8 ms·

Really surprised someone has not filled the gap that Pebble left. Projects like this get close, but it still boggles my mind that over a decade ago we had a pol

Really surprised someone has not filled the gap that Pebble left. Projects like this get close, but it still boggles my mind that over a decade ago we had a polished and commercial e-ink smartwatch with a 1-week battery life, 5 atm waterproof rating, integration with Android and iOS, a vibrant developer community, and a robust app store... and it all just, disappeared.

crimsoneer 4y ago
Yeah, it's a pretty clear market failure in my book. I still find the whole saga pretty mystifying.
- theaussiestew 4y ago
  Would you buy an e-ink smartband if it came out?
Steltek 4y ago
My Pebble watch and my dumb-as-bricks LCD TV. Elegant simplicity of a past generation that I can't let go of today because the modern replacement sucks. There's gotta be other things that fall in that category. 3.5mm headphones? Cars with tactile controls? Non-electric bicycles?
- ThrowawayR2 4y ago
  > "* 3.5mm headphones?*" Sure as heck aren't those. While I still want a physical connector, jiggling the cable to get a good connection when the jack started wearing out is something that should have been put it in its grave long ago.
  - nixpulvis 4y ago
    Just give the leads a quick lick.
  - DrThunder 4y ago
    Nah, wired ear buds are quite popular again. They're just so easy to use, cheap, and not have to fiddle with remembering to charge them.
  - wwweston 4y ago
    Still working on most of the devices I've got that were made in the 80s/90s, meanwhile I have machines with USB ports less than a decade old where how you seat the cable matters or the port just outright doesn't work anymore. Some of that you can chalk up to survivor bias, but if this is a conversation, the main reason anybody can actually have it is that we're talking about a standard that was universal enough for long enough.
  - dontlaugh 4y ago
    I also don’t understand the love for analog, with all the crackling from interference or poor connection.
    - legacynl 4y ago
      I don't understand the 'love' for digital. Why would you want to replace your headphones with wireless ones that are more expensive, can run out of battery, can't plug into your amplifier, and are probably impossible to repair.
    - dspillett 4y ago
      As much as I wouldn't be without my bluetooth headphones (usually bone conduction for a little extra safety/comfort/convenience) and don't use a 3.5mm jack on anything mobile myself, I can definitely agree it has advantages that are attractive enough that some really want it over what I prefer: ♯ No extra device to remember to charge (unless, perhaps, you have big noise-cancelling cans). ♯ No running out at an inconvenient/irritating time if you don't charge them (or are just out for a long time). ♯ Standard fitting so anything can plug in, makes carrying a spare set (or buying one in an “emergency”) inexpensive. ♯ Easily plug in a double+ adaptor too (not seen it for a while that I remember, but there was a spate of people on public transport listening to the same music that way). Try that with BT. ♯ No pairing issues (tell me you've never had them, even with supposedly good quality kit, and I'll call you a lier!). ♯ Easily switch between devices (my headset doesn't always want to connect when I switch from work to personal phone, so I have to go through the BT-on-and-off-again-at-both-ends dance. At least these days decent devices (and most cheap ones) remember multiple pairings, it used to be even worse. ♯ The crackling from a poor connection was rare with a good jack+socket in my experience, and BT is not immune to interference in busy environments. I've also experienced BT dropping out temporarily if devices get too close (i.e. I sit and bend to adjust a shoelace while my phone is on a trouser pocket). And of course there is little reason not to have a standard jack as a fallback option, even if you do usually use wireless playback.
      - dontlaugh 4y ago
        Most of that would also apply to wired digital headphones. It's the analog bit I don't get. Why would I want to give up data integrity until right up to the speaker?
  - legacynl 4y ago
    > jiggling the cable to get a good connection when the jack started wearing out I think this is mostly due to shitty cables though. I've had multiple Sennheiser earbuds that lasted for 4,5 years on average, while only costing 20 euros at the time. Similarly, my current headphones are semi-profesional studio monitors that I've used heavily for the last 8 years, (including DJing) and they still work perfectly. I think there's a difference between solid-core or stranded cables. I don't recall which is the more durable one, but as long as you get the right one cabled headphones can last a long time. Also when it does break it's trivially easy to repair or replace the cable.
