First Pebble. Very mixed feelings

General Discussion
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I’d like to start positive.

The watch looks really great (red). I’m impressed by the build quality and overal look and feel. Love the buttons! The basic band is silicone one, but it doesn’t look cheap, in my opinion. Feels nice. It’s a standard 22mm as well, which is good. The UI is nice, system is responsive and snappy. Especially in combination with the buttons! I would welcome an option to disable some of the animations, but it’s fine. There are a lot of settings, quite granular. I like that. I also like the philosophy behind the product. Open source. Ownership. :+1: Anyway, my first impression was great.

And now the other side.

Indoor readability is absolutely awful. Unless you have a B/W high contrast watch face, most of the time you cannot see anything. Which kinda beats the purpose of having a colored e-ink display.

Wake up movement sensitivity is terrible by default. I had to shake my hand excessively to get the display to light up. Thanks to this forum, I found a solution: Settings → Backlight motion → Debug → Motion sensitivity → Medium-high , which helps. It’s not great, but significantly better. (I think this settings should be available in the default settings.)

I knew that health tracking was supposed to be basic. But this is absolutely barebones. I’m currently using a Garmin Vivomove Style. And I’m aware that comparing health functions directly with Garmin wouldn’t be fair. I’m fine with basic tracking. However, basic doesn’t mean barely functional. (more on that later).

Notifications are a mess. First of all, when I dismiss a notification it should be dismissed everywhere. Period. I don’t get this “oh, in case you accidentally dismiss your notification, there’s a X days history”. I suspect it’s an excuse, because there’s a programatical synchronization problem. Which is fine, just be transparent. As far as I know, Android, for example, has notification history, so that argument is moot. And if you accidentally dismiss a notification. Tough luck :person_shrugging: How many times does that happen? Once per few months?

Second. I was not able to make notifications work consistently and respect the phone settings. I have DND mode during the night and only selected family members able to reach me. Pebble ignores that setting (despite having a checkbox for it). Either all notifications go through or none.

Another thing that an account is required for *checking notes* displaying battery stats??? Are you serious?

Which brings me to my biggest issue. The account is only tied to big tech. No email option. Quite ironic for an open source product. Other functions are tied to Google as well (at least on Android). Calendar only Google Calendar. Proton doesn’t work (it works on my Garmin, btw). Health stats? Google Health. The app itself is available only on the Google Play store. No F-droid, no Github release. No support for alternative stores like Obtanium. Again, one of the huge announcements was that they were able to get the code to be 100% open-source. To give the people back the power of control and ownership. (Apparently I’m not the only one having this issue as seen here and here)

A few other issues, in no particular order:

  • Alarm vibration is off by default for some reason.
  • Weather just doesn’t work. Even with all the permissions. The static location throws an error that “can’t search” and I should “check the connection”.
  • The step counter is quite unreliable - counting steps during the night. 100 steps (80 → 176) in my studio apartment? I don’t think so. (Could this be connected to the motion sensitivity?)
  • Sleep tracking. It’s all over the place compared to Garmin.

As for today, I’ve put the watch back in the box and I’ll try again in a month or two if software updates fix and improve things. If not, I’ll have a watch for sale. I really wanted to like this watch :confused:

Disclaimer: The whole experience was unfortunately kinda frustrating, so I used the watch for only a few days. Therefore, there is a possibility that I missed some settings or features.

Obligatory disclaimer these days: This review is HUMAN WRITTEN.

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Hi there, thanks so much for taking the time to write this! Some of the things you mentioned sound like bugs (your alarms should definitely vibrate + pressing the center button on your watch should dismiss notifications on your phone).

Could you do me a favor and fill out a bug report by going into the Pebble app and heading to Settings > Phone > Get Help > New Bug Report? We have limited support on the weekends but we can look over your issues/device logs on Monday!

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For what’s it’s worth, I specifically want notifications to remain on the watch unless I explicitly dismiss them there, even if I have deliberately swiped away the notifications on the phone. I briefly tried a Garmin when my Time Steel buttons started playing up a few months ago, and detested that I could not go back through the history because dismissing on the phone, or rebooting for OS updates, etc, made notifications vanish from the watch.

As just one example, when I receive security codes, I leave them on my watch for quick reference for when I ultimately need them, so that I don’t have to go hunting through my phone for something that may have arrived days earlier.

AFAIK, swiping away a notification on the phone also clears it from the pebble screen. From the watch, you can select/dismiss and again it is gone from both. Nothing requires you to look at the notification history on your watch if you don’t want to: you can simply remap the notification history quick launch button to do something else and then you’ll never be bothered by old notifications again. However, it doesn’t work the other way: if the history isn’t stored, there’s no getting it back.

I never listen to music so it is obvious that the Music app functionality should be removed. People who think otherwise are just making excuses. How often does anyone need to listen to music anyway? Once very few months? Tough luck. Just use a radio.

I recommend reading about “Chesterton’s fence” if you haven’t already encountered the concept.

Built-in weather app works fine for me, although I typically use Weather Graph.

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It’s best to keep in mind that PebbleOS and most apps had zero development for the decade it was owned by Fitbit and Google, which is a lifetime in mobile OS development, so it will be playing catchup for quite some time to adjust to the latest API’s and user expectations for each OS.

Indoor readability: Try TimeStyle - Pebble Appstore with bold and black/white colors for the time. I never need the backlight with it.

Wake up movement: If it’s too sensitive it will dramatically impact battery life. Try double tap to wake the screen.

Notifications: Yeah, they suck. Needs improvement. Try adjusting Settings > Quiet Time > Schedule to align with the phones DND until they improve.

Battery Stats: try Muninn - Battery Wisdom - Pebble Appstore until they fix the account situation (or leave, like I will if they don’t :grimacing:).

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While I share some of your concerns, it feels like you are looking for a better alternative to your Garmin/a fitness tracker. If you do: this is “just” a watch from a small company with some nice additional features on top of said watch. Its design ideals and constraints are probably not in line with what you are looking for if you want a fitness tracker with detailed health tracking. (and that’s okay)

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@Cytl I’m sorry if you feel attacked, I had no such intention. It was an honest admission that the Pebble will probably come short of what you are looking for if you compare it to a Garmin on the merits of fitness tracking and you might struggle with getting the best mileage out of it. This was meant in a helpful way.

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If that was about my reply, I’m sorry if it came across as hostile. I was responding to the one point in it that I disagree strongly with. I agree or am indifferent to other points so didn’t comment on them. Perhaps I should have done.

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Yup, me too. And I got it last week :nerd_face: