Hacker News

Pebble never said that anyone "needs" to buy the ring sizing kit. They did suggest that you buy the sizing kit from them for $10, OR 3D print it at home, OR visit a jeweler.

The ring has a button on it that you are going to press often, and you will likely wear it on a different finger than you would normally wear a ring on. That is/was the advantage of the sizing kit IMO: you can try the different sizes and wear the "dummy" ring for a couple of hours or a day and get a better idea of what size and finger will work best for you.

I think calling the ring sizing a "debacle" is being a little over-dramatic. It is a shame the ring kit is off on sizing, but how big of a problem it is, is kind of an unknown right now. It's a limited production product, there will be problems at the start, just like there have been with the Pebble Time 2.

I could be misremembering but I seem to recall them saying that their sizing (the reason you had to buy the special sizing kit) was slightly smaller than normal, and now it turns out the rings are coming out slightly bigger, could it be that all along we should've just used normal US ring sizing?

Yeah, this annoyed me. I live right next door to a jeweler who could have given me a standard sizing easily, but I bought the kit at their suggestion/mild insistence.

What's worse, I threw it out when I was done, given that it was a PLA sheet with no other apparent use, with it being nonstandard and all. So now I'm not even sure if I need to size up, because I'm not going to buy a second sizing kit to refresh myself on the fit.

Like, come on.

Was this a manufacturing issue or something?

How do you manufacture a ring and not know what size it is / sell it to people?

agree, not being able to guarantee or even know, it seems, how your sizing works is a deal breaker and i might have to cancel my order until i see how the first reviews come out :/

Exposed terminals would need a lot more than a single transistor. It would need ESD protection and it would change the outer case from being a complete sealed over mold into something that had to seal against two exposed terminals. That’s a big change.

They would also need to ship a separate charger device to go with it, which approaches the complexity of the simple ring product.

These are solvable problems, but it would increase the cost, decrease their margins, or both.

For a niche, low volume product with an unknown market demand I think making the simplest possible version of the product is a good idea to start, but at $99 it’s getting into the range where buyers don’t want to think of it as a disposable item.

The bigger problem is that the 2 year battery life depends on the device being used for only short notes like “Add milk to the grocery list”. The people who expect to use this for taking notes or thinking out loud could exhaust the battery in a couple months.

Yeah, that's really not great at all! From their website:

> Wait, it's single use? Yes. We know this sounds a bit odd, but in this particular circumstance we believe it's the best solution to the given set of constraints

I don't want to be too harsh, since it seems like the pebble team are working hard at producing some exciting tech. But intentionally making a single use device is phenomenally irresponsible in today's climate.

I know they say they'll recycle them, but it'd be naive to expect anything other than a tonne of these becoming e-waste.

Cool, let me know when I can order your ring.

Yeah I agree if it was 10 yrs then I would say no need to charge, but apparently it's 2 yrs? In that time frame you could totally recharge it.

I agree losing the charger is actually pretty likely but THAT'S ON ME. For a $75 product, I don't want to consider it a consumable.

So 100% agreed, +$10 add terminals and a special charger.

A piezo button would be neat, might be able to generate enough electricity for each use without having to rely on a battery at all. Not sure about the form factor here though.

I’m also baffled that they didn’t do this. If I am buying something that becomes so precious to my workflow then I don’t want a hardware subscription. I also want peace of mind that the company will not be gone, or the product discontinued in a few years.

Hopefully version two is rechargeable.

This is version one, I'm not particularly worried as I will probably upgrade to version two by the time the battery runs out.

> To provide access to the battery, one of the terminals could be behind a transistor enabled by the micro

So it’s a brick as soon as the battery goes flat?

IIRC EU markets now mandate the USB-C charger for devices (which is not a bad thing, too many throwaway custom chargers....). Adding the port, the USB-C PD circuitry may take up too much room. I think this approach would require some kind of custom charging cradle (probably usb-c connected..). Is having a custom usb-c adapter to charge a device allowed under the rules?

I think it uses a silver oxide battery which is not rechargeable.

Given their track record hitting the battery life projections for the P2D and PT2 (almost), I would give them the benefit of the doubt on the Index01.

That discrepancy isn't explainable given a change in daily use. 12hrs vs 2 years is a 1000x difference. You're saying they expected people to use it 1000x less than they actually are? That's them expecting people to use it for 1 min per day, and people actually are using it for 16 hours per day

Honestly not sure how this is legal given that the software is not fully baked when the devices ship. That is, people were getting PT2s when there was no way to test the touchscreen because the OS didn't support it yet. Same for speaker.

My guess is that if you got a bad unit and discovered it later when the software was updated, they'd probably swap the unit for you. That seems like more of a no-brainer than the screen crack replacements they're apparently doing.

It's also under the minimum EU demands, but I guess they found a loophole or they just hope they won't be fined.

Nirav from Framework is similar, he speaks openly about compromises they make with their designs and why they make them.

When leaders are both technical and open about these sorts of things it makes me feel like I can trust that they are invested in supporting and improving their products.

