The history of the Pebble dates back to 2012, when its creator, Eric Migicovsky received more than ten million dollars via Kickstarter. His users still swear by the simplicity and design of the original Pebbles, but that wasn't enough to prevent the company from closing in 2016. Pebble went to Fitbit, which was then acquired by Google, and that brings us to the latest news: The Mountain View giant has made the PebbleOS operating system open source, leading to a wave of announcements, including the launch of new watches.
I still remember the madness over smartwatches and wearable devices. Every day a “me too” would appear with the promise of revolutionizing the market, but in the end they always made the same mistakes: they either tried to do too much, did too little, or their price was ridiculous. My personal experience was limited to a Xiaomi Mi Band 3, which worked well until its strap disintegrated and the battery gave up. It ended up in a box gathering dust, and that seems to be the fate of many smartwatches.
Now, if we go by user comments, the exception is the Pebble. Its official story ended in June 2018 when all its cloud services were discontinued, but a group of enthusiasts started Rebble project to keep its devices alive. In parallel, Eric Migicovsky, the original creator of Pebble, asked his friends at Google to release the PebbleOS operating system, exploring the possibility of restarting his old business. Fortunately, the Mountain View mothership said yes, and the code has already been published on GitHub. What does that mean? That if all goes well, there will be new Pebbles in the future.
Will Pebble Get a Second Chance? Its Creator Says Yes
Through the RePebble portal (because “Pebble” is still owned by Google), Migicovsky confirmed that he plans to launch new watches, preserving the essence of the original product: e-paper screen, simple user experience, excellent battery life, physical buttons (to control phone music without looking at screens) and of course, hackable. Migicovsky also mentions his blog that “today it is much easier to manufacture hardware” thanks to an abundance of factories with the necessary capacity, and Bluetooth chips with a good combination of cost, power, and efficiency. The big challenge was the software... but Google threw a bone in the right direction.
In short, the plan is to build a watch with specifications similar to the Pebble, plus some additional details. The operating system will be PebbleOS under its new open source status, maintaining compatibility with all apps and watchfaces. Obviously, there is a lot of work ahead: The proprietary elements of the code were removed (fonts, the Bluetooth stack, the voice codec, etc.), and nobody should try to compile it in its current state. However, everyone is celebrating the news, including the administrators of Rebble, recently transformed into “non-profit”.
Sources: RePebble, Rebble, Eric Migicovsky, GitHub.
