
But all regrets went away when I received the package. It's a good product. Excited for you too!
But its so cheap compared to other watches, analog watches I mean. And it is also competitively priced against other smartwatches, isn't it? The price really shouldn't feel all that bad.
I wear an analog watch; I've never spent over $200 on a watch, despite being a bit picky (I insist on a day-of-week feature).
Seiko doesn't seem to make the movement in my watch anymore (5M83), but the equivalent automatic-winding mechanical watch can be had for under $200 still.
Casio and Citizen sell analog watches for under $100.
I've been on Amazfit Bip S.
That's 10% of the price if we account for taxes and delivery.
And I haven't even considered the vast majority of alternatives due to (IMO) ugly OLED screens. Wouldn't buy any of those even for 30$, but you're right, they can be quite expensive.
The watch I really want is the Pebble Time 2 with a black-and-white screen.
The Pebble Time 2 is a huge step up from the Pebble 2 Duo in almost every conceivable way, but the contrast ratio on the latter is so much better that I still wear the P2D instead of the PT2, and just resign myself to deal with the lower resolution screen and inferior build quality.
the contrast ratio of a black-and-white e-ink screen is significantly better than the contrast ratio of a color e-eink screen when displaying black and white. It's a very noticeable difference between black-and-white vs dark-grey-on-light-grey. The P2D is much more comfortable to read indoors with the backlight off.
I liked the idea of the Pebble index, but don't really want another device to manage. So I ended up configuring my apple watch to record a memo using the double-pinch gesture. It uses whisper ai, and translation has been great. After voice memo is translated, I parse the text using some apple shortcuts and inject things like tasks into my daily memos.
So far it's been working great, and it's allowed me to offload important ideas that are on the tip of my brain.
Anyone tried/ended up using their Index 01 in any substantial way? Looks interesting but the non-changable battery turned me off a bit, now this post reminded me of the little ring again, looks handy for taking quick voice memos.
I'm on ze list but not a beta tester so haven't used it, but as I remember the claim was to expect up to a couple of years life with moderate use; works out about $40 a year so seems ok to me if I mentally model it as a subscription.
"Battery that lasts for years" being actually 12-15 hours of recording is a huge turn off honestly.
>How long does the battery last?
>Roughly 12 to 15 hours of recording. On average, I use it 10-20 times per day to record 3-6 second thoughts. That's up to 2 years of usage.
They then say:
>Wait, it's single use?
>Yes. We know this sounds a bit odd, but in this particular circumstance we believe it's the best solution to the given set of constraints. Other smart rings like Oura cost $250+ and need to be charged every few days. We didn't want to build a device like that. Before the battery runs out, the Pebble app notifies and asks if you'd like to order another ring.
My oura has lasted ~3 years, I recharge it twice a week usually, and I think it has spent way more than 15-20 hours turned on.
It's just a big faux pas in this day and age of environmental consciousness really. In my country we used to joke that people would buy a new car because the ashtray was full. This reminds me of that.
I don't really care about the environmental consciousness, my issue is that presenting a product with a battery that lasts for years when it actually lasts 15 to 20 hours makes me feel like I'm being lied to.
If it lasts 15 hours of recording and you record on average 5 seconds at a time, that’s about 11000 activations. I think 5 seconds is a pretty conservative estimate, most things I imagine this being useful for would be more looks 2. Easy to see it lasting years in those conditions, but yes you could drain it faster if you used it very heavily.
This is true, but there's a big difference between saying "15-20 hours battery life, which is 11000 5-seconds activations, which last you a few years with 10 5-seconds activation a day" and "years of battery (btw in small text the real number is given). Especially since they mention that this project is hackable/you can do other things with it, knowing in advance you have something like ~100k button presses means some projects feel perfectly and some others won't really work.
> This is true, but there's a big difference between saying "15-20 hours battery life, which is 11000 5-seconds activations, which last you a few years with 10 5-seconds activation a day" and "years of battery
Same issue Apple had when the iPod was new. How big is 20 gigs? Better put 150,000 songs instead…
I am restraining myself from mocking this idea of pollution from discarded smart rings. It takes some effort, but I'm being very mature and saying nothing.
What is there to mock? Making ten smart rings because each one is consumable sounds worse for the environment than making one that has a simple charging circuit?
Well, it would have gone something like this, what I would have said: smart rings everywhere, littering the streets! Landfill sites, crammed full with smart rings! Towering trash heaps of smart rings, unmanageably vast, on fire, falling on us in an avalanche of smart ring pollution, what will we do! This might sound ridiculous, but it all adds up. We have to be concerned about every little bit of waste, because our concern successfully prevents it, as can clearly be seen nowhere.
It's crazy they manage to say this with a straight face when their product still costs $225. Gee, $225 for a disposable piece of e-waste or $250 for a rechargeable device... but hey, at least it reminds you with an advertisement to spend another $225 before it dies!
The Oura Ring costs $350 now and it has an optional $6/month subscription.
Also, rechargeable does not mean it is infinitely rechargeable. After around four years, the Oura's battery will not hold a charge long enough to be useful (record a night's sleep), so it is also disposable.
We are comparing apples and oranges though because the Index is not a smart ring.
The Pebble Time 2 looks pretty tempting to develop a custom running/fitness app for. It's got heartrate detector, accelerometer, vibrator for silent feedback, plus an SDK that works with Linux.
I almost decided to make my own app recently (and was also considering the Pebble) to try and replicate the old basis Peak functionality, but when I found out that the Garmin health data was relatively open and accessible, l decided that it was easier to just make a new badge/gamification system for the Garmin data than to make an entire tracking app.
yes, but the GarminDB [0] project still manages to get most available data by impersonating a browser (admittedly that could be broken eventually). If that happens in the future, I'll probably revisit making an entire tracking app for myself.
It's kind of interesting reading the scathing comments about the lack of a rechargable battery, but it probably makes the most sense if the two year battery life claims are true, as you'd likely be ready for an upgrade by then and the technology would be cheaper and/or more advanced. This thing isn't an iphone. It weighs a few grams. There's likely less silicon and battery in it than in the singing greeting card you got two year old for their birthday. Everyone needs to chill out
I wonder if the functionality od Index 01 will also be available via the Pebble watch? I mean, it would be logical to allow that, all it needs is a separate app for the watch. But I didn't find any clear confirmation of this anywhere.
Less the part where you can do it one handed, I don't see why they wouldn't be. Even the Time Round 2 has a microphone just no speaker. If not official support somebody else can always make it.
owning a time 2. nice watch. but i consider its purchase more as voting with my wallet for future editions. its utility is seriously limited by its dependence on a smartphone. given its size it's rather disappointing that it contains neither mobile, nor wifi, not even gps. while it may be an odd comparison, given my user profile and its feature set it is about as useful as my sensorwatch pro 2 which i really enjoy. i wish there where swappable custom boards for casios with more than three buttons ... the calculator casios would be a dream.
