Eight years after Pebble wound down its beloved smartwatch business, the wearable is set to rise from the ashes and adorn your wrist in the near future.
That's all thanks to the efforts of its creator, to the team at Google who open-sourced the operating system powering it, and the community of Pebble owners who kept its services alive all these years.
Let's turn back the clock...
If this doesn't ring a bell, let me refresh your memory: Pebble was a smartwatch brand that offered e-paper displays and a custom OS, born from one of the most funded Kickstarter projects of all time.
When it first shipped in 2013, the Pebble predated the Apple Watch and Google's WearOS, and garnered hardcore fans with its thoughtfully designed user interface, novel screen technology, and the extensible capabilities afforded by its app store.
Sadly, after shipping 2 million units and raking in US$230 million, Pebble fumbled the ball. It failed to hit subsequent sales forecasts and manage its finances properly. In 2016, founder and CEO Eric Migicovsky, who started the company with a bunch of friends back in 2008, ended up filing for insolvency and selling the Pebble brand and IP to Fitbit – which was later acquired by Google.
Silver lining
While Migicovsky had shuttered the company, Pebble owners kept the watches alive by building custom web services to run its various cloud-connected apps and functions – as what's collectively known as the Rebble project. So for all these years after the formal end of Pebble, the devices have been alive and well in the hands of ardent fans.
That brings us to the latest news: Migicovsky knew the people who owned the Pebble IP over at Google, and a year ago, asked nicely if they would please open source the OS. As of today, they did!
What that means is anyone, including Migicovsky and the volunteers behind the Rebble project, now have access to the code base behind the OS – barring some bits that have been removed, and including other portions that need to be updated.
It also means this makes it possible for someone to build a new watch with PebbleOS on board. And Migicovsky is that someone. In a blog post published yesterday, he noted that there's no wearable out there with all the features on his wish list: an always-on e-paper display (like a Kindle), long battery life, a simple user experience, physical buttons, and the ability to hack it and add your own apps.
"Manufacturing hardware for a product like Pebble is infinitely easier now than 10 years ago," he wrote. "There are plenty of capable factories and Bluetooth chips are cheaper, more powerful and energy efficient."
So with that, Migicovsky and "a small, narrowly focused company" will begin working on a brand new watch. The upcoming wearable will have "the same specs and features as Pebble, though with some fun new stuff as well. It runs open source PebbleOS, and it’s compatible with all Pebble apps and watch faces. If you had a Pebble and loved it… this is the smartwatch for you."
I had the chance to strap on a Pebble for a few weeks 8 years ago, and loved the time I spent with it on my wrist. The way it displayed notifications and alerts in a scrollable timeline, the intuitive navigation, and the fact that you didn't need to charge it often made it an absolute delight to use. So I'm pumped for this project, and can't wait to see more Pebbles back in the wild soon.
Migicovsky noted it'll be a while before he'll be able to share a timeline for when the new Pebble will be available. You can find the PebbleOS code base over on GitHub, and sign up to receive updates on the project with your email address over on the rePebble site.
Source: Eric Migicovsky
