Always-on e-paper screen (it’s reflective rather than emissive. Sunlight readable. Glanceable. Not distracting to others like a bright wrist)
Long battery life (one less thing to charge. It’s annoying to need extra cables when traveling)
Simple and beautiful user experience around a core set of features (telling time, notifications, music control, alarms, weather, calendar, sleep/step tracking)
Buttons! (to play/pause/skip music on my phone without looking at the screen)
Hackable (apparently you can’t even write your own watchfaces for Apple Watch? That is wild. There were >16k watchfaces on the Pebble appstore!)
Pre-Order: https://store.repebble.com/
https://github.com/google/Pebble
Still works to this day, the battery is shot so its at best 2days, but man what other smart watch still works and still is connected to my phone 8 years after I got it.
Most people with Apple watches have had to replace them since their first or second gen dont get updates.
Let me know how it goes!
The swap was challenging but not impossible. New battery seems to last about 6-8 days but I have only charged it once so I'm extrapolating.
I still can't get my calendar/timeline to work but otherwise it's so nice to have a real smartwatch again.
Is it still great?
in so many ways yes! Still did not find a way to fix the events on my calendar but week long battery life, notifications with a real vibration motor and always on screen are just so awesome.
I cant wait for the new one!