This post is just a love letter to Pebble and the Pebble Time. This is my most beloved smartwatch. I bought a Pebble Time in 2015 the next year they got bought out by Fitbit. After they shut down the Pepple app and its store I caved and bought a Fitbit Versa. It was close to the Pepple in style and features. And it worked pretty well for a long time. However, earlier this year my Fitbit died and went into a permanent boot loop. I reached out to Fitbit for help but the best they could do is give me a discount on a new Fitbit. Better than nothing but I wasn’t down to spend that kind of cash.
Cheap Dumb Casio
So I decided to forgo smart watches and buy a Casio F-901w. It’s a classic digital watch that can go anywhere and survive just about anything I’ll throw at it. It’s my go-to watch whenever I go to the pool. Life was good and having the hourly chime was extra nice since it allowed me to notice the passage of time. Not having my watch monitor my every move and every heartbeat was liberating. Being able to tell the time without flicking my wrist just the right way was a habit I had to unlearn. It was also small and lightweight so I hardly noticed it was there, it never got caught on a long-sleeved shirt or jacket.
Call me old if you want to.
It made me realize how much you don’t need a smartwatch and how much physical buttons were superior when interacting with such a small interface. It had 90% of the features you’d want on your wrist, date, day of the week, and time. It also had an alarm and a stopwatch, and all this for less than $20. 1/10th of a Fitbit. And 1/25th of an iWatch. Still that 10% of features the Casio was missing, I did miss.
Samsung missFit
Thus I pulled out my Samsung Fit 2. It was free with my Samsung S20FE phone. And honestly, it was enough - I got notifications, could tell the time, could check the weather. It even had good wrist turn detection so I didn’t have to flick my wrist too often at the screen. All this, coupled with weeks of battery time. Did I mention the Casio has a ten-year battery?
But the touch screen was clunky, the stopwatch and timer were hard to input and often got canceled because of accidental touches. It happened with workouts too. It just dropped the ball. The lack of watch face choices was tough too. The screen was impossible to read with sunglasses on. And lastly, it wasn’t comfortable to wear.
Still, I use it from time to time when I don’t want my Pebble to get damaged or its charging. Getting a wrist buzz works better than one from my pocket most times.
My heart will always be in Pebble
The Pebble from the get-go kicked ass. After I figured out how to sideload the no longer available Pebble app onto my iPhone, I was ready to rock.
I instantly fell back in love with the tactile buttons, the myriad of watch faces, the lack of a heart rate monitor, the look and feel of it on my wrist, and the e-ink display. Not to mention it still is holding out a four-day battery lifespan.
It outshines anything I’ve worn and even my wife’s iWatch feels clunky by comparison. Having to input a pin on a tiny screen to access apps on my wrist is wack.
Display and build
The E-ink display alone makes it a better experience. No “Always on Display” eating the battery, that’s the default nature of it! Honestly, if a watch came out with a comparable e-ink display I’d consider it as refreshing as a Pebble. I think the muted colors of color E-ink enhance the watch’s usability during micro-interactions. Nowadays there are hybrid watches that I’ve looked at. They too are going the way of the Pebble, and getting discontinued.
Next are the physical buttons, goodbye fat fingers. I know asking for real buttons nowadays is like asking for a physical keyboard on my smartphone. Call me old if you want to. But having buttons on the small space of my wrist feels better and makes getting the thing to do what I want more attainable. Because of the lack of swipe ability the menus are straightforward and I’ve never gotten confused by it. I’m sure if I had an iWatch as a daily driver I’d figure it out. Whenever I see my wife writing out text messages I get jealous. Still, I stand By the lack of a touch screen to be a good thing.