Mobile, WiFi and GPS would require a substantially bigger battery to achieve the planned 30 days (I get about 25 days). I guess it wasn't a design goal.
maybe. i don't see the appeal of 30 days battery at the expense of such relevant features. 3 days would be more than enough for me. also, considering that the watch is practically useless without a connected phone, advertising its excessive battery life is questionable.
This is a bit of a hand wave, sorry, but if you're okay with a 3 day battery life and want those features, then maybe the pebble is just not the watch you're looking for? I hear good things about the Garmin watches.
I deeply appreciate the battery life personally. Every time I charge it is an opportunity to forget to put it back on. I can go on a long trip and not worry about packing a charger. I can wear it at night to track sleeping more easily. And probably most importantly, with weeks of life, there's basically zero chance of me being surprised at 9am after leaving the house that my watch is about to die in a couple hours.
If he had built the feature set you're suggesting, and with the battery life it would require, he'd be competing directly with Apple, Google, and Samsung. And he'd have no key differentiator.
The reason Pebble has a chance at success is because they carved out a niche years ago, and for some reason no one decided to occupy it in their absence.
At least, that's what quartz watches could manage in the early 90s, as does the clock in my microwave oven from the early 2000s. Why would a modern disconnected device would be any worse?
I'd suspect that a watch like the Pebble isn't syncing time with a Quartz crystal but by counting processor ticks - that would be a lot less precise in the long run.
I got the pebble time 2 now for a month. Pebble is the Casio smartwatch.
The issues are a bit sad. But I will happily upgrade with the discount to the revised version of time 2.
To me, a Pebble is better than an apple watch due to battery life and hack-ability. Especially with the latest AI models it is just your imagination. And with ASK and Notification Forwarding it will be much closer to a Apple Watch in functionality.
Apple has been gate keeping for decades. It's a fundamental part of their business strategy.
Anyone still expecting anything different is ignoring reality.
It's really not complicated. If you want to continue to be gate kept, use their products and keep giving them your money. If you don't want to be involved with their shady practices, stop giving them your money and using their products.
Cool watch. Have mine for a while. Would recommend. I love battery time (around 2 weeks with my usage patterns with longer backlight time). Love variability and flexibility of watchfaces. Comparing to my usecases of applewatch I am missing "find my phone" (which is mentioned to be under development) and paying with the watch. Yet increased battery life + hackability compensates those for me.
Hacking your own app is also something easily accessible. When I preordered the watch I thought of a breathing app which could be used with closed eyes. App must indicate breathing phase with vibrations. Guess what? In couple days I got first version running and published (couple more weeks of polishing completely transformed the initial version which still has screenshots in the project folder for historical reasons). In case you also want to meditate/box-breach with your pebble here is it free on any charge
missed the hype ten years ago, but now have a Pebble 2 Duo since about half a year. absolutely love it, although seeing images of the new models makes me a bit jealous. but just being able to see incoming messages on my wrist on a device i have to charge about once a month is so comfortable.
bit of a bummer that the new weather app is not for P2D, but well.
I feel this would have been incredible....in the 2014-2016 timeframe. There just isn't any room for this product anymore. Pebble was at the top of their game before Apple came in and showed them up.
If Apple made a watch with 1/4 the battery life of a Pebble, I would agree. However, there are apparently 20,000 people who prefer to have less functionality and more battery life than Apple/Samsung/Google are interested in offering.
There are other options like Garmin and Amazfit, but honestly the UI on both of those are pretty awful, especially compared to the slick Pebble UI.
...and BUTTONS! Pebble's capabilities are excellent b/c the UX of a ~1.5" screen is wildly different than that of an iPhone. Up/Down/Forward/Backwards and the occasional long-press is an excellent match for on-the-go interaction.
I absolutely hated brushing the iWatch screen and triggering random crap and there was no other way to interact with it! Garmin's w/ 5 buttons and transflective (sunlight-readable) displays have been the closest alternative, and they have a pretty cool "touch-screen alt mode" which you can access via press+hold on two of the diagonal buttons to enable/disable (or automatically starts if you open up the "maps" app for dragging it around).
I went through 3 pebbles with the screen corrupting, and sending it back for a refurb.
I'm jealous that yours is still working, and I'm looking forward to getting back in the fold.
My Fitbit Versa that I finally got after the acquisition is definitely spiritually related, but after Google bought Fitbit and got involved it became terrible with bugs.
Unfortunately it isn't quite everyone, it appears to only be folks affected by the overheating issue and you need to have all the original accessories.
I replaced the strap because the one it came with tore.
I don't know why HN is obsessed with whatever this product is (literally never heard of it) but I'm getting strong juicero vibes. Is this all botted up votes hoping for more VC slop or...?
You've never heard of "the most funded project in Kickstarter history"?
This project is the continuation of Pebble watches after they sold their assets to Fibit, Fitbit got bought by Google and Google open sourced Pebble software.
Nah, it's more than that. They didn't just resuscitate the brand and slap it onto some pre-made hardware. They're building everything from scratch. They are building devices that are just like the original Pebbles, but with smaller bezels and longer battery life. The only potential asterisk is the protruding screen breakage issue on the PT2, which the company swears is not a big issue. Time will tell.
John Pebble sold his community and their collective souls for a corn chip and I genuinely don't understand why they all went rushing back to him; particularly after he went on his little social media crusade against rebble and accused them of stealing and gatekeeping the apps/software that were already -- and have been for years now -- avaliable.
Every time he makes a post I can't help but somehow lose even more respect for him and his stupid ring is so enviromentally unfriendly and anticonsumer that even if I was given one for free by him I would likely still spit in his face and cuss him out.
Also... a 30 day warranty? Does he think that's cute? What the f--.
> John Pebble sold his community and their collective souls for a corn chip and I genuinely don't understand why they all went rushing back to him
youve never made a mistake? you didnt think google had at least a decent shot of making pebble even bigger and better? he has not been shy about google's errors in handling pebble post acquisition. please be kinder - this is clearly his passion and he wants to run things his way. let him cook. spitting on a strangers face just because you dont agree with how they run their business when its really none of yours is something you should reflect on.
The notion that a ring-sized device could be "so environmentally unfriendly" is just not serious. I have no desire to get one, but environmentalism has zero to do with it.
Is my smoke detector "so environmentally unfriendly" because it requires alkaline batteries? There are so many things that are bigger than a ring (and have a greater manufacturing carbon footprint) that we do not think twice about using.
