Thoughts and ideas of a dyslexic designer/developer
My last pebble 2 smartwatch suffered a number of button problems. Luckily I was able to fix it with Sugru moldable glue. The pebble is showing a lot of wear and tear.
I’m still looking for an alternative to Pebble smartwatches, but the there is simply nothing close, even the new Fitbit is LCD based. Although I’m considering maybe now I have the Oura ring, maybe I could rely less on the health and tracking parts?
Today my pebble 2 smartwatch broke while playing with the diabolo in the garden. The screen came straight out the frame. Not sure why but I did put it back but found the screen was dead.
As I thought my smartphone was still connected to the watch via bluetooth and was responding to the button presses and battery charge.
However without a screen I’m forced to use my very last pebble smartwatch. The Pebble time kindly donated from Ahmed, who got a Apple watch. This is why although I did say the previous pebble was my last, I luckily had this backup. However this is the last. Lets hope the hybrid smartwatches are better than Fossil’s attempt.
During the seasonal period “I bought” a Fossil hybrid HR smartwatch. It was meant to replace my pebble smartwatch but it never came. I made the decision to give it a try after trying it on in the Fossil store in Manchester.
I found it online also found a discount code from Fossil for first time purchases. Ordered it and expected to come back home after xmas to a little present from myself. The Fossil invoice said it takes 4-5 business days
However after lots of chasing weeks after, I finally got a reply saying they had cancelled the order (without telling me) because they were completely out of stock for that model. It was frustrating but they finally offered me a discount when it comes back into stock. However the discount was for less than my original discount.
I think I would be more annoyed if I hadn’t read this updated review of the smartwatch. I realised one feature the Fossil didn’t have was the ability to reply to messages or emails. Its something I use on my pebble a lot and seeing the message is useful but sending an acknowledgement of some kind is pretty essential.
Like the Motiv ring, being an early adopter can be troublesome and in this case its time to wait and see what others do in the hybrid smartwatch space.
It was bound to happen but the last few days my pebble 2 watch has experienced a number of very bad glitches. The last glitch made it unreadable and although it was still working as normal which makes a difference from when the last two caved in on themselves.
So I think its time to stop buying old pebbles and maybe look at the hybrid smartwatch market instead.
To be honest I haven’t bought a pebble for quite some time, as I have happily taken from friends who no longer have use for them. The one which broke came from my line manager and my friend Ahmed. Gave me his colour Pebble time, which wil be my last after my pebble 2 white, which I had in storage.
I was reading about the Fossil hybrid HR smartwatch recently, and on the face of it (pun intended) it looks like a good smartwatch with all the features I would be after to replace my pebble smartwatch.
What’s the difference between a hybrid smartwatch and a regular smartwatch? In the hybrid category, Fossil’s Hybrid HR mixes physical watch hands with an always-on display that shows information and notifications. It almost feels like an old-school Pebble watch fused with an everyday analog-style watch.
I always swear by eink for these type of things, and I’m happy to hear its using eink too.
Keeping a smartwatch charged is incredibly annoying. Fossil’s newest line of hybrid smartwatches may have found an answer, and it’s E Ink. The Hybrid HR’s added display feels less like a screen and more of an extension of the watch, the sort of basic readouts that you might expect on a digital watch. Or, like what Google’s Wear OS watches offer, but in E Ink. To be clear, though, this isn’t Wear OS. It almost reminds me of what the TicWatch Pro tried for by layering an always-on display on top of a feature-packed smartwatch, but the Hybrid HR looks a lot nicer.
Earlier this year, Google reportedly paid $40 million for Fossil smartwatch technology that could enable hybrid watches. The Hybrid HR looks like it is, indeed, the watch tech that earlier reports thought Google was interested in… and it’s here now.
I will be keeping en eye on this category, because although I like the Hybrid HR, I’m not so keen on round faces and I’d need to get a sense if theres sleep tracking support? Or more so if theres going to be a standard for watch apps like WearOS and the Pebble OS.
I like many Google Pixel users recently got the Android 10 upgrade. It was smooth and everything was in order except there was a notification that the Pebble/Rebble smartwatch software may need to be upgraded as it might be incompatible with the Android 10.
What follows was a long painful process trying to pair the Pebble 2 with my Pixel 2 phone. It took forever and ended up with me unpairing both rebooting both and repairing the whole lot again. Nothing was lost in the process but its a real painful process and I thought, once its done, its done forever.
