Remember the news that Google had released the PebbleOS operating system under an open-source license so that anyone can use the software (with certain stipulations) to create their own PebbleOS-based devices?
Pebble’s founder Eric Migicovsky was one of the most excited to hear the news. He teased that he wanted to take a swing at resurrecting the Pebble himself, and well, shit. It’s been less than two weeks and he’s already teasing a snapshot of PebbleOS running on a prototype device.
playin’ the greatest hits
Migicovsky organized “a small group of folks” under his new company, Core Devices, which includes Heiko Behrens, who Migicovsky calls the “brilliant mind behind much of Pebble’s aesthetic and engineering beauty”, as technical advisor.
The second person to join the original iteration of Pebble, Andrew Witte, and a “key Pebble design leader,” Mark Solomon, are also on board. They’ll soon be joined by Steve Penna, who worked for the original Pebble in helping build the Pebble Android app.
“I’m flying to Shenzhen next week to meet with factories and suppliers,” Migicovsky said in a February 6 post. “I’ll post an update or two here on the blog, but for real-time fun check out @ericmigi on (X) or @ericmigi.com on Bluesky.”
Pebble is owned by Fitbit, which is owned by Google. It’s a Russian nesting doll of smartwatch properties. Perhaps Google open-sourced PebbleOS because its simplified user interface is so different from the Google Pixel Watch’s do-everything approach and Fitbit’s health-and-fitness-deep philosophy.
“Please don’t get your hopes up that the new watch will have X/Y/Z new feature,” writes Migicovsky. “It’s going to be a Pebble and almost exactly as you remember it, except now with open source software that you can modify and improve yourself.”
Evidently, he wants to get ahead of the hype train that could see people chasing their expectations up a tree that the Pebble will become anything like an open-source competitor to the Apple Watch, Google Pixel Watch, or Samsung Galaxy Watch.
The Pebble’s appeal was in its simplicity. As Migicovsky wrote in his earlier post, the relaunched Pebble will focus on “telling time, notifications, music control, alarms, weather, calendar, (and) sleep/step tracking.”
I’ve got a smartphone for when I want to be online, which isn’t nearly as much as I used to want. For a smartwatch, just give me the basics, the greatest hits of watch functions. If this new team of OG experts keeps it up, it may be the first smartwatch that doesn’t feel like it’s wearing me.
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