The ring sizing has been such a debacle, first with needing to buy (!) their special ring sizing kit because standard sizing wouldn’t be accurate they said, and now they say that the ring sizing kits weren’t true to size and suggest this:
> When in doubt, order a larger size. You can always adjust a larger Index 01 to feel smaller with a foam adhesive or clip but you can’t make it larger!
Size up and shim it with foam!
Pebble never said that anyone "needs" to buy the ring sizing kit. They did suggest that you buy the sizing kit from them for $10, OR 3D print it at home, OR visit a jeweler.
The ring has a button on it that you are going to press often, and you will likely wear it on a different finger than you would normally wear a ring on. That is/was the advantage of the sizing kit IMO: you can try the different sizes and wear the "dummy" ring for a couple of hours or a day and get a better idea of what size and finger will work best for you.
I think calling the ring sizing a "debacle" is being a little over-dramatic. It is a shame the ring kit is off on sizing, but how big of a problem it is, is kind of an unknown right now. It's a limited production product, there will be problems at the start, just like there have been with the Pebble Time 2.
I could be misremembering but I seem to recall them saying that their sizing (the reason you had to buy the special sizing kit) was slightly smaller than normal, and now it turns out the rings are coming out slightly bigger, could it be that all along we should've just used normal US ring sizing?
Was this a manufacturing issue or something?
How do you manufacture a ring and not know what size it is / sell it to people?
to be fair, most smart rings (oura, samsung, even the cheap chinese ones on aliexpress) use ring sizing kits. it seems to be standard practice in this space.
Are there different jewelry sizing standards, perhaps?
agree, not being able to guarantee or even know, it seems, how your sizing works is a deal breaker and i might have to cancel my order until i see how the first reviews come out :/
Yeah, this annoyed me. I live right next door to a jeweler who could have given me a standard sizing easily, but I bought the kit at their suggestion/mild insistence.
What's worse, I threw it out when I was done, given that it was a PLA sheet with no other apparent use, with it being nonstandard and all. So now I'm not even sure if I need to size up, because I'm not going to buy a second sizing kit to refresh myself on the fit.
Like, come on.
I thought it was reasonable, having bought the $10 sizing kit (3D printed, mailed from SF) and a ring.
Was just checking out the Index 01 [1]:
> Why can't it be recharged?
> We considered this but decided not to for several reasons:
> You'd probably lose the charger before the battery runs out!
> Adding charge circuitry and including a charger would make the product larger and more expensive.
> You send it back to us to recycle.
I don't think this is true. The charging circuit could have been in the charger itself. To provide access to the battery, one of the terminals could be behind a transistor enabled by the micro. The charger could then send a signal to the ring to unlock the battery terminal. Then all you needed to do was expose two/three pads externally.
[1] https://repebble.com/index
Exposed terminals would need a lot more than a single transistor. It would need ESD protection and it would change the outer case from being a complete sealed over mold into something that had to seal against two exposed terminals. That’s a big change.
They would also need to ship a separate charger device to go with it, which approaches the complexity of the simple ring product.
These are solvable problems, but it would increase the cost, decrease their margins, or both.
For a niche, low volume product with an unknown market demand I think making the simplest possible version of the product is a good idea to start, but at $99 it’s getting into the range where buyers don’t want to think of it as a disposable item.
The bigger problem is that the 2 year battery life depends on the device being used for only short notes like “Add milk to the grocery list”. The people who expect to use this for taking notes or thinking out loud could exhaust the battery in a couple months.
> Exposed terminals would need a lot more than a single transistor. It would need ESD protection and it would change the outer case from being a complete sealed over mold into something that had to seal against two exposed terminals. That’s a big change.
This is a solved problem though. Wireless earbuds can do it. We're probably just talking about a TVS diode.
> For a niche, low volume product with an unknown market demand I think making the simplest possible version of the product is a good idea to start, but at $99 it’s getting into the range where buyers don’t want to think of it as a disposable item.
> The bigger problem is that the 2 year battery life depends on the device being used for only short notes like “Add milk to the grocery list”. The people who expect to use this for taking notes or thinking out loud could exhaust the battery in a couple months.
$75 for a use once device that could last as little as a few months under normal usage, or $100 for something that could operate for 5+ years. Knowing whether there is a market is always difficult, but if you do crack a market you typically only get one chance to get people onboard.
> This is a solved problem though. Wireless earbuds can do it
They’re all solved problems!
That doesn’t change the fact that every additional complication adds cost, complexity, failure points, more warranty returns, and time to market.
Saying it’s just a transistor and a TVS ignores the hard parts like sealing the enclosure and building an entire second device to charge it.
Solvable, but less so for a low volume product with unproven demand. You have to be building a lot of a product to offset the costs of developing it.
> $75 for a use once device that could last as little as a few months under normal usage, or $100 for something that could operate for 5+ years.
The retail price of this device is $99. The $75 is only for the promotional preorder period.
It’s already a $100 product. Adding charging ports and a separate charger is going to be even more expensive unless they start shipping 100,000s of these to build at scale.
Not only that, the charger thing also implies charging it weekly if not more often. I got a pebble watch because I can wear it for 2 weeks without charging. Would hate to have to charge a ring.
Also ask any serious Garmin watch user about their charging/data contacts. They start to rot away after 1-2 years of being exposed to sweat.
Just looked at mine and wondered whether I should 3D print a cover for the contacts from TPU. Thanks for the idea!
edit: Done. :-D Better safe than sorry.
I don't think I've ever heard anyone complain about that, and I know a good amount of people who use Garmin watches. My own forerunner is still going strong after 5 (I think) years of use, with multiple runs a week for most of that time.
I've had my Fenix 5 Plus swapped once during warranty because of this. And the replacement's contacts started to corrode again when I sold the watch. It might not happen to all models, but some are very prone to it.
Just have a look at Google results: https://www.google.com/search?q=garmin+watch+contacts+corrod...
I know someone whose garmin watch refused to charge after a few years, not sure if it was caused by sweat. Mine is starting to get wonky after a few years. I keep worrying I'll plug in some time and it will stop. anec-data is not that reliable of course.
Yeah, that's really not great at all! From their website:
> Wait, it's single use? Yes. We know this sounds a bit odd, but in this particular circumstance we believe it's the best solution to the given set of constraints
I don't want to be too harsh, since it seems like the pebble team are working hard at producing some exciting tech. But intentionally making a single use device is phenomenally irresponsible in today's climate.
I know they say they'll recycle them, but it'd be naive to expect anything other than a tonne of these becoming e-waste.
