Certain watches can stay just as they are and people will keep buying them. The Casio F-91W, the most-sold watch in the world, keeps the time on a readable display and offers a single daily alarm slot (unless you board-swap it). The Timex Weekender may last as long as mechanical watches exist.
What about the Pebble? Is there still room on people’s wrists for the most exciting Kickstarter-backed tech of 2012–2016?
Eric Migicovsky, founder of the firm that was perhaps a bit too early to the smartwatch market, has made good on his pledge to find out and has made new Pebble watches available for preorder. The Core 2 Duo, “almost exactly a Pebble 2” with modernized chips, 30 days battery life, and a black-and-white e-paper screen, is $150 at preorder and is scheduled to ship in July. The Core Time 2, Migicovsky’s “dream watch,” is bigger, color, and metal, and goes for $225 right now. Its release is slated for December.
rePebble
The Core 2 Duo (“short for ‘do-over'”) is a modern-times Pebble 2 with a black-and-white 1.26-inch e-paper screen, polycarbonate frame, and better buttons.
rePebble
The Core Time 2 is the reimagined but faithful Pebble Time 2, with a 1.5-inch 64-color display, mic and speaker, HR sensor, and metal (aluminum) frame and buttons.
The Core Time 2 is the reimagined but faithful Pebble Time 2, with a 1.5-inch 64-color display, mic and speaker, HR sensor, and metal (aluminum) frame and buttons.
The Core 2 Duo (“short for ‘do-over'”) is a modern-times Pebble 2 with a black-and-white 1.26-inch e-paper screen, polycarbonate frame, and better buttons.
rePebble
The Core Time 2 is the reimagined but faithful Pebble Time 2, with a 1.5-inch 64-color display, mic and speaker, HR sensor, and metal (aluminum) frame and buttons.
Both watches are sold through the rePebble store in quantities limited by display availability. Migicovsky writes that there are more people signed up for news about the Pebble relaunch than watches available.
Both watches run PebbleOS, which Migicovsky and others pushed Google to make open source late last year. Therefore “most of the existing 10,000+ PebbleOS watchfaces and apps will immediately work on these new watches,” Migicovsky writes on his blog, with the long-running Rebble store making them easier to get to.
Both watches get something like 30-day battery life, largely due to the advances in low-power Bluetooth tech over the last eight years. New to the watches are a speaker (though not one that might necessarily make wrist calls easy) and a linear resonance actuator for stronger vibrations. The Core Time 2 has a touchscreen, the first on a Pebble watch, so its apps can scroll and watchfaces can have interactive complications, but hackers may come up with other uses. Both watches charge with the same magnetic pins as the original models.