It seems like a new Pebble smartwatch might hit the market soon as Google open-sourced the wearable’s software.
Fitbit, and eventually Google, took ownership of the Pebble OS when the fitness wearable company bought Pebble for $23 million USD (roughly, $33 million CAD). Google, of course, bought Fitbit starting in 2019 for $2.1 billion USD (roughly $3 billion CAD).
In a trio of blog posts from Google and original Pebble creator Eric Migicovsky, it’s explained that Google has made a vast majority of Pebble’s original code available to use. This allowed Migicovsky to recreate a new version of the original smartwatch.
He says that he started work on the first Pebble in 2008 and still wears his Pebble model today. However, he wants new hardware since he says that he’s not happy with the current slate of smart watch offerings and wants a better solution.
His current criteria for the perfect smartwatch include an always-on e-ink screen, long battery life, a simple user interface, buttons, and hackability/customization.
In the blog post, he says, “Over the years, we’ve thought about making a new smartwatch. Manufacturing hardware for a product like Pebble is infinitely easier now than 10 years ago. There are plenty of capable factories and Bluetooth chips are cheaper, more powerful and energy efficient. The challenge has always been, at its heart, software. It’s the beautifully designed, fun, quirky operating system (OS) that makes Pebble a Pebble.”
The version of PebbleOS that was bought by Fitbit took dozens of engineers four years to build so Migicovsky asked friends he has at Google if they would consider open-sourcing the software and the company agreed. You can find all of the Pebble code on GitHub.
You can sign up to learn more about the potential new watch on a site called rePebble.com. You can also join a Discord channel or follow the sub/Reddit from the site.
Overall, Migicvovsky seems extremely committed to the idea of building a new smartwatch and making it as close to one of the original Pebbles as possible. I’d expect it to be similar to the Pebble Time that came out in 2015, but I’m hoping he makes one more reminiscent of the Pebble Time Round, which has beautiful hardware.
Source: Eric Migicovsky, rePebble.com, Google Open Source Blog
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