I was initially put off by the lack of recharging too, but I've changed my mind a bit.
I think the amount of ewaste is pretty small. My uneducated guess is that it's probably about the same as a musical birthday card. And unlike a singing card that probably gets used a dozen times and thrown away, the Index can be used >10,000 times before it's time to recycle it (assuming it lives up to the specs)
For comparison, check out the rechargable Stream ring. It's bulkier, costs >2x as much (before including subscription... The sub alone costs more than buying an index every 2 years), and needs to be recharged every night. It's sort of in line with Pebbles advantage over other smart watches- doesn't need to sleep on a charger every night
Constraints include needing to keep component cost low and ensuring that they could sell more hardware in 2 years.
A phone has 10-20x if not more weight of electronics.
I assume you will use your phone for 20-40 years?
The ring can record for 12-15 hours before it's empty. I'd guess it's incredibly rare that people throw away their phone before reaching 15h * 20 = 12.5 days of active screen time.
What do you mean by “today’s climate”?
The EU just mandated cell phones must have user replaceable batteries by 2027: https://www.cereport.eu/news/european-union/91054
So making this single use is kinda flying into the wind in that regard.
The EU just backtracked on user replaceable batteries for wearables.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/26/07/14/apple-watch-meta-...
I was thinking about the combination of:
- Human impact on the environment, which e-waste is a big part of, is causing damage to wildlife, and serious climate change.
- There's huge awareness of and push back against bad hardware practices (often around non-replacable batteries) so they must have at least considered this.
Western Europe is experiencing a record setting deadly heatwave, for one interpretation.
Yeah I agree if it was 10 yrs then I would say no need to charge, but apparently it's 2 yrs? In that time frame you could totally recharge it.
I agree losing the charger is actually pretty likely but THAT'S ON ME. For a $75 product, I don't want to consider it a consumable.
So 100% agreed, +$10 add terminals and a special charger.
> How long does the battery last?
> Roughly 12 to 15 hours of recording. On average, I use it 10-20 times per day to record 3-6 second thoughts. That's up to 2 years of usage.
2 years is optimistic I think. 3-6 second thoughts is not much, most ideas I'm having past TODOs are >15 seconds. Plus this would definitely depend also on how regularly you sync to the app.
Bare in mind, these devices have not yet been used in the wild on people outside of the product creator. Maybe one of the use cases is to note down monologues, or to easily record conversations with clients for later review.
1 month battery life is also highly usable, but there at least should be a way to charge it.
Why can't they just sell the charger separately? If you lose it you buy a new one.
You could even make it a seperate item - buy one with/without the charger, then in 2 years you decide if you want the charger or an upgrade.
Seeing the index in action next to an oura I appreciate how much smaller/thinner the index is (or at least how much less it seems to “spread” my fingers apart with of a width of 6.5mm vs 8mm).
It’s effectively a regular ring with a button on it that’s smaller than a typical 1ct engagement ring. The oura by contrast (even the 4) is a chonker compared to “regular” wedding bands. I’ve tried in the past but personally a very thick ring is a non-starter for me. Might just be a personal sensitivity thing. Clearly the oura sells.
From a V1/MVP/founder lens I am sensitive to the value in shipping a product that just works rather than doubling the complexity with a bms, custom charger, wrap around flex pcb, and associated engineering effort to mitigate ignition hazards. Especially when there’s platform risk in seeing if this thing even gets used. There’s no platform risk on the watch side which has comes miles from my first pebble/Alerta that was one day charge and blackberry phone compatible only.
As for the ewaste argument? If the market demands a rechargeable product then that’s the right move. But from a weight perspective? This feels performative. Even pessimistically three-four 5g device that are 0% recyclable will generate less ewaste than a 200g phone with 55% recovery and a 5% recapture rate of obsolete devices thats turn over every 3.5 years. It’s like 10x less and probably in the ballpark of what a hypothetical “rechargeable” index would look like.
A piezo button would be neat, might be able to generate enough electricity for each use without having to rely on a battery at all. Not sure about the form factor here though.
Or even a thin-film amorphous silicon solar panel + capacitor.
Assuming most of the weight of that ring is the battery, it appears to be storing around 0.5Wh, so two years of operation should amount to approximately 30uW of power.
It should be possible to squeeze this much from a 0.5mm2 amorphous cell in direct sunlight. Considering the ring is 6.6mm wide at the widest point, they could get orders of magnitude more power even in poor lighting conditions, by just wrapping a thin-film solar panel around the ring.
EDIT:
Or just slap on four of these photodiodes:
https://www.sparkfun.com/miniature-solar-cell-bpw34.html
They're tiny, they're light and even though woefully inefficient, they should do the trick.
I was thinking also about some kind of coil. Being a ring it should be possible to induce a current, with the chassis as a ground.
It would be funny if solar panels worked this way. We could just spray paint our homes with them. Free energy!!
Not sure that would work. Charging is not 100% efficient, and if I remember correctly most batteries need to reach a minimum current to start actual charging. When you're talking micro or pico amps, it barely registers as a signal in most cases.
I’m also baffled that they didn’t do this. If I am buying something that becomes so precious to my workflow then I don’t want a hardware subscription. I also want peace of mind that the company will not be gone, or the product discontinued in a few years.
Cool, let me know when I can order your ring.
Hopefully version two is rechargeable.
This is version one, I'm not particularly worried as I will probably upgrade to version two by the time the battery runs out.
I dunno. If you need to record your thoughts often enough that you're wearing a smart-ring to do it, then it seems like you're going to burn through the 12 hours of recording time pretty quick.
Probably. Also, if I/we don't buy version one, there may not be a version two.
> To provide access to the battery, one of the terminals could be behind a transistor enabled by the micro
So it’s a brick as soon as the battery goes flat?
yep, you can buy a new one
IIRC EU markets now mandate the USB-C charger for devices (which is not a bad thing, too many throwaway custom chargers....). Adding the port, the USB-C PD circuitry may take up too much room. I think this approach would require some kind of custom charging cradle (probably usb-c connected..). Is having a custom usb-c adapter to charge a device allowed under the rules?
I think the "dock" itself could be USB C easily, it would probably also significantly reduce the cost of the dock.
> Adding the port, the USB-C PD circuitry may take up too much room.
You don't need PD circuitry for this. 5V 500mA over USB2 is more than enough. But the actual port and battery charging circuit is a bit ridiculous at this size.
I'm not sure precisely what the EU rules are, but the requirement should really depend on the dimensions/power of the device.
For these kinds of devices, yes.
I think it uses a silver oxide battery which is not rechargeable.
