Eric Migicovsky, the founder of Pebble, announced plans to bring the e-ink smartwatch back to market. Why now? Migicovsky cites the lack of a similar smartwatch that meets his needs. In making the announcement, the Pebble founder turned re-founder took the opportunity to poke fun at Apple for still not allowing third-party watch faces to run on the Apple Watch.
Migicovsky says he’s working to bring Pebble watches back to the market because no other product meets this criteria (in his words):
- Always-on e-paper screen (it’s reflective rather than emissive. Sunlight readable. Glanceable. Not distracting to others like a bright wrist)
- Long battery life (one less thing to charge. It’s annoying to need extra cables when traveling)
- Simple and beautiful user experience around a core set of features I use regularly (telling time, notifications, music control, alarms, weather, calendar, sleep/step tracking)
- Buttons! (to play/pause/skip music on my phone without looking at the screen)
- Hackable (apparently you can’t even write your own watchfaces for Apple Watch? That is wild. There were >16k watchfaces on the Pebble appstore!)
While the viability of Pebble 2.0 in 2025 is uncertain, you have to give it to the guy for using a common Apple Watch complaint as a selling point.
Of course, when it comes to watch faces, the Pebble is like a Kindle, while the Apple Watch is like an iPad. Still, I hope it works out for the new Pebble!
Top comment by HalfwitWizard
There is something to the week long battery life for watches. It'll never happen but I'd love an e-ink apple watch SE that just did fitness tracking and basic time stuff. I was a fitbit user for a long time and loved only having to charge it every 5-8 days depending on usage.
It sounds like the new hardware will be as close to the original hardware as possible. And despite Fitbit obtaining Pebble’s intellectual property before being bought by Google, the new Pebble can run its original OS thanks to open sourcing by Google.
The Pebble founder even says an iOS version of the Cobble app that works with the smartwatch is coming soon to iPhone. Pebble’s old legacy app supported iPhone, but it has long been defunct.
Prior to the Apple Watch release, I was a happy Pebble user myself. I knew I wanted a smartwatch that could play music and podcasts, not just control them, and I really wanted Siri voice control and the ability to reply to message notifications. Nevertheless, I get that the smartwatch hasn’t replaced the smartphone, and having a different kind of smartphone satellite could be appealing.
Show your interest for the return of Pebble at repebble.com. I’ve now said “pebble” so many times in my head that the sound of the word has lost all meaning. Speaking of sound, Apple Watch does include a tone that’s actually called pebble…
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