The Bangle.js 2 is pretty cool
this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2024
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That's what I use. It's way more stripped down than a modern smart watch, but it has good battery life, a transflexive LCD, can discretely give me notifications so I can keep my phone on silent, and can show me the weather at a glance.
There are more things it can do, I just find my phone is better for the majority of them.
Are the notifications actionable? (Snoozing alarms, canned replies to messages, etc)
I couldn't find that important detail on the website easily.
You can snooze alarms, play/pause/ff/rw media, and mark messages as read
what do you mean by "good battery life"?
Disclaimer I don’t have one, but seems like 2-4 weeks between charges.
That's been my experience
So frustrating that their logo is a nice looking round watch, but their product is an ugly rectangular one.
The original one was round.
And priced for the average human! Wow.
Damn, if I didn't need the fitness tracking support of my Garmin watch, I'd be all over that!
Gatgetbridge (your link) has a breakdown of devices they support https://gadgetbridge.org/gadgets/ . You can click through the vendors to find devices which are both "highly supported" and "no vendor-pair". Meaning most/all the features work without any reliance on the vendor app.
As for the similarity you are asking about with pixel->GrapheneOS, there are very few watches that can run an alternative open source firmware or operating systems apart from the ones that are already open source, like bangle.js, pinetime, etc. Wearables are even more specialized than phones, they require specialized code designed specifically for them and would likely require pretty extreme effort to reverse-engineer.
I use a pebble 2 HR with gadgetbridge but the watch it self runs the old pebble firmware which gadgetbridge talks to. This is fine for me, but if you are looking for a more modern watch you may have to make some compromises.
Lilygo T-Watch. Sorry, I know I'm late to the party but no one mentioned these. They're a little closer to a development platform, but basic enough for anyone to pick up and learn. They're similar to the PineTime in terms of being low-power, more simple options. But this uses a more powerful ESP32-S3 SoC and is a lot more responsive.
Big fan of the PineTime for minimalism and extraordinary battery life, but the Bangle looks compelling. Maybe once the PineTime dies.
PineTime
Bangle.js 2
TIL
PineTime is nice, wearing it right now.
What all can it do?
Notifications, media control, minor navigation aids, some heart rate stuff (they've linked some papers for their algorithm which I think is cool cause now we can discuss the validity of said algorithm for heart rate monitoring) and most importantly 1024 (the game)
And 1 week (approx) of battery life
I thought the game was 2048.
oh my bad, yeah. its all the same game to me.
Nice. Guess I will get one after all.
I'm a PineTime-user too, but be advised, that there is no sleep tracking, and the heartrate measurement is not passive, nor does it work in the background.
But if you want a simple watch for notifications, weather, time, step count, and a handy flashlight, with up to three weeks uptime with one charge, the pinetime is for you!
Also, you might want to consider joining the PineTime-Community, bring some life there! <3
Similar to what most smartwatches can: measure heartbeat, show notifications and answer calls from your smartphone, flashlight (by showing white write screen), show weather, etc.
You can't actually take calls on the PT, you can use it to pick up your phone.
It's pretty barebones, but I like it for the price that it costs and the freedom it gives.
I just picked up a banglejs 2 and I love it. I was using a galaxy smart watch 5 but didn't work without gapps on my lineage phone. Its obviously not as good as the Samsung smart watch but I've been super happy with it. No creating accounts, getting tokens etc. Just pair it via Bluetooth and gadget bridge and you are good to go. Its a little pricey but for open source watch its awesome, I've heard good things about pinetime as well.
I use the AmazFit Band 7, the last sensibly sized watch that exists it often feels like.
Weather fails to sync, but then it's probably the least important feature on a watch. The only feature I really wish Gadgetbridge could do that even the official stack can't is "nap mode"
As a narcoleptic person still recovering from major depression, I wish I could either press a button to silence the watch and set a "smart alarm" for 30 minutes. Even better if it would turn on automatically if it detects me sleeping during the day!
The only other thing GB can't do is stand in for the phone-side ZeppOS API functionality, but who needs that, let's be honest!
Fantastic battery life to boot. I have gone two weeks after forgetting to charge it while wearing it almost 24×7!
Idk if it can be called a smartwatch, but I just found out about the sensor watch, and now I really want one. Basically a hackable Casio f-91w
Is there a more reliable to find the right sensor watch than searching "sensor watch?"
Really wish we'd get some nice, fast RISC-V base boards with a nice amount of flash memory paired with a cool round LCD display..keep patrolling CNX for the parts but they don't seem to be quite there yet.
Now I miss my Pebble and Pebble 2 :(
I held onto my Pebble for so long, wearing it from launch until about a year ago, where I got a Garmin Smartwatch.
So many things I loved about it, especially its simplicity and legendary battery life (at that time).
I only know of the Pine Time, however they warn that their watch OS is community driven and under active development.
In the open source world, I take that as a highlight, not a warning.
Agreed! However I don't want to set unrealistic expectations
Is it mature enough or it is better to wait now?
I don't have one myself as I don't like jewelry.
However you can gather a lot based on the release history in the Infinitime wiki
I'm using an Amazfit bip watch. Is full supported from gadgetbridge.
This. And battery life is amazing.
Have an amazifit too, just found out about this, spent the last hour configuring everything. Looks very promising.
Also, amazifit tools is complaining a bit about not finding zepp anymore but seems that everything still works, including Tasker integration
I have a PineTime, but I'd have to go with the Bangle.js.
I have a pinetime and I basically just stopped using it. I thought it being open source would mean I could add my own features, but development for it sucks and it's massively limited.
Can you expand more, why it is limited?
It has 512kb of flash, and Over 400kb is already taken by the base firmware. Also, you have to flash a new firmware every time you want to try a new feature.
64kb of ram, too. So you have to be extremely cautious and careful about how you code any features.
It's just not worth it.