The index is a ludicrous product. The battery life, they claim, is 2 years. This is one heck of a misrepresentation. It is actually 12-15 hours. They get the 2 years because its meant to be used around 10-20 times a day, in *3-6 second* recordings.
The device is being marketed as external memory for your brain. I'm hardly a philosopher, but I don't have many useful thoughts that are 3-6 seconds in length. heck, when i try to voice record a thought, i'm uhming and erring for the at least 3 seconds.
"The index is a ludicrous product"... for you, and most of the general public.
But there are 1,000s of us that heard about it, researched the limitations.. and still bought one immediately.
At $100 even if it only lasts a year it would still be worth it. For me.
Even if it was really 2 years, that really doesn’t sound great IMHO. I personally keep my devices a very long time, and given there is no reasons for such a simple device to become obsolete I wouldn’t want to replace it after only 2 years
Given their track record hitting the battery life projections for the P2D and PT2 (almost), I would give them the benefit of the doubt on the Index01.
That discrepancy isn't explainable given a change in daily use. 12hrs vs 2 years is a 1000x difference. You're saying they expected people to use it 1000x less than they actually are? That's them expecting people to use it for 1 min per day, and people actually are using it for 16 hours per day
Low power electronics are all about low duty cycles: if it can be worn but asleep and drawing next to no power for 15 hours and 59 minutes, and recording audio for 60 seconds, they only need enough battery to run the processor for 60 seconds.
No one is using the thing like a dedicated microphone to record their entire day's audio, it's a note-taking tool.
Yeah I know. I misunderstood the 12-15hr battery life comment. They're saying the battery lasts for 12-15hrs *of recording*. Very different statements.
> Is there a warranty?
> Yes, we warrant against manufacturing defects for 30 days after you receive your order.
Is this the shortest warranty on a consumer electronics device ever? What on earth are they thinking.
Honestly not sure how this is legal given that the software is not fully baked when the devices ship. That is, people were getting PT2s when there was no way to test the touchscreen because the OS didn't support it yet. Same for speaker.
My guess is that if you got a bad unit and discovered it later when the software was updated, they'd probably swap the unit for you. That seems like more of a no-brainer than the screen crack replacements they're apparently doing.
That is what they say in the article:
> most frequent are problems with the touch panel. At first, we thought this could be a hardware problem and replaced around 70 watches. After reviewing the units with our factory, we now believe this could be a software bug. We’re working to fix these issues with a software update - if we can’t, we’ll replace the affected watches (regardless of your warranty eligibility).
It's also under the minimum EU demands, but I guess they found a loophole or they just hope they won't be fined.
EU doesn't impose a minimum manufacturer warranty period. What it imposes is a _seller_ guarantee, for which the manufacturer's limited warranty conditions don't really apply directly anyway. Many companies will offer a 2-year warranty because they know that's how long they need to support the buyer anyway, but I've often seen conditions like "2 year warranty for EU, 1yr in US". Anyway, iiuc pebble is not doing anything illegal as long as they don't refuse seller warranty for these 2 years
In this case the seller is American and shipping from Asia, so while the warranty should be 2 years in the EU, there is no way to force them as they have no presence in the EU.
The pressure is “you can’t sell this here”
They are selling it though. If I (from the EU) buy something directly from the US (or China), I don't expect EU conditions to apply. It's quite common and it's fine if both sides of the transaction understand the deal.
What's the mechanism for stopping them?
Interdiction at the ports. Seizure of persons related to the enterprise crossing into the jurisdiction.
Interdiction at the ports is the buyer's problem, not the seller's. Kidnapping people because of their employer sounds like a great way to lose tourism permanently.
Because the warranty is too short? I'll go with 'no chance' on that one.
Oh yeah, as a practical matter I totally agree though lack of enforcement invites more participation by other actors.
I'm not quite sure what that implies. That they have to support EU customers (since they sell directly to them) for 2 years and their "30 day warranty claim" is overridden?
I think its the same as the UK. The person who sells to the customer is responsible, so if they sell to a retailer who sells to users then the retailer is responsible. If they sell directly the warranty terms cannot override the law so they are responsible.
You realize the EU let Chinese sellers sell lead-containing painted toys to EU babies for 12 years despite endless warnings, right? They will not act unless forced or it's easy enough.
The EU came from the "European Union of coal and steel". It's a business first, not a government. And yes, they've really deceived a lot of people about this.
That's why we have the DMA ... except for Apple ... except for Google, as if that doesn't negate the entire law.
That's why we have the GPDR, except for (just for the Netherlands) any company the government wants https://www.avgregisterrijksoverheid.nl/ (specifically this negates the purpose of the GPDR. The first purpose of it was to protect your medical data from insurers, taxes, police and courts, so the insurer cannot decide you're committing fraud based on your medical data, or raise prices for you, or ... for example) well "ministerie-van-sociale-zaken-en-werkgelegenheid" has a specific exemption so they can regulate whether unemployment money can be used for medical treatment, and which ones ... And that's just one example.
> The EU came from the "European Union of coal and steel". It's a business first, not a government. And yes, they've really deceived a lot of people about this.
That is true, but omits an important part of the motive for that. The aim was to tie France and Germany together economically to discourage them from going to war again.
It became irrelevant quite quickly due to the cold war and NATO, but it was an important part of what was intended.
The toys are the problem because there are so many being imported they can't possibly control them all.
And if the EU tries to do something structural about it the backlash is enormous - look at that 3 euro fee for packages for example.
Same in Québec, where the legal minimum for guaranteeing against defects is 1 year (enforced at both the manufacturer and seller).
Usually the terms will use wording like "30 days or the minimum applicable by law".
Feels so fresh to hear their CEO talk so openly and transparently of all the flaws their products still have. Sounds like he's someone very fun to work with.
Nirav from Framework is similar, he speaks openly about compromises they make with their designs and why they make them.
When leaders are both technical and open about these sorts of things it makes me feel like I can trust that they are invested in supporting and improving their products.
The failure rate waving is quite a stretch though. If you take into account reporting rates and time (since most people do not have the watch for long) I'm quite concerned. And I own a PT2. The "look big number, it's not a problem" does not translate to actual sensible failure rates.
To be clear: 51 broken screens in less than two months results in a yearly failure rate of over 1% which is find quite high for a watch.
The fact that he's putting his money where his mouth is (replacing all broken screen PT2s for the foreseeable future) is what gives me confidence that the rate is very low, even if his number is not quite right for the reasons you indicate.
Some people just break screens
What would your acceptable failure rate be?
Less than 1% yoy combined. This is far over that when you combine all failures. Battery degradation is of course excluded.