    - arcanemachiner 4y ago
      I've had female connectors go bad, but to your point, I place the blame on the connector, not the standard itself.
- wwweston 4y ago
  > 3.5mm headphones? Yes. For over 30 years, consumer electronics had a Just Works™ standard for stereo audio. No pairing issues. No charging issues. No dongles for different devices. For some situations (jogging, gym, housework, etc) I get that no-wires is also convenient, but others (like the car) make no damn sense, and even the situations where it does make sense aren't a reason to remove the feature. But we did it anyway because it makes Apple more money.
  - dontlaugh 4y ago
    For cars wires make sense, but the lack of controls doesn’t. There’s no standard for play/pause/volume, or even in general a widely used wired digital standard. Ideally we’d get rid of analog and have the same digital standard that works wires or wireless. In practice, I use Bluetooth and CarPlay.
    - wolrah 4y ago
      There is a widely used standard, actually two, that solve this problem just fine over a single pure digital interface. USB Audio Class has been almost universally supported in computing devices for literally decades at this point, as has USB HID Class which supports media controls. I have no idea whether Apple allows it to work on iOS devices, but a car head unit could easily expose a USB audio class device and it'd "just work" with Android, Windows, MacOS, etc. devices. Add a USB HID "keyboard" that can send media/telephone inputs and you're good to go without any new tech required to be invented. Works with anything that doesn't go out of the way to prevent it from working. All you'd be missing compared to Bluetooth A2DP/AVRCP would be communicating media info back to the head unit, which is more of an optional nicety rather than a necessity. Plug a USB cable in to whatever computing device you want to source audio from and it would work great. Unfortunately the majority of the non-technical community, and a surprisingly large amount of the technical community, acts like they're allergic to wires. I honestly do not understand the demand for wireless charging, wireless AA/CP, etc. when a single cable works better for both. It's not that hard to plug a phone in when you sit down in your car.
      - 4y ago
- derekp7 4y ago
  Digital Cable / TV. It used to be that you could sit back with the remote and flip through the channels to find something good on. Now it takes a few seconds for the next channel to "start up" that you can't quickly scan through them. Oh, and the proliferation of "junk" channels on cable means that you still couldn't channel surf because of all the crap you have to wade through, and the half dozen channels out of several hundred that might have a show you are interested in is more likely than not to have a commercial running when you land on it. Yes, we have more choice with more channels, and streaming, and independent media, but I'd almost rather have limited choice of higher quality than to have a choice of thousands of "meh" options.
  - zikduruqe 4y ago
    > Digital Cable / TV Remember when you paid a subscription NOT to watch commercials? something, something, Pepperidge Farms meme....
- tonymet 4y ago
  this comment deserves a [Ask HN] post. There is a huge untapped market for tactile, responsive, simplified & elegant products / tools / appliances / vehicles. We just need to articulate & define the market segment well. “Responsive Utility” or “Full Control Appliances” . Unfortunately the positive qualities of “simple, long lasting, “ and to a lesser degree “intuitive” are presently lost to many/ most consumers. My dream would be resurrecting 1990s mazda with 3 models: the hatchback, 90s-size pickup truck , and the miata. All tactile control interior. Modern drivetrain efficiency ( direct injection, variable timing) . Primitive ICs (just air/ fuel mix, ABS, and minimal ODB-II features) . There is a huge market of guys who just want usable, long-lasting, responsive & intuitive tools
  - vaidhy 4y ago
    Let us do this - car in a box. If you are in Pacific NW, we can start it as a side project :)
    - tonymet 4y ago
      I like this idea. i saw your email on HN i’ll email you
solarkraft 4y ago
Most importantly: Buttons. I'm still wearing mine.
- opan 4y ago
  This. I got a PineTime and after using it a while I realized it will never be as good as the Pebble because they didn't put enough buttons on the thing. Touchscreens suck for this kind of device. The software is still catching up as well, but at least that might get good enough someday. I'd like to see something with as many buttons as a Pebble get Infinitime support.
  - solarkraft 4y ago
    Yup, that's my main PineTime complaint besides the display. I wish it had a more sensible set of features, but I know it's just rebranded chinese crapware. That people keep DIYing not-so-bad watches makes me think thay getting one into mass production may not even be all that hard. A few of the Rebble people seem to be interested in it too.
- m-p-3 4y ago
  I live in a country where it's sub-zero almost 4 months in the year. being able to control the watch with physical buttons without taking of my gloves is underrated. I enjoy my BangleJS2, but the tactile display feels like a downgrade to my Pebble Time Steel 4 buttons.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
Pebble had a small but vocal audience. Their audience is price conscious, picky about features being exactly what they want, and relatively hard to please (despite the simplicity of their expectations). It’s not a good recipe for building a company around. Probably best for someone doing a hobby-scale or deliberately small business, but establishing manufacturing and logistics for a hardware project is notoriously expensive. Meanwhile, engineer compensation expectations have gone up a lot since the Pebble days. Just think about how many Pebble watches you’d have to sell to be able to support even one engineer salary. Multiple that across a team big enough to do everything needed to ship a Pebble watch that satisfies their audience and it’s not hard to see why it’s not happening.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  > Meanwhile, engineer compensation expectations have gone up a lot since the Pebble days. Rents have gone up since pebble days. Not just engineers, everyone needs to be paid more today. The housing crisis is eating civilisation
- tpoacher 4y ago
  "small but vocal audience" is a rather misleading statement when you consider it refers to a company within its first year of operations. As far as I remember there were as many pebbles as applewatches around that time, even though apple was an established company with significant clout.
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
Try Withings It lasts a week on battery, shows time mechanicaly, records hearbeat and usual accelerometer/sleep/wtv. Not as advanced as Garmin/others, but its neater and simpler. The timepiece functionality lasts a month without charging. Here being a watch comes first, bells and whistles are secondary
tpoacher 4y ago
> "disappeared" you mean bought and killed
- tesseract 4y ago
  It was already dead when it was bought. The founder wrote a postmortem: https://medium.com/@ericmigi/why-pebble-failed-d7be937c6232 https://medium.com/@ericmigi/why-pebble-failed-d7be937c6232
michaelmior 4y ago
I personally really like my Xiaomi Mi Band. It's much cheaper than many alternatives (Apple Watch, Wear OS devices) at <$50USD for the most current model. I get notifications pushed from my phone, step tracking, heart rate monitoring, sleep detection, among other things. Battery life is multiple weeks and it's waterproof (not sure to what pressure). It's not as customizable as I'd like, but Notify for Mi Band[0] helps a lot. For example, I'm able to connect my watch to Home Assistant so I can use watch controls for my smart home devices. [0] https://mibandnotify.com/ https://mibandnotify.com/
- dirtyid 4y ago
  This, low effort Chinese smart band/watchess with 2-3 week battery life that does 80% works well for my use case. Upgraded to a huawei GT because it has 1 physical short cut button I use to pull up media controls. IMO that's really what's missing, a simple band with 4-6 programmable buttons.
  - michaelmior 4y ago
    Agreed. Thats really what I want. Something with hood battery life and some buttons that I can program via Tasker. That said, I think the market for such a device is fairly small. Most users will want something that works well out of the box.
dariosalvi78 4y ago
well, there's BangleJS, but no e-ink display
hooverd 4y ago
I had two Pebble 2s. They were both great watches but both lost their silicone button covers to wear. Can you even buy replacements for that anymore?
m-p-3 4y ago
I'm surprised they didn't offer some subscription-based extra features to have a steady flow of revenue instead of only depending on hardware sale.
JeremyNT 4y ago
I believe Garmin ticks all the boxes, depending on your definitions of "vibrant" and "robust" at the end there. I had a Pebble, which I really enjoyed, but my Garmin 945 is much better at everything I actually wanted the Pebble to do (and much more). I honestly don't actually care about third party apps, because the device does everything I want it to without them.

crimsoneer 4y ago

Yeah, it's a pretty clear market failure in my book. I still find the whole saga pretty mystifying.

theaussiestew 4y ago
Would you buy an e-ink smartband if it came out?

Steltek 4y ago

My Pebble watch and my dumb-as-bricks LCD TV. Elegant simplicity of a past generation that I can't let go of today because the modern replacement sucks. There's gotta be other things that fall in that category. 3.5mm headphones? Cars with tactile controls? Non-electric bicycles?

ThrowawayR2 4y ago
> "* 3.5mm headphones?*" Sure as heck aren't those. While I still want a physical connector, jiggling the cable to get a good connection when the jack started wearing out is something that should have been put it in its grave long ago.
- nixpulvis 4y ago
  Just give the leads a quick lick.
- DrThunder 4y ago
  Nah, wired ear buds are quite popular again. They're just so easy to use, cheap, and not have to fiddle with remembering to charge them.
- wwweston 4y ago
  Still working on most of the devices I've got that were made in the 80s/90s, meanwhile I have machines with USB ports less than a decade old where how you seat the cable matters or the port just outright doesn't work anymore. Some of that you can chalk up to survivor bias, but if this is a conversation, the main reason anybody can actually have it is that we're talking about a standard that was universal enough for long enough.
- dontlaugh 4y ago
  I also don’t understand the love for analog, with all the crackling from interference or poor connection.
  - legacynl 4y ago
    I don't understand the 'love' for digital. Why would you want to replace your headphones with wireless ones that are more expensive, can run out of battery, can't plug into your amplifier, and are probably impossible to repair.
  - dspillett 4y ago
    As much as I wouldn't be without my bluetooth headphones (usually bone conduction for a little extra safety/comfort/convenience) and don't use a 3.5mm jack on anything mobile myself, I can definitely agree it has advantages that are attractive enough that some really want it over what I prefer: ♯ No extra device to remember to charge (unless, perhaps, you have big noise-cancelling cans). ♯ No running out at an inconvenient/irritating time if you don't charge them (or are just out for a long time). ♯ Standard fitting so anything can plug in, makes carrying a spare set (or buying one in an “emergency”) inexpensive. ♯ Easily plug in a double+ adaptor too (not seen it for a while that I remember, but there was a spate of people on public transport listening to the same music that way). Try that with BT. ♯ No pairing issues (tell me you've never had them, even with supposedly good quality kit, and I'll call you a lier!). ♯ Easily switch between devices (my headset doesn't always want to connect when I switch from work to personal phone, so I have to go through the BT-on-and-off-again-at-both-ends dance. At least these days decent devices (and most cheap ones) remember multiple pairings, it used to be even worse. ♯ The crackling from a poor connection was rare with a good jack+socket in my experience, and BT is not immune to interference in busy environments. I've also experienced BT dropping out temporarily if devices get too close (i.e. I sit and bend to adjust a shoelace while my phone is on a trouser pocket). And of course there is little reason not to have a standard jack as a fallback option, even if you do usually use wireless playback.
    - dontlaugh 4y ago
      Most of that would also apply to wired digital headphones. It's the analog bit I don't get. Why would I want to give up data integrity until right up to the speaker?
- legacynl 4y ago
  > jiggling the cable to get a good connection when the jack started wearing out I think this is mostly due to shitty cables though. I've had multiple Sennheiser earbuds that lasted for 4,5 years on average, while only costing 20 euros at the time. Similarly, my current headphones are semi-profesional studio monitors that I've used heavily for the last 8 years, (including DJing) and they still work perfectly. I think there's a difference between solid-core or stranded cables. I don't recall which is the more durable one, but as long as you get the right one cabled headphones can last a long time. Also when it does break it's trivially easy to repair or replace the cable.
  - arcanemachiner 4y ago
    I've had female connectors go bad, but to your point, I place the blame on the connector, not the standard itself.
wwweston 4y ago
> 3.5mm headphones? Yes. For over 30 years, consumer electronics had a Just Works™ standard for stereo audio. No pairing issues. No charging issues. No dongles for different devices. For some situations (jogging, gym, housework, etc) I get that no-wires is also convenient, but others (like the car) make no damn sense, and even the situations where it does make sense aren't a reason to remove the feature. But we did it anyway because it makes Apple more money.
