Pebble Smartwatch

Are the new Pebbles being shipped? Has anyone received one yet? What are they like?

There was a lot of excitement when they were announced, lots of people being like "hooray I just ordered one", but suspiciously few like "hooray I just got it" ... and the new Round has been delayed from May to July ... so, where are all the happy new Pebble owners?

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/57937680

"We offer a 30-day warranty. We will ship you a replacement during that period if you encounter any hardware defects and return it . We think this is a fantastic watch, and we stand behind it. But we can't stand up behind it forever - life happens. We’re also a much smaller company than before. We can’t afford to bring these new watches to market unless we can contain our exposure to risk. To balance that, we’re clearly stating our terms in the interest of being as transparent as possible, enabling you to make an informed decision.

We don't offer buyer's remorse refunds. The information about what Pebble is and does has been around for 14 years now. You all should have a pretty good idea of what the product is and whether you want it. It's also very hard to do reverse logistics worldwide (ie getting watches returned). If you don't want a Pebble, please don't order one 😉."

Blog post

This doesn't seem to fit with European consumer laws which they probably are required to follow since they're shipping to Europe.

Bummer. Now I have to wait another month - changing from Time 2 to Round 2.

I've just preordered a Pebble Time 2. Never owned a Pebble before, and no real smart wath either (just a fitness watch).

I chose Pebble because of the Open Source concept.

Do you have any advice on what I can/should do, what software/apps are must-haves, or other Tipps?

Kinda nice to see Rebble backing down a bit and taking stock. I don't really blame them for their anxiety regarding pebbles future but honestly I was kind of confused by some of the issues they raised. Even this post seems kind of defensive but it's a step in the right direction. I'm especially pleased that they confirm they will be offering the face/app database to all. Phew.

I don't think any of us wanted a single entity to control the fate of pebble. And even when the group is a non profit or just a loose collection of FOSS people it's so easy for people to get territorial and precious. The whole accusing Core of stealing was embarrassing especially now that they admit they were just misreading server logs 😮‍💨

I was so frustrated that it looked like both core and Rebble were trying to ensure their control over the game, but I'm glad that both sides are clearly stating that the future of pebble is decentralized and open. It's the only way to keep a niche device like this breathing IMO.

I've seen some commenters over on the other news aggregate site complaining that this all will damage the user experience and make things less seamless. I'm kind of of the opinion that pebble will never be a zero configure seamless consumer device again. We may need to do some legwork as users, and I'm ok with that.

I'm especially looking forward to the prospect of weird custom firmwares and hacking. That always seemed like a great fit for pebble to me? I guess we'll see what the future holds and hopefully there will be no more fighting from here on in 🤞

Recently I've been pretty discouraged watching the drama surrounding Core and Rebble's ideas for the future of the Pebble face/app store. Eric Migicovsky has put up a video with his solution that makes the Pebble app open source and treats face/app sources more like a repository that you can subcribe to. It should be possible for anyone to make their own face/app repo and stock it with their apps if they wish. Pebble will maintain its own source and maybe work out payments etc.

I'm pretty into that idea, and I think its a good solution personally.

Also really enjoyed the look at more PT2 hardware. The removable back plate is fantastic. Looking forward to my PT2.

Not sure if this is already known, but if you're like me and have Android and want Musicboss, Autoapp, etc on your shiny new watch, and have no patience, use Micropebble instead.

Install the new Pebble app, do the setup as usual. This will ensure firmware is installed.

Remove watch from bluetooth.

Install Micropebble. https://github.com/matejdro/microPebble/releases

Connect.

Disconnect watch in Pebble app (if you leave it connected it will do strange things like install apps from both services)

Install your apps from .pbw files

https://apps.rebble.io/en_US/watchapps?dev_settings=true (This link exposes .pbw downloads for each app)

So far most of my apps work. Voicenote is a nogo. The old version of Nav works, as does Music Boss,

and Autopebble (The most important)

Trying to get a Pebble smartwatch community started far from the reach of Reddit. Everyone is welcome! If you are using the new watch and need companion apps to run, btw, go to Micropebble and use that for now. https://github.com/matejdro/microPebble

So far I have Autopebble, original Navme, and Music Boss running on micropebble. For some reason calendar is not working though.