I'm super excited about the Index. All the time, I feel like I go "oh, I need to buy this thing" or "I should message that person about this" but I'm in the middle of a task and then I forget. (Or I have to get out my phone or a notepad to write it down - the phone is distracting and the notepad needs to be synced manually later, which I won't do.) I think my main use case is probably going to be adding stuff to my grocery list while I'm cooking, but I'm also excited about the webhooks integrations - I can pipe my idle while-driving questions to an agent and read the report later, for example. Or maybe I'll connect it to home assistant - "It's cold, turn down the AC please" or "hey can you play some music" without having to break focus. If this all works alright, I'm thinking about figuring out audio-out, so I can ask "what's on my calendar for tomorrow" and get a verbal answer. (Or maybe, putting this+todo lists on e-ink displays in physical space.)
I think the reason this is so exciting to me is that it's a way to interact with technology that's a lot less "evil" feeling. I am at my best when I'm not looking at screens all day, and the index provides an off-ramp that can potentially move several common workflows off those screens. I think even on my technology-off days, using the ring would still be fine. It also looks cool, and speaking into a ring to make things happen is much more aesthetically pleasing to me than "ok google." I really think you can't discount the cool factor here.
I disagree with the super limited warranty terms and the lack of charger for the Index 01, but I am happy to give Eric and the Pebble Team a pass this time while their company is in this stage. I really hope they adopt stronger pro-consumer practices as the company finds its footing, but if they don't the good thing about their watches is how durable they are. I kept my Pebble Time on wrist through 2023, and by then I only stopped because I got sick of trying to repair the adhesive connecting the front bezel(?) to the back case. The PT2 is already a marked improvement over that watch's build quality so I figure I'll be good for at least eight years of daily use.
Its so good having Pebble back in action though.
I don't know if I would count durability as one of Pebble's strengths. The Pebble 2's silicone buttons often failed, and the bezel of the Time scratched if you looked at it wrong. There's also the whole thing with the company failing and only being propped up by Rebble to restore functionality.
I am so excited for my Round 2. The original Pebble Time Round (20mm w/ brown leather strap) is the single best smartwatch I've ever owned. Can't wait to relive it today haha
I received my Time 2 recently.
The original Time was my first smartwatch, which I used for maybe 7 years, until decided to sell it after briefly switching to iphone.
Since then I was constantly looking for something similar in terms of capabilities and battery life.
I pre-ordered my Time 2 immediately after it opened, but since then I started regretting my decision. It's quite an expensive watch, and I got used to living without it, so it the spending seemed unjustified.
But all regrets went away when I received the package. It's a good product. Excited for you too!
But its so cheap compared to other watches, analog watches I mean. And it is also competitively priced against other smartwatches, isn't it? The price really shouldn't feel all that bad.
I wear an analog watch; I've never spent over $200 on a watch, despite being a bit picky (I insist on a day-of-week feature).
Seiko doesn't seem to make the movement in my watch anymore (5M83), but the equivalent automatic-winding mechanical watch can be had for under $200 still.
Casio and Citizen sell analog watches for under $100.
You're right, that's just my perspective.
I've been on Amazfit Bip S. That's 10% of the price if we account for taxes and delivery.
And I haven't even considered the vast majority of alternatives due to (IMO) ugly OLED screens. Wouldn't buy any of those even for 30$, but you're right, they can be quite expensive.
The watch I really want is the Pebble Time 2 with a black-and-white screen.
The Pebble Time 2 is a huge step up from the Pebble 2 Duo in almost every conceivable way, but the contrast ratio on the latter is so much better that I still wear the P2D instead of the PT2, and just resign myself to deal with the lower resolution screen and inferior build quality.
Just don't use a color watch face?
the contrast ratio of a black-and-white e-ink screen is significantly better than the contrast ratio of a color e-eink screen when displaying black and white. It's a very noticeable difference between black-and-white vs dark-grey-on-light-grey. The P2D is much more comfortable to read indoors with the backlight off.
https://i.imgur.com/Z2Yrkl1.jpeg
Your reasoning is correct but Pebbles don't use E Ink screens. That's a specific technology made by a company by the same name.
agree 100%
I liked the idea of the Pebble index, but don't really want another device to manage. So I ended up configuring my apple watch to record a memo using the double-pinch gesture. It uses whisper ai, and translation has been great. After voice memo is translated, I parse the text using some apple shortcuts and inject things like tasks into my daily memos.
So far it's been working great, and it's allowed me to offload important ideas that are on the tip of my brain.
Anyone tried/ended up using their Index 01 in any substantial way? Looks interesting but the non-changable battery turned me off a bit, now this post reminded me of the little ring again, looks handy for taking quick voice memos.
I'm on ze list but not a beta tester so haven't used it, but as I remember the claim was to expect up to a couple of years life with moderate use; works out about $40 a year so seems ok to me if I mentally model it as a subscription.
Update: ah, here (obv the founders claim):
https://repebble.com/index
How long does the battery last?
Roughly 12 to 15 hours of recording. On average, I use it 10-20 times per day to record 3-6 second thoughts. That's up to 2 years of usage.
"Battery that lasts for years" being actually 12-15 hours of recording is a huge turn off honestly.
>How long does the battery last?
>Roughly 12 to 15 hours of recording. On average, I use it 10-20 times per day to record 3-6 second thoughts. That's up to 2 years of usage.
They then say:
>Wait, it's single use?
>Yes. We know this sounds a bit odd, but in this particular circumstance we believe it's the best solution to the given set of constraints. Other smart rings like Oura cost $250+ and need to be charged every few days. We didn't want to build a device like that. Before the battery runs out, the Pebble app notifies and asks if you'd like to order another ring.
My oura has lasted ~3 years, I recharge it twice a week usually, and I think it has spent way more than 15-20 hours turned on.
It's just a big faux pas in this day and age of environmental consciousness really. In my country we used to joke that people would buy a new car because the ashtray was full. This reminds me of that.
I don't really care about the environmental consciousness, my issue is that presenting a product with a battery that lasts for years when it actually lasts 15 to 20 hours makes me feel like I'm being lied to.
If it lasts 15 hours of recording and you record on average 5 seconds at a time, that’s about 11000 activations. I think 5 seconds is a pretty conservative estimate, most things I imagine this being useful for would be more looks 2. Easy to see it lasting years in those conditions, but yes you could drain it faster if you used it very heavily.
This is true, but there's a big difference between saying "15-20 hours battery life, which is 11000 5-seconds activations, which last you a few years with 10 5-seconds activation a day" and "years of battery (btw in small text the real number is given). Especially since they mention that this project is hackable/you can do other things with it, knowing in advance you have something like ~100k button presses means some projects feel perfectly and some others won't really work.