- dontlaugh 4y ago
  For cars wires make sense, but the lack of controls doesn’t. There’s no standard for play/pause/volume, or even in general a widely used wired digital standard. Ideally we’d get rid of analog and have the same digital standard that works wires or wireless. In practice, I use Bluetooth and CarPlay.
  - wolrah 4y ago
    There is a widely used standard, actually two, that solve this problem just fine over a single pure digital interface. USB Audio Class has been almost universally supported in computing devices for literally decades at this point, as has USB HID Class which supports media controls. I have no idea whether Apple allows it to work on iOS devices, but a car head unit could easily expose a USB audio class device and it'd "just work" with Android, Windows, MacOS, etc. devices. Add a USB HID "keyboard" that can send media/telephone inputs and you're good to go without any new tech required to be invented. Works with anything that doesn't go out of the way to prevent it from working. All you'd be missing compared to Bluetooth A2DP/AVRCP would be communicating media info back to the head unit, which is more of an optional nicety rather than a necessity. Plug a USB cable in to whatever computing device you want to source audio from and it would work great. Unfortunately the majority of the non-technical community, and a surprisingly large amount of the technical community, acts like they're allergic to wires. I honestly do not understand the demand for wireless charging, wireless AA/CP, etc. when a single cable works better for both. It's not that hard to plug a phone in when you sit down in your car.
    - 4y ago
derekp7 4y ago
Digital Cable / TV. It used to be that you could sit back with the remote and flip through the channels to find something good on. Now it takes a few seconds for the next channel to "start up" that you can't quickly scan through them. Oh, and the proliferation of "junk" channels on cable means that you still couldn't channel surf because of all the crap you have to wade through, and the half dozen channels out of several hundred that might have a show you are interested in is more likely than not to have a commercial running when you land on it. Yes, we have more choice with more channels, and streaming, and independent media, but I'd almost rather have limited choice of higher quality than to have a choice of thousands of "meh" options.
- zikduruqe 4y ago
  > Digital Cable / TV Remember when you paid a subscription NOT to watch commercials? something, something, Pepperidge Farms meme....
tonymet 4y ago
this comment deserves a [Ask HN] post. There is a huge untapped market for tactile, responsive, simplified & elegant products / tools / appliances / vehicles. We just need to articulate & define the market segment well. “Responsive Utility” or “Full Control Appliances” . Unfortunately the positive qualities of “simple, long lasting, “ and to a lesser degree “intuitive” are presently lost to many/ most consumers. My dream would be resurrecting 1990s mazda with 3 models: the hatchback, 90s-size pickup truck , and the miata. All tactile control interior. Modern drivetrain efficiency ( direct injection, variable timing) . Primitive ICs (just air/ fuel mix, ABS, and minimal ODB-II features) . There is a huge market of guys who just want usable, long-lasting, responsive & intuitive tools
- vaidhy 4y ago
  Let us do this - car in a box. If you are in Pacific NW, we can start it as a side project :)
  - tonymet 4y ago
    I like this idea. i saw your email on HN i’ll email you

solarkraft 4y ago

Most importantly: Buttons. I'm still wearing mine.

opan 4y ago
This. I got a PineTime and after using it a while I realized it will never be as good as the Pebble because they didn't put enough buttons on the thing. Touchscreens suck for this kind of device. The software is still catching up as well, but at least that might get good enough someday. I'd like to see something with as many buttons as a Pebble get Infinitime support.
- solarkraft 4y ago
  Yup, that's my main PineTime complaint besides the display. I wish it had a more sensible set of features, but I know it's just rebranded chinese crapware. That people keep DIYing not-so-bad watches makes me think thay getting one into mass production may not even be all that hard. A few of the Rebble people seem to be interested in it too.
m-p-3 4y ago
I live in a country where it's sub-zero almost 4 months in the year. being able to control the watch with physical buttons without taking of my gloves is underrated. I enjoy my BangleJS2, but the tactile display feels like a downgrade to my Pebble Time Steel 4 buttons.