However I was wrong. It seems like this happens every few weeks? Others have suggested it happens when the Pixel doesn’t see the pebble for a little while. Someone started a bug issue with Google, thankfully and I added my own comment to the growing list.
If you are having similar issues, do add a comment to show Google there is a problem and maybe the Bluetooth LE stack might be at fault? Although I’ve not had a problem with my Motiv Ring yet?
So recently I’ve gone into Quantified Self overload with my new Motiv Ring, added to my Pebble smartwatch for sleep tracking.
The ring is very good, but the app isn’t the best, its seems to work but isn’t very clear when its not syncing with the ring. Also I knew the 2 day battery was going to be a pain but to date I’ve been charging it every 2 days and never got to the point where its gotten below 44%.
As the app is pretty rubbish, I have sent everything to Google fit. I pretty much have everything synced with Google fit now.
The first time I noticed it was all working, was when I looked at sleep as android which I use with my pebble smartwatch and noticed my heart rate over the top of my sleep data.
Likewise I recently hooked up my Withings/Nokia iot scale to Google fit. The scale has its own app which isn’t bad but frankly its not great. It suffers from the similar problems as most of the quantified apps attached to a device or service; they want to be the centre of the world. Reminds me of my Fitbit which import everything but export little.
I understand Google fit is mining the heck out of my quantified data but with Google takeout, I can get the raw numbers in one place. Everyone wants to sync with Google fit and the dashboard view is far better than what everyone else right now.
I’ve also set it up to send me an update every 2 months. Now that’s pretty neat. Would I pay for a service to do this? Yes I would, how much is the question…
I have been considering something else to help track different activities, since I lost the Mi Band 1. The pebble smartwatch is great for this but there is no way I can wear it while playing volleyball. I also found using gadgetbridge more painful than it needed to be.
While keeping my eyes open for alternatives, I seen Oura but not the Motiv. After reading about it against the Oura and then further reviews. I decided its worth trying. FIDO and 2FA swung it for me, so put down the money and bought one. I’m looking forward to giving it a proper review once I get it and try syncing data, etc. Hopefully its more spa proof than the pebble.
Sadly its the 2nd Pebble smartwatch I have lost to my love of spas. First one died during a spa visit in the Midland hotel, weirdly about a year ago. I instantly got another one exactly the same as my kickstarter version. It worked great but I didn’t learn the lesson and kept wearing the smartwatch at spas and swimming pools.
Then a few days in a hotel spa in London and Liquidrome in Berlin, caused my smartwatch to fail again.
Looking at the damage I think its the intense steam of the steam room (to be fair, was in the steam room for over 30mins) mixed with the heat of a sauna. Then floating in a salt water pool just killed it for good. I really should have done the bag of rice trick but I was mitte, Berlin and well bags of rice wasn’t easily available at midnight while leaving Liquidrome.
After a few days in Berlin with no smartwatch I realised how much I missed it and looked online to get a replacement. Black pebble 2’s were closer to the 400 pound mark, while the white one was less than half that brand new. So I got a white one.
I did spend some serious time looking at alternatives to the pebble but couldn’t find a decent alternative for anywhere near the price. My list was simply this…
Nothing too complex but the smartwatch still seems lacking in diversity. As most seem to be clearly copies of previous with beefed up specs. I even consider the Fitbit charge but I hated the straps and the size was massive.
If like me you love the pebble and although I hate that Fitbit bought them, can’t really slate their support to keep the watch alive and working with the rebble team.
The Rebble team have been literally everywhere urging pebble users to create an account on the rebble servers before the pebble servers are switched off for good.
The Rebble account system is up and running, and now is the time for you to create your accounts. Head over to Rebble Auth and log in using your preferred site. You’ll then be asked to link your Pebble account. Please do: we will use this to import information from the Pebble servers before they shut down in order to help make the transition smoother.
It is especially important for developers to link their Pebble accounts now. Once the Pebble services shut down at the end of this month, we will no longer be able to identify developers who did not link their accounts, and so we will be unable to let them update or otherwise change their apps.
We are also going to use the number of accounts created to assist us in determining service usage and attempt to validate our assumptions about the number of users we expect to see.
That’s all there is to do right now: there is no app to install, and we are not yet ready for users to switch over to Rebble services. We will be sure to update you when we are!
Do it now, it takes a minute or so and will save you a lot of heartache later!
