Pebble to bring back e-ink smart wearables
The Pebble smartwatch is coming back, revealed Eric Migicovsky, founder of the company. The wearables, once popular for their e-ink displays and long battery life, will once again be powered by PebbleOS, which was made an open-source project by Google.
The founder shared an emotional open letter expressing his longing for a smartwatch with essential features, emphasizing his desire to reintroduce such a wearable device. He mentioned that he has tried "every single smartwatch available," yet none include all the desired functionalities this:
- Always-on e-paper screen that is reflective rather than emissive, sunlight readable, glanceable, not distracting;
- Long battery life for one less thing to charge and not bother with extra cables when traveling;
- Simple and beautiful user experience for regularly used features, such as telling time, notifications, music control, alarms, weather, calendar, sleep/step tracking;
- Buttons to play/pause/skip music without looking at the screen;
- Hackable. Migicovsky mentioned that Apple does not allow creating your own watch faces, while Pebble had over 16,000 on its app store.
Google, the owner of Fitbit which bought Pebble"s intellectual property, decided to open source PebbleOS, and the source code is now available online.
With that in mind, the founder is assembling a small team focused on developing a sustainable solution. He encourages the team to "continue designing exciting gadgets" while maintaining the same specifications and features, along with introducing some enjoyable new options.
