Who can resist the countdown clock? Not a tech journo, not a tech-savvy early adopter. It’s like one of those big, inflatable gorillas outside a used car lot. Even if you’re in the market for whatever is being pitched, you have to slow down and take a look.
Those who signed up for e-mail updates on the RePebble website got an email earlier today that said, “Time to get excited! Set your alarm for March 18 (tomorrow!) at 9 am PDT – 12 noon EDT – 4 pm GMT – 9:30 pm IST – Midnight CST – 1 am JST.”
It included a hyperlink that takes you to a countdown clock ticking down toward midnight. The URL is store.repebble.com/countdown, which—and I’m going out on a real limb that’s testing my professional credibility here—seems to be a store.
Ooh. Ahhhh.
a short tease and a fast arrival
It wasn’t all that long ago that Google, owner of Fitbit, which is the owner of Pebble, announced that it would open-source PebbleOS so that anyone could make their versions of the OG smartwatch. Oh yeah, it was only just on January 27, 2025. My, how things move fast.
Less than two weeks later, Pebble’s founder Eric Migicovsky showed off his own in-progress work on a successor using the now open-source PebbleOS. For those who enjoy the idea of a smartwatch with a simple user interface that doesn’t try to be a do-everything supercomputer for your wrist, like an Apple Watch, the spate of incoming Pebble watches promise a return to basic functions and clean UIs.
The Pebble’s appeal was always its simplicity. As Migicovsky wrote in an earlier post, the relaunched Pebble will focus on “telling time, notifications, music control, alarms, weather, calendar, (and) sleep/step tracking.”
So what’ll it be tomorrow? Details are scarce. Intrigue is high. Will Pebble smartwatches go on sale tomorrow? Or might they just be preorders, with a ship date later this year? Perhaps RePebble will pull the ultimate early April Fool’s joke and only start selling stress balls.
We’ll find out at the same time when you do, which seems to be (checks countdown clock) just a few hours away.
The post Pebble Smartwatch Relaunch Likely Set for March 18 appeared first on VICE.
