Revival of the Pebble Smartwatch
Samantha Wright writes:
The Pebble was 2012 smartwatch built using an e-paper display. It had great battery life, a UI that could be hacked using C or Javascript, and a very loyal fanbase. Unlike current incumbent smartwatches like the Google Pixel Watch or Apple Watch, Pebble kept its feature set under control and aimed to supplement a smartphone rather than step on its toes. The end result was a compact product with great battery life that was genuinely liked by gadgeteers.
Unfortunately, after a number of strategic missteps, the manufacturer of the Pebble was bought out in 2016, by a competitor, FitBit. The product was discontinued almost immediately, leaving the world of nifty wrist-mounted doodads noticeably poorer.
Ever since there's been a sort of grassroots campaign to support the Pebble, called Rebble, which was started more-or-less immediately after FitBit shuttered the Pebble, and is helmed by one of Pebble's founders. For the longest time they weren't making much headway on delivering software updates, as they essentially had to start over from square one, without the initial startup resources they'd had the first time around. Mostly they just served as a home for applications and widgets.
This all changed on Monday, when the Rebble lead was able to get hold of some folks at Google-who bought out FitBit in 2021-and convinced them to open-source the Pebble OS. (It's not quite complete-like many open-sourcings of closed projects, there are some patent-encumbered bits missing.) There's now the (similarly-named yet distinct) Repebble project, which aims to begin a new production run of Pebble smartwatches.
Is this the beginning of a renaissance for resurrecting beloved Google-owned products? Probably not. But it's one less corpse in the ground, that's for sure.
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