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

Pebble had a small but vocal audience. Their audience is price conscious, picky about features being exactly what they want, and relatively hard to please (despite the simplicity of their expectations). It’s not a good recipe for building a company around. Probably best for someone doing a hobby-scale or deliberately small business, but establishing manufacturing and logistics for a hardware project is notoriously expensive. Meanwhile, engineer compensation expectations have gone up a lot since the Pebble days. Just think about how many Pebble watches you’d have to sell to be able to support even one engineer salary. Multiple that across a team big enough to do everything needed to ship a Pebble watch that satisfies their audience and it’s not hard to see why it’s not happening.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago
> Meanwhile, engineer compensation expectations have gone up a lot since the Pebble days. Rents have gone up since pebble days. Not just engineers, everyone needs to be paid more today. The housing crisis is eating civilisation
tpoacher 4y ago
"small but vocal audience" is a rather misleading statement when you consider it refers to a company within its first year of operations. As far as I remember there were as many pebbles as applewatches around that time, even though apple was an established company with significant clout.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago

Try Withings It lasts a week on battery, shows time mechanicaly, records hearbeat and usual accelerometer/sleep/wtv. Not as advanced as Garmin/others, but its neater and simpler. The timepiece functionality lasts a month without charging. Here being a watch comes first, bells and whistles are secondary

tpoacher 4y ago

> "disappeared" you mean bought and killed

tesseract 4y ago
It was already dead when it was bought. The founder wrote a postmortem: https://medium.com/@ericmigi/why-pebble-failed-d7be937c6232 https://medium.com/@ericmigi/why-pebble-failed-d7be937c6232

michaelmior 4y ago

I personally really like my Xiaomi Mi Band. It's much cheaper than many alternatives (Apple Watch, Wear OS devices) at <$50USD for the most current model. I get notifications pushed from my phone, step tracking, heart rate monitoring, sleep detection, among other things. Battery life is multiple weeks and it's waterproof (not sure to what pressure). It's not as customizable as I'd like, but Notify for Mi Band[0] helps a lot. For example, I'm able to connect my watch to Home Assistant so I can use watch controls for my smart home devices. [0] https://mibandnotify.com/ https://mibandnotify.com/

dirtyid 4y ago
This, low effort Chinese smart band/watchess with 2-3 week battery life that does 80% works well for my use case. Upgraded to a huawei GT because it has 1 physical short cut button I use to pull up media controls. IMO that's really what's missing, a simple band with 4-6 programmable buttons.
- michaelmior 4y ago
  Agreed. Thats really what I want. Something with hood battery life and some buttons that I can program via Tasker. That said, I think the market for such a device is fairly small. Most users will want something that works well out of the box.

dariosalvi78 4y ago

well, there's BangleJS, but no e-ink display

hooverd 4y ago

I had two Pebble 2s. They were both great watches but both lost their silicone button covers to wear. Can you even buy replacements for that anymore?

m-p-3 4y ago

I'm surprised they didn't offer some subscription-based extra features to have a steady flow of revenue instead of only depending on hardware sale.

JeremyNT 4y ago

I believe Garmin ticks all the boxes, depending on your definitions of "vibrant" and "robust" at the end there. I had a Pebble, which I really enjoyed, but my Garmin 945 is much better at everything I actually wanted the Pebble to do (and much more). I honestly don't actually care about third party apps, because the device does everything I want it to without them.