The failure rate waving is quite a stretch though. If you take into account reporting rates and time (since most people do not have the watch for long) I'm quite concerned. And I own a PT2. The "look big number, it's not a problem" does not translate to actual sensible failure rates.

To be clear: 51 broken screens in less than two months results in a yearly failure rate of over 1% which is find quite high for a watch.

I don't know if I would count durability as one of Pebble's strengths. The Pebble 2's silicone buttons often failed, and the bezel of the Time scratched if you looked at it wrong. There's also the whole thing with the company failing and only being propped up by Rebble to restore functionality.

Just don't use a color watch face?

agree 100%

I received my Time 2 recently.

The original Time was my first smartwatch, which I used for maybe 7 years, until decided to sell it after briefly switching to iphone.

Since then I was constantly looking for something similar in terms of capabilities and battery life.

I pre-ordered my Time 2 immediately after it opened, but since then I started regretting my decision. It's quite an expensive watch, and I got used to living without it, so it the spending seemed unjustified.

But all regrets went away when I received the package. It's a good product. Excited for you too!

I almost decided to make my own app recently (and was also considering the Pebble) to try and replicate the old basis Peak functionality, but when I found out that the Garmin health data was relatively open and accessible, l decided that it was easier to just make a new badge/gamification system for the Garmin data than to make an entire tracking app.

Interesting. Curious, what features exactly?

Is it to download the Pebble mobile app?

I'm on ze list but not a beta tester so haven't used it, but as I remember the claim was to expect up to a couple of years life with moderate use; works out about $40 a year so seems ok to me if I mentally model it as a subscription.

Update: ah, here (obv the founders claim):

https://repebble.com/index

How long does the battery last?

Roughly 12 to 15 hours of recording. On average, I use it 10-20 times per day to record 3-6 second thoughts. That's up to 2 years of usage.

"Battery that lasts for years" being actually 12-15 hours of recording is a huge turn off honestly.

>How long does the battery last?

>Roughly 12 to 15 hours of recording. On average, I use it 10-20 times per day to record 3-6 second thoughts. That's up to 2 years of usage.

They then say:

>Wait, it's single use?

>Yes. We know this sounds a bit odd, but in this particular circumstance we believe it's the best solution to the given set of constraints. Other smart rings like Oura cost $250+ and need to be charged every few days. We didn't want to build a device like that. Before the battery runs out, the Pebble app notifies and asks if you'd like to order another ring.

My oura has lasted ~3 years, I recharge it twice a week usually, and I think it has spent way more than 15-20 hours turned on.

Mobile, WiFi and GPS would require a substantially bigger battery to achieve the planned 30 days (I get about 25 days). I guess it wasn't a design goal.

Less the part where you can do it one handed, I don't see why they wouldn't be. Even the Time Round 2 has a microphone just no speaker. If not official support somebody else can always make it.

Probably https://apps.repebble.com/brain-dump-index01-for-your-pebble...

> The issues are a bit sad. But I will happily upgrade with the discount to the revised version of time 2.

The what? The only discount mentioned in the article is when they stop replacing cracked glass for free and heavily discount replacements instead.

And the only hardware changes mentioned are making sure they all get assembled correctly.

If only iOS didn't gatekeep some of its most useful functions, that would be great.

"But I will happily upgrade with the discount to the revised version of time 2."

Has an updated version been mentioned anywhere?

If Apple made a watch with 1/4 the battery life of a Pebble, I would agree. However, there are apparently 20,000 people who prefer to have less functionality and more battery life than Apple/Samsung/Google are interested in offering.

There are other options like Garmin and Amazfit, but honestly the UI on both of those are pretty awful, especially compared to the slick Pebble UI.

Are they still using eink?

I had my PT2 shipped to Germany. Watch cost $225 and then I had to pay an additional $58.54 in taxes / customs fees.

Legacy pebbles still work great with rebble.io. I still use my pebble time daily connected to my android phone.

They... kind of do, software-side at least. What kind of support are you looking for?

You've never heard of "the most funded project in Kickstarter history"?

This project is the continuation of Pebble watches after they sold their assets to Fibit, Fitbit got bought by Google and Google open sourced Pebble software.

No, it's a nostalgia thing from us olds + the long battery life and hackability.

I also haven't used it, but apparently people liked the old pebble: https://www.reddit.com/r/pebble/comments/1ijjm5w/people_who_...

It’s all nostalgia mining

> John Pebble sold his community and their collective souls for a corn chip and I genuinely don't understand why they all went rushing back to him

youve never made a mistake? you didnt think google had at least a decent shot of making pebble even bigger and better? he has not been shy about google's errors in handling pebble post acquisition. please be kinder - this is clearly his passion and he wants to run things his way. let him cook. spitting on a strangers face just because you dont agree with how they run their business when its really none of yours is something you should reflect on.

The notion that a ring-sized device could be "so environmentally unfriendly" is just not serious. I have no desire to get one, but environmentalism has zero to do with it.

Is my smoke detector "so environmentally unfriendly" because it requires alkaline batteries? There are so many things that are bigger than a ring (and have a greater manufacturing carbon footprint) that we do not think twice about using.