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Pebble is dead and hardware buttons are going with it
- paulryanrogers 9y agoMaybe for screen equipped wearables we'll see buttons disappear. Though I doubt keyboards on laptops and game controller buttons will be replaced any time soon. Consider the move from tablets to laptops and paper in schools.
- PaulBGD_ 9y agoI just bought a Pebble 2 SE and it's absolutely phenomenal. I'm hoping over the next few months an open source OS comes out, otherwise I'll have to look for a worse alternative.
- floatboth 9y agohttps://rebble.io https://rebble.io will eventually become usable. But honestly even the stock firmware is fine. Like, it still runs any applications you want.
- Fnoord 9y agoThere's 2 main alternatives for smartwatch OS: For Pebble there is Rebble [1] and for touchscreen smartwatches there is AsteroidOS [2]. You wanna look at the first although most functions of the stock firmware should remain working. They'll for sure stay running till June 2018. As for the subject (I skimmed through the article), I think its true. I own a Pebble 2 as well and I'd love to buy a smartwatch with similar features (7 days battery life, music control, customisable watchface, stepcounter, calendar, alarms, Google Drive app, workout app, 2FA app, to-do list app, and 4 hardware buttons or some inventive way to be easily usable during sports (the scrollwheels don't cut it)). I haven't found any (nevermind the price of the Pebble being very competitive). Mind you, I did find some devices which were very good at some of these features. [1] https://rebble.io https://rebble.io [2] https://asteroidos.org/about/ https://asteroidos.org/about/
- asciimo 9y agoBattery life keeps me from buying a successor to my pebble. The Samsung Gear watches are alluring except for daily charging.
- ocdtrekkie 9y agoFitbit Ionic is the spiritual successor to the Pebble, and has a five day battery life. Has been as low as $229 on sale. Not enough apps for it yet though.
- mikestew 9y agoThis former Pebble owner is quite happy with his Garmin Fenix and it’s week-long battery life. You’ll pay through the nose for it (US$500), but Garmin might have less expensive options with good battery life. I paid the money because I actually use the stuff that makes it cost $500, but something like a 620 might suit you for less dosh.
- Fnoord 9y agoVivoactive 3 also has a week uptime if you do not use GPS [1] Vivoactive HR can do with 8 days even. Both assumes you don't use the GPS. When you use that, battery life is far less, but you don't use that 24/7. I'm quite lost with regards to Garmin as in which devices do what. I feel like I'm lost in a forest. If anyone has a comparison website, I'd love to read such. From what I can tell it appears the Fenix has hardware buttons which the Vivoactive's doesn't. [1] https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/p/571520 https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/p/571520
- lettergram 9y agoGod I miss my Pebble (had a Pebble Time 2)... I took it off when it was bought and haven't put it back on (pull of the bandaid). It was pretty much better than any of my friends watches. We used to trade to try them out. I hate the iWatch because the bettery died all the time and I hate the touch screen (I love dials too). The android wear was a bit more my style, but again battery life sucked and I didn't like it wasn't eInk. Honestly, give me an option to pay double for a pebble and I would. The Pebble Time 2 was the best watch I've ever owned bar none.
- SyneRyder 9y agoWait, you had a Pebble Time 2? And you didn't wear it?!! The Time 2 is legendary with Pebble fans, as it was cancelled and never sold commercially, and Kickstarter backers were given refunds. Only a handful went out to employees & reviewers: https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/12/7/13864804/pebble-time-2-core-canceled-fitbit-deal https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/12/7/13864804/p... I still use my Pebble Time Steel and love it, and I'm not sure what I'll move to next. The Fitbit Ionic is meant to be the successor (and it has hardware buttons too, despite what the Verge article says). But it doesn't have a microphone, and I use that a lot on my Pebble. It's useful for dictating SMS replies when I'm out running, or for setting quick reminder alarms with Snowy (Pebble's version of Alexa / Siri).
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- dTal 9y ago>I took it off when it was bought and haven't put it back on (pull of the bandaid). That seems needlessly masochistic. I was bought a Pebble Time Steel for Christmas just after the FitBit buyout. I use it with Gadgetbridge, never even touched the official app. It's wonderful, and the hardware shows no signs of slowing down.
- Fnoord 9y agoThe hardware will run for a long time. Consider that you recharge once a week. That's about 208 recharges in 4 years. Or 416 recharges in 8 years. That's the lifetime I expect a normal watch to last while the batteries either had to be replaced or it was "self-winding".
- dingo_bat 9y agoClassic verge bullshit where they assume everything apple does is innovative and "the future". If you look at the general market you will find things like note8, which adds a hardware button, pixel2 which adds a hardware squeeze detector, gear s3 which adds a physical circular wheel. I promise you verge will soon publish an article indignantly explaining how every touchscreen needs a notch on the top that looks ugly and obscures viewing area.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ElKoji 9y agoThe author purposely ignores Garmin, who is one of the biggest player in Smart watches, after Apple and among Samsung and Fitbit. They make a strong case of buttons over touch screens, mostly because athletes prefer them, buttons are easy to operate without looking at the screen and the only way when the screen is wet, something that is meant to happen even if you don’t swim at all. But he even ignores the fact that Fitbit themselves always use a combination of touch screen and buttons, including their newest watch The Ionic. I hate when a headline is fabricated this way.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- tallanvor 9y agoI sort of consider real fitness watches, like the Garmin line to be in a different category from smartwatches. My Fenix 3, especially when paired with a chest strap feels like an actual tool for me, whereas the smartwatches I've seen and tried were more like toys. I don't think I can ever switch back to a touchscreen watch until there's one that still has the physical buttons, but also lets you disable the touchscreen functionality during workouts - beyond the difficulty getting the touches to register, sweat has enough minerals that the screen sill start registering false touches, which can wreak havoc during a workout when it starts pausing things! And, of course, with my Fenix 3, I normally charge it less than once a week unless I need to use GPS on it. Touchscreen smartwatches simply don't get that type of battery life.
- scarface74 9y agoCapacitive touch screens don't work well if your hands are sweaty. I couldn't understand for the life of me why Garmin ever introduced a capacitive touch screen watch. I thought my old Garmin GPS watch was amazing when I first got it around 2010.
- tallanvor 9y agoI certainly can understand why they released a watch with a touchscreen. They're trying to appeal to people who aren't necessarily as serious about fitness (or rather, don't feel the need/desire to closely track their workouts), but do want to start doing more, and want some of the benefits that they've heard smartwatches are supposed to offer. I think the smartwatch fad is actually good in some ways, because it is forcing Garmin to look at what they can realistically add into their core watches to help make them more appealing, while still not turning them into a full smartwatch until the technology is there. And I'm calling smartwatches a fad for now because they really are at the moment. The potential for them to be more than a fad is there, but the technology, specifically battery life, isn't there, and the current lineups don't offer a compelling story about why we should consider them an integral piece of technology to keep with us all the time.
- TechLeadVic 9y agoUse a Casio G-Shock with bluetooth if you want control your music. 2 year battery time too.
- gravypod 9y agoI've never heard of these. Do you have any links to store pages? Everything I find seems to be crazy expensive/discontinued.
- shakna 9y agoCasio watches tend to be "crazy expensive", or more than everyone else anyway. So far as I can see G-Shocks range from $200-$1100 [0], which is about normal for a Casio. The one with bluetooth, the G'MIX, is around $350, [1] which sounds about right for them (their famous calculator watch is 50+, even though its fairly basic). [0] https://www.bevilles.com.au/watches/g-shock https://www.bevilles.com.au/watches/g-shock [1] https://www.bevilles.com.au/casio-g-shock-bluetooth-g-mix-series-model-gba400-1a9 https://www.bevilles.com.au/casio-g-shock-bluetooth-g-mix-se...