Next, I want to talk about the form factor. They knew what they were doing. Since it has no heat rate tracker it’s thinner than most smartwatches at 9.5mm, only weighs 24 grams, and it has a curve to it so it sits comfortably on the wrist. Not a straight brick that presses against it. It has a bezel on the face and that is nice because it gets banged around at the end of my flailing meat sticks. It has an industry standard 22m swatch band so it is interchangeable with any other normal band you want, no stupid proprietary mechanisms just to cause extra grief. With a 30m resistance to water, it’s also safe from splashes and rain. However, since they are now discontinued I’d never take it into the pool, just to be safe.
Only the best features
Biometrics are a scam, change my mind.
Heart rate and SpO2 tracking are useless for the everyday person. I’ve never given a thought to my heart rate. It is a stat that A. You can track yourself and B. Means nothing unless you have a reason to keep tabs on it. And the accuracy of these measurements is debatable anyway. So at best they are worthless and at worst they are another point of data that companies can sell about us. My Pebble Time doesn’t have it and gets better battery life because of it.
I underestimate the abilities of a modern smartwatch since I have never used one as a daily driver.
But it does track my steps and sleep. And that’s enough and useful in my day to day. Steps because they have been proven to be a metric for activity in the day and sleep because knowing how many hours I got each night can help me prepare for what the day is going to shape up to be. Also monitoring it long term has been shown to help understand symptoms of disorders like sleep apnea that could kill me.
Customizable
The last thing I want to touch on is the watch faces, apps, and general personality of the watch. They had fun making this, from the smear animations when you get a notification, the coffee cup filling while you charge the watch, to the little mouse that pops up when you activate silent mode. It all makes it a joy to use.
Then there are the watch faces and apps. The watches themselves are not a product made by Pebble but because of how they treated the community and let them develop their own it is a huge reason why I stick with them. Fitbit also has a huge selection, many similar to Pebble and that is a reason why I was happy with it for so long.
The apps for Pebble are just as fun as the watch itself. When the watch was still going strong there was a Tea Time app that had a setting to set timers for your black, white, green, and herbal teas. As well as a cooldown timer that used thermodynamic calculations to tell you when the tea was safe to drink. But simple games were fun like Mr.Runner. The creativity in the community it’s unparalleled in today’s watches.
This watch is only made possible to be used nowadays due to Rebble and a huge shoutout to their efforts in keeping the Pebble alive.
Caveats
Since I have an iPhone, I need to sideload the now removed Pebble app. In order to do this I sideload it onto my phone using the tutorial provied by Rebble.io. The big downside to this is I have to do it every week. Since I’m on Linux most times, I have to switch into Windows in order to do it. However, I recently figured out how to get a Windows virtual machine to reconize my iPhone when I plug it into my Linux partition and I’ve been able to sideload it that way, score!
The resolution of the watch is also something to be desired. If you use a watchface that requires any kind of fidelity outside of a GIF, you are out of luck. The color e-ink display just can’t handle it. Not to mention, it is only 144x168px resolution with 182 ppi. That is less texture space than a character from Playstation One game. and we all know how detailed those were.
Still, 99% of the time I don’t notice, the watchfaces I use and the notifications are all aware of the limitations and circumvent them well. Still - I underestimate the abilities of a modern smartwatch since I have never used one as a daily driver.
The only thing I think I would add to the Pebble is some internal storage to hold and play music from. And a find my phone feature.
Honorable mention
I also have the Pavlok Shock Clock Max. It has been the only alarm that has woken me up consistently. The vibrations on the Pebble are good but not enough to get me out of a deep sleep. The Pavlok zaps you to wake you up and that silent alarm is perfect for not waking anyone up. It also has a flashlight that I’ve found myself using a lot, especially during a power outage so, yeah, good job Pavlok
Smartwatches are dumb
I think the smartwatch industry turned sideways when the focus went from functional wearables to fitness trackers. When the standard was to place another black mirror on your wrist to emulate the one in your pocket. The Pebble is this great wearable where people can see your style because you can change the band or to a unique watch face that they can see in broad daylight. Sadly, it’s not being made anymore and if I could have this wish fulfilled, to have Fitbit, now Google, bring back e-ink watches to the forefront, I’d be a happy camper. That’s all for now.