> This is true, but there's a big difference between saying "15-20 hours battery life, which is 11000 5-seconds activations, which last you a few years with 10 5-seconds activation a day" and "years of battery
Same issue Apple had when the iPod was new. How big is 20 gigs? Better put 150,000 songs instead…
I am restraining myself from mocking this idea of pollution from discarded smart rings. It takes some effort, but I'm being very mature and saying nothing.
You are not restraining yourself from mocking, you are somehow doing something even less conducive and more annoying
I did my best! You should reinforce this attempt at self-restraint!
What is there to mock? Making ten smart rings because each one is consumable sounds worse for the environment than making one that has a simple charging circuit?
Well, it would have gone something like this, what I would have said: smart rings everywhere, littering the streets! Landfill sites, crammed full with smart rings! Towering trash heaps of smart rings, unmanageably vast, on fire, falling on us in an avalanche of smart ring pollution, what will we do! This might sound ridiculous, but it all adds up. We have to be concerned about every little bit of waste, because our concern successfully prevents it, as can clearly be seen nowhere.
It is a small amount of resources yes but all these little bits add up too.
There's a reason that we're banning all types of disposable electronics including vapes.
So either these disposable smart rings are banned or they're not.
Wait, so it can record for 12-15 hours, then it dies and there's no way to recharge it?
That's like, horror game flashlight levels of longevity.
> other smart rings like Oura cost $250+
It's crazy they manage to say this with a straight face when their product still costs $225. Gee, $225 for a disposable piece of e-waste or $250 for a rechargeable device... but hey, at least it reminds you with an advertisement to spend another $225 before it dies!
From the website it seems the ring is $75. So definitely cheaper
The Oura Ring costs $350 now and it has an optional $6/month subscription.
Also, rechargeable does not mean it is infinitely rechargeable. After around four years, the Oura's battery will not hold a charge long enough to be useful (record a night's sleep), so it is also disposable.
We are comparing apples and oranges though because the Index is not a smart ring.
It still pains me the only way to access some features is to have an account on Apple, Google, or Microsoft. No standard auth, no generic oauth.
The app has the ability to connect to any MCP Server. Could that be used for your use-case?
Interesting. Curious, what features exactly?
Is it to download the Pebble mobile app?
The Pebble Time 2 looks pretty tempting to develop a custom running/fitness app for. It's got heartrate detector, accelerometer, vibrator for silent feedback, plus an SDK that works with Linux.
I almost decided to make my own app recently (and was also considering the Pebble) to try and replicate the old basis Peak functionality, but when I found out that the Garmin health data was relatively open and accessible, l decided that it was easier to just make a new badge/gamification system for the Garmin data than to make an entire tracking app.
Didn't Garmin recently change the terms of their deal and put the API behind a paywall?
yes, but the GarminDB [0] project still manages to get most available data by impersonating a browser (admittedly that could be broken eventually). If that happens in the future, I'll probably revisit making an entire tracking app for myself.
[0] https://github.com/tcgoetz/GarminDB
It's kind of interesting reading the scathing comments about the lack of a rechargable battery, but it probably makes the most sense if the two year battery life claims are true, as you'd likely be ready for an upgrade by then and the technology would be cheaper and/or more advanced. This thing isn't an iphone. It weighs a few grams. There's likely less silicon and battery in it than in the singing greeting card you got two year old for their birthday. Everyone needs to chill out
I wonder if the functionality od Index 01 will also be available via the Pebble watch? I mean, it would be logical to allow that, all it needs is a separate app for the watch. But I didn't find any clear confirmation of this anywhere.
It will be - see Eric's responses here https://github.com/coredevices/mobileapp/issues/270
I am very keen to use the PT2 version. Don't need a dedicated ring.
Less the part where you can do it one handed, I don't see why they wouldn't be. Even the Time Round 2 has a microphone just no speaker. If not official support somebody else can always make it.
Probably https://apps.repebble.com/brain-dump-index01-for-your-pebble...
owning a time 2. nice watch. but i consider its purchase more as voting with my wallet for future editions. its utility is seriously limited by its dependence on a smartphone. given its size it's rather disappointing that it contains neither mobile, nor wifi, not even gps. while it may be an odd comparison, given my user profile and its feature set it is about as useful as my sensorwatch pro 2 which i really enjoy. i wish there where swappable custom boards for casios with more than three buttons ... the calculator casios would be a dream.
Mobile, WiFi and GPS would require a substantially bigger battery to achieve the planned 30 days (I get about 25 days). I guess it wasn't a design goal.
maybe. i don't see the appeal of 30 days battery at the expense of such relevant features. 3 days would be more than enough for me. also, considering that the watch is practically useless without a connected phone, advertising its excessive battery life is questionable.
This is a bit of a hand wave, sorry, but if you're okay with a 3 day battery life and want those features, then maybe the pebble is just not the watch you're looking for? I hear good things about the Garmin watches.
I deeply appreciate the battery life personally. Every time I charge it is an opportunity to forget to put it back on. I can go on a long trip and not worry about packing a charger. I can wear it at night to track sleeping more easily. And probably most importantly, with weeks of life, there's basically zero chance of me being surprised at 9am after leaving the house that my watch is about to die in a couple hours.
If he had built the feature set you're suggesting, and with the battery life it would require, he'd be competing directly with Apple, Google, and Samsung. And he'd have no key differentiator.
The reason Pebble has a chance at success is because they carved out a niche years ago, and for some reason no one decided to occupy it in their absence.
> considering that the watch is practically useless without a connected phone
It can still tell you the time. Its primary function is a watch.
It will drift, significantly, without being connected to a device to set the time.
...by, at most, a minute or so each year.
At least, that's what quartz watches could manage in the early 90s, as does the clock in my microwave oven from the early 2000s. Why would a modern disconnected device would be any worse?
I'd suspect that a watch like the Pebble isn't syncing time with a Quartz crystal but by counting processor ticks - that would be a lot less precise in the long run.
I got the pebble time 2 now for a month. Pebble is the Casio smartwatch.
The issues are a bit sad. But I will happily upgrade with the discount to the revised version of time 2.
To me, a Pebble is better than an apple watch due to battery life and hack-ability. Especially with the latest AI models it is just your imagination. And with ASK and Notification Forwarding it will be much closer to a Apple Watch in functionality.
If only iOS didn't gatekeep some of its most useful functions, that would be great.
Apple has been gate keeping for decades. It's a fundamental part of their business strategy.
Anyone still expecting anything different is ignoring reality.
It's really not complicated. If you want to continue to be gate kept, use their products and keep giving them your money. If you don't want to be involved with their shady practices, stop giving them your money and using their products.
