Early smartwatch brand Pebble is to be brought back by the inventor behind its original launch Eric Migicovsky, a move announced in the wake of Google releasing most of the source code for the defunct brand’s OS.
Pebble shipped its first smartwatch in 2013, having raised cash through crowdfunding platform Kickstarter the previous year. The website set to sell the new versions noted the brand sold more than 2 million devices the first time around.
Its watches were based around simple functionality and long battery life, and used an e-paper display. The company’s IP was sold to Fitbit in 2016, which was subsequently scooped up by Google and is the reason the tech giant came to own Pebble OS.
On his website, Migicovsky said “You’d imagine that smartwatches have evolved considerably since 2012. I’ve tried every single smartwatch out there, but none do it for me”.
He added nobody currently makes a smartwatch with an always-on e-paper screen, long battery life, simple UI, physical buttons and the ability to be “hackable”, where users can make their own watch faces.
“This time round, we’re keeping things simple,” he added. “Lessons were learned last time. I’m building a small, narrowly focused company to make these watches. I don’t envision raising money from investors, or hiring a big team. The emphasis is on sustainability. I want to keep making cool gadgets and keep Pebble going long into the future”.
Source code
In a statement on its move Google explained it was open sourcing the code behind the OS “which provides all the standard smartwatch functionality, notifications, media controls, fitness tracking, and support for custom apps and watch faces”.
Elements missing from the release include “some proprietary code”, including for “chipset support and the Bluetooth stack”.
The tech giant positioned the move as part of an effort to support volunteers in the Rebble Project community who have maintained functionality for the original watches since 2016.
However, Google noted “For someone to build a new firmware update, there is a non-trivial amount of work to do in finding replacements for the pieces that were stripped out of this code, as well as updating this source code that has not been maintained for a few years”.
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