- gravypod 9y agoThat's insane. Are there any similar BT enabled watches with a long (2+ year) battery life? Being able to configure from a smart phone and control actions from the watch sounds cool.
- Cyberdog 9y agoAre you talking American dollars? Don't know about the others, but Casio's awesome calculator watches can be had for less than US$16. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B000GB1R7S/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1517176444&sr=8-3&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=casio+calculator+watch&dpPl=1&dpID=41EWHarBxJL&ref=plSrch https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B000GB1R7S/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?ie=...
- scarface74 9y agoI lost the ability to just plug in my headphones and skip between songs on my iPod while drifting off to sleep on planes. Where has he been for the last 10 years? You've always been able to use headphone buttons to skip between songs on iPhones/iPod touches. My wife just started teaching fitness classss. She uses this to control music while she is teaching: https://www.amazon.com/Satechi-Bluetooth-Button-iPhone-Samsung/dp/B00RM75NL0 https://www.amazon.com/Satechi-Bluetooth-Button-iPhone-Samsu...
- danieldk 9y agoSmall footnote: the iPod Touch comes with Earpods without controls.
- WhyNotHugo 9y agoIf the intention is to skip songs and change volume when listening to music, can't you just use the buttons on your headphones? I understand that there may be value for hardware buttons, but the example given by the author is a pretty much covered by simple headphone buttons.
- jakobegger 9y agoNot if you have Airpods...
- djsumdog 9y agoI still have a Pebble Steel. I hope the services get open sourced, because if not, it will never work with another phone after the cut-off in July. It's one of the huge disadvantages of how we distribute software today; the bastardization of the Linux software repository into these stupid non-mirrorable/non-free app stores. It's also sad no phone has slide-out keyboards any more. I'm sure there are several people who would take the thickness trade-off. If a major manufacture produced a physical keyboard phone, there probably would be demand. One of the earliest HTC android devices, after the Evo 4G, was a version with a slide out keyboard. Now the only option seems to be BlueBerries.
- icebraining 9y agoNo argument regarding the app stores, but for Android you can (usually?) make a backup of the APK and then move it to another device. Alternatively: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/nodomain.freeyourgadget.gadgetbridge/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/nodomain.freeyourgadget.gadg...
- ocdtrekkie 9y agoFunny story: I did this a lot when I had Android, but offloaded the APKs to my computer for storage purposes. This became a lot buggier and irritating when Android switched USB handling from mass storage (like a flash drive) to MTP (like a digital camera). I once tried to talk to Dianne Hackborn about this difficulty at Google I/O, and the moment I mentioned 'APK file', she said Google 'didn't support piracy' and walked off. That day I learned backing up your own apps was 'piracy'.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoTangential, but: > when Android switched USB handling from mass storage (like a flash drive) to MTP (like a digital camera). This is how, step by step, computers become even more difficult to use by regular people, and how computing becomes balkanized. All the attempts at fucking with the hierarchical filesystem are ass-backwards and create inconsistent abstractions, which make learning hard.
- stmw 9y agoDoes on touchscreens help with driving more engagement metrics and/or advertising screen time?
- RainaRelanah 9y agoI doubt it. It's more about consumer perception. Hardware buttons aren't futuristic, touchscreens are. And smart watches are largely a futuristic niche product. Pre-purchase consumers want better specs and often neglect the practicality of those decisions (battery life of OLED panels and touchscreens, usability of a 1 inch touchscreen interface, etc).
- ignobleParting 9y agoPebble was a terrible device, and riddled with horrble design decisions. From the word “go” you knew Pebble was trying to lock you in, register and count you as a user, log demographic information about you, and tether that information to unique device identifiers. You could not simply use Pebble as a watch, if so desired. Pebble enforced specific behaviors onto the user. For example, you couldn’t just like the looks of the watch, buy it, take it out of the box, wear it, and use it to tell time. No. Open the box, and the watch directs you to an internet connection, so it can phone home to the mothership. Really? Really? To me, that reeks of exploitation, and the goal was never to provide people with a good watch that does stuff. Open the box, and push people around. Make them clap their hands and sing along. Sorry guys. You made serious mistakes. People notice. Good riddance.
- _jn 9y agoTurning off Bluetooth and uninstalling the app (or stopping it from running in the background) after the initial update worked just fine when I tried it. Not sure why you’d want that, though. The vast majority of users will buy a smartwatch expecting it to be smart, so giving them instructions for how to enable those features seems logical to me. >lock you in Wait, how? >demographic information ...which is optional?
- ignobleParting 9y agoafter the initial update See, there’s your problem. Wait, how? The decision to ship the watch in an inoperable state is coercive. optional? Still, this is a dark pattern. Forcing the conversation represents an inductive stance. Going in blind, the user has to judge whether they should yes-to-death (at their own risk) a lengthy sequence of interview questions, to explore further, or attempt to reject the possibly optional activities, and feel the tug of a leash later on. The preferred behavior is obvious. Do you defy the preference? What ramifications will that have? Unboxing it, you find there are strings attached, puppeting your actions.
- wvenable 9y ago
- iveqy 9y agoButtons on smartwatches isn't dead. There are just a bit more niche: https://www.kronaby.com/ https://www.kronaby.com/
- Johnny555 9y agoTouchscreens are awful on a device that you might want to use in the rain... like a watch. I have a Garmin sport watch with a touch screen (plus two physical buttons). If you're out in the rain and need to change modes on a run or bike ride, it's nearly impossible, you need to stop, bend over to shield the watch with your body, dry your finger on your shirt (assuming you have a dry spot), then then you can usually use the touchscreen. Once it's set to the right mode, the 2 physical buttons work well, but anything that requires the touchscreen is nearly impossible without stopping what you're doing. (at least that's the case with whatever touchscreen technology Garmin uses, maybe there's a better option for use in the rain)
- wazoox 9y agoI've found that the touchscreen on my vivoactive works perfectly when wet and in light rain (not under the shower). However to get it to work it's necessary that some metal part of the watch (either one of the buttons, or the charging contacts underneath) to be touched (either by the wrist, or another finger) while touching the screen.
- Johnny555 9y agoYou must have a different Vivoactive than me, I have the Vivoactive HR with no metal buttons. The charging contacts are on the back and recessed enough that they probably don't contact my wrist.
- wazoox 9y agoI have the original 1st gen. vivoactive, the buttons are metal and the charging contacts recess is less than 1mm, so it certainly touches the wrist. You can clearly see the metal button on this picture https://urbanwearables.technology/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/garmin-vivoactive-hr-vs-vivoactive.jpg https://urbanwearables.technology/wp-content/uploads/2016/02...
- viperscape 9y agoOlder resistance style touchscreen s would work well here, this is where the capacitance screens fail easily.
- lerie82 9y agoI never cared much for smart watches, especially the hideous pebble. I also disagree with the title saying "hardware buttons", buttons will never go away.
- wvenable 9y agoI have a Gear S3 now (used to own a Pebble) and I rarely touch the screen to do anything (except to treat it as a big button). You can do most navigation with the buttons and the ring around the outside. Between that and the always-on-display it's a good replacement for the Pebble.
- HumanDrivenDev 9y agoWatch hardware buttons come back in a mainstream product in 5-10 years, and be touted as a revolutionary new feature.
- goldenkey 9y agoI have touchscreen gloves - never had any problems even for the 5 years I spent in Buffalo. I recommend Agloves because they have awesome customer support incase your gloves have knit issues. They sent me a pair of the thicker ones for free when I asked for help with a pair that had some stray threads. Here is an amazon link: http://amzn.to/2Eg8MUc http://amzn.to/2Eg8MUc
- wyclif 9y agoThis article explains part of my rationale why, later this week when I get my new MacBook Pro, I'm going to opt for the non-Touch Bar version.