What functionalities are limited on iOS? I'm curious, because I'm considering Pebble watch as I'm disappointed with Garmin.
Migicovsky wrote an article on it:
https://ericmigi.com/blog/apple-restricts-pebble-from-being-...
That said, I'm happy with my Pebble on iPhone (though I'd be happier if it had fuller access).
Now with Pebble you only receive iOS notifications.
Soon in Europe you can reply to notifications via voice.
> The issues are a bit sad. But I will happily upgrade with the discount to the revised version of time 2.
The what? The only discount mentioned in the article is when they stop replacing cracked glass for free and heavily discount replacements instead.
And the only hardware changes mentioned are making sure they all get assembled correctly.
I should have said 'a discount' since I indeed hope they make a revised version of Time 2.
"But I will happily upgrade with the discount to the revised version of time 2."
Has an updated version been mentioned anywhere?
Wow, the UI on that weather app is slick! Well done to whoever designed/implemented it.
Cool watch. Have mine for a while. Would recommend. I love battery time (around 2 weeks with my usage patterns with longer backlight time). Love variability and flexibility of watchfaces. Comparing to my usecases of applewatch I am missing "find my phone" (which is mentioned to be under development) and paying with the watch. Yet increased battery life + hackability compensates those for me.
Hacking your own app is also something easily accessible. When I preordered the watch I thought of a breathing app which could be used with closed eyes. App must indicate breathing phase with vibrations. Guess what? In couple days I got first version running and published (couple more weeks of polishing completely transformed the initial version which still has screenshots in the project folder for historical reasons). In case you also want to meditate/box-breach with your pebble here is it free on any charge
https://github.com/podgorniy/pebble-box-breathing
missed the hype ten years ago, but now have a Pebble 2 Duo since about half a year. absolutely love it, although seeing images of the new models makes me a bit jealous. but just being able to see incoming messages on my wrist on a device i have to charge about once a month is so comfortable.
bit of a bummer that the new weather app is not for P2D, but well.
Are they still using eink?
It's a low power transflective LCD branded as e-paper, not e-ink. So it has none of e-inks downsides (namely low refresh rate and image persistence)
I kind of think so. This is why I believe the battery duration is so good. But it is a better eink display then 10 years ago.
I feel this would have been incredible....in the 2014-2016 timeframe. There just isn't any room for this product anymore. Pebble was at the top of their game before Apple came in and showed them up.
If Apple made a watch with 1/4 the battery life of a Pebble, I would agree. However, there are apparently 20,000 people who prefer to have less functionality and more battery life than Apple/Samsung/Google are interested in offering.
There are other options like Garmin and Amazfit, but honestly the UI on both of those are pretty awful, especially compared to the slick Pebble UI.
...and BUTTONS! Pebble's capabilities are excellent b/c the UX of a ~1.5" screen is wildly different than that of an iPhone. Up/Down/Forward/Backwards and the occasional long-press is an excellent match for on-the-go interaction.
I absolutely hated brushing the iWatch screen and triggering random crap and there was no other way to interact with it! Garmin's w/ 5 buttons and transflective (sunlight-readable) displays have been the closest alternative, and they have a pretty cool "touch-screen alt mode" which you can access via press+hold on two of the diagonal buttons to enable/disable (or automatically starts if you open up the "maps" app for dragging it around).
Long battery, sunlight readable, buttons.
finally.... my time 2 should be shipped by the end of the month. I've been waiting for it for ages! can't wait!
I want this so badly, but unfortunately, shipping to Europe comes with unpredictable customs fees.
I had my PT2 shipped to Germany. Watch cost $225 and then I had to pay an additional $58.54 in taxes / customs fees.
They’re not going to support legacy pebble by any chance?
Legacy pebbles still work great with rebble.io. I still use my pebble time daily connected to my android phone.
I went through 3 pebbles with the screen corrupting, and sending it back for a refurb.
I'm jealous that yours is still working, and I'm looking forward to getting back in the fold. My Fitbit Versa that I finally got after the acquisition is definitely spiritually related, but after Google bought Fitbit and got involved it became terrible with bugs.
They did the decent thing with the Versa and refunded everybody.
How did i miss this?
Unfortunately it isn't quite everyone, it appears to only be folks affected by the overheating issue and you need to have all the original accessories. I replaced the strap because the one it came with tore.
They... kind of do, software-side at least. What kind of support are you looking for?
I don't know why HN is obsessed with whatever this product is (literally never heard of it) but I'm getting strong juicero vibes. Is this all botted up votes hoping for more VC slop or...?
You've never heard of "the most funded project in Kickstarter history"?
This project is the continuation of Pebble watches after they sold their assets to Fibit, Fitbit got bought by Google and Google open sourced Pebble software.
No, it's a nostalgia thing from us olds + the long battery life and hackability.
I also haven't used it, but apparently people liked the old pebble: https://www.reddit.com/r/pebble/comments/1ijjm5w/people_who_...
It’s all nostalgia mining
Nah, it's more than that. They didn't just resuscitate the brand and slap it onto some pre-made hardware. They're building everything from scratch. They are building devices that are just like the original Pebbles, but with smaller bezels and longer battery life. The only potential asterisk is the protruding screen breakage issue on the PT2, which the company swears is not a big issue. Time will tell.
John Pebble sold his community and their collective souls for a corn chip and I genuinely don't understand why they all went rushing back to him; particularly after he went on his little social media crusade against rebble and accused them of stealing and gatekeeping the apps/software that were already -- and have been for years now -- avaliable.
Every time he makes a post I can't help but somehow lose even more respect for him and his stupid ring is so enviromentally unfriendly and anticonsumer that even if I was given one for free by him I would likely still spit in his face and cuss him out.
Also... a 30 day warranty? Does he think that's cute? What the f--.
> John Pebble sold his community and their collective souls for a corn chip and I genuinely don't understand why they all went rushing back to him
youve never made a mistake? you didnt think google had at least a decent shot of making pebble even bigger and better? he has not been shy about google's errors in handling pebble post acquisition. please be kinder - this is clearly his passion and he wants to run things his way. let him cook. spitting on a strangers face just because you dont agree with how they run their business when its really none of yours is something you should reflect on.
The notion that a ring-sized device could be "so environmentally unfriendly" is just not serious. I have no desire to get one, but environmentalism has zero to do with it.
Is my smoke detector "so environmentally unfriendly" because it requires alkaline batteries? There are so many things that are bigger than a ring (and have a greater manufacturing carbon footprint) that we do not think twice about using.
Agreed, that’s a silly argument.
You should worry more about your daily commute than a little ring.
It’s plastic straws all over again.