Why not? I don’t see how it would be in Fitbit’s interest to generate bad press for that small an amount as far as they are concerned.
Wendelius
It sounds like Fitbit didn’t purchase Pebble, Pebble went bankrupt and Fitbit bought/is buying assets piecemeal. I’ll be pleasantly surprised if after Pebble has settled with their creditors that there’s still money to refund Kickstarter (or that Fitbit acquired the debt related to Kickstarter pledges).
Promising payment four months out feels like a good way for everyone involved in Pebble to transition things over and then consider actual refunds no longer their problem.
On a related note, any recommendations for a smartwatch that can go a week or so without needing charged? Apple Watch is a non-starter.
Fitbit Blaze, I guess.
As for Pebble, from what I’m reading, Fitbit is buying their assets and hiring some of their employees for around $40 million. Pebble itself is no more, which how they get away with just cancelling everyone’s warranty support.
$40 million. That’s quite the drop from the rumored $700 million they were offered in 2015 from Citizen, or even the $70 million from Intel.
What was funny was how they framed this announcement with all these smiling people photos.
/shows picture of smiling people
Great news! Fitbit has voided your warranty! We’ve loved our time together!"
/shows picture of mom holding baby
Great news! All your Kickstarter funds are being refunded! We’re selling the company and getting out of hardware! What a journey we’ve made together!"
Yep. The way that announcement was put together really rubbed me the wrong way.
This feels like when NBC bought the rights to “The State” and then just canceled the show.
WTF. I want a damn smart watch with 10 days battery life.
Seriously bummed.
I’m pretty confident I’ll see my refund. They certainly went into a lot of detail on how they plan to handle refunds for a company that didn’t plan to fulfill them.
Happy to hear there may be an update that reduces reliance on cloud services – that’s way better to hear than just “You’re on your own.” (Anyone wanna buy my Chumby?) If I can just download new watchfaces from a website like I used to with my OG original Pebble, I’ll be okay.
I’m wearing one now. Garmin Fenix 3 HR. Do you need to know the barometric pressure where i am right now? Of course you do (30.57 inHg).
This is terrible news. Why couldn’t they have gotten the Time 2 released and THEN gone bankrupt? I guess I’ll just have to hope my Pebble Steel keeps on ticking and that the software will continue to be available on the Play Store in case I ever happen to need it.
[LIKE]
Yeah. As I’ve said several times here, messaging was never Pebble’s strong suit.
So I’d like toget the wife a smart watch for Christmas. I’d prefer that it can talk to her iPhone 6+. I know nothing about them. She lies to ride her bike and work out but I don’t want it to be a pure sports thing. The price range is between $250 and $350. Is that too vague? Any help welcome.
The obligatory Wirecutter article for Apple phone smartwatches.
I have been using the gen 1 Apple Watch for a year and half now, never missed a day. It’s handy and I like it very much, but it is far from perfect. Its a bit slow and 3rd party apps still aren’t that speedy (although they are better than they used to be). Also the interface still takes some getting used to. Outside of using it as a customizable watch, I use it for exercise mostly. The drawback is you need to bring your phone with you when you exercise, but I just strap it to my arm and use the watch to control music/podcast playback.
The main complaint you see is battery life, at least form people who don’t have one. I completely understand some people like to wear their watch 24 hours a day, and if that is the case, this isn’t the watch for your wife. It is a complete non-issue for me (and pretty much every article I have read seems to agree). I take my watch off at night and the charger is located on my nightstand. I just put it on that that. Impossible to forget to charge it. The charge will last 2 days unless you did an hour or more of exercise, then it might be cutting it close on day 2. If that is the case, 20 minutes on the charger and its good for the rest of the day.
For an iPhone user who doesn’t want to wear the thing to sleep and can remember to charge it, I highly recommend it.
I second everything @LeeAbe said, but I’ll add the series 2 watches (the newest Apple Watches) have a built in GPS so you no longer need to have your iPhone for accurate distance tracking.
You still won’t have any cellular/network connectivity without the phone nearby, but all the fitness stuff works without the phone now (and you can sync music to the watch to use with Bluetooth headphones as well).
Thanks guys. That was essentially my take as well. So let it be written, so let it be done. :)
The problem is that it means when I travel, I need to take another charger… and this sucks.
I say this as someone who wears a smartwatch. It’s the single biggest problem with them at this point.
That’s why the pebble time 2 seemed so great.
That’s why my Time is so great indeed. I only need to worry about charging it once a week. And it pops up a warning during the last day to remind me to charge it that night. It’s truly a non hassle. I had to spend most of the weekend staying at the hospital with my son and the watch was a non issue.
So yes, we can generally charge a smart watch every night like we do our phone. But Pebble really had a a very nice advantage there.
We’ll see how it works six months down the line or when the next Android release hits. Guess I can only hope someone has decided to make a watch that will at least take me through 3-ish days by then. Because I think smart watches are really great. Not for the fancy apps. For the notifications and having the time on my wrist (how old fashioned :) ).
Wendelius
Sure, but everything I have read/heard from Pebble users who switched to an Apple Watch or an Android watch, as neat as the Pebble is, it’s no where near as useful/powerful as the Android or Apple smart watch. It’s enough for some people, I get that, but it looks like for those people, your only option left is a Fitbit.
Traveling is a good point against an Apple Watch. But when I traveled a lot in the past, I had a small bag for chargers. Always bought an extra charger for my devices to go in my bag. Not cheap I realize, especially with Apple products.
When I used to use a Fitbit, I had the opposite problem. I would charge it, then come some 7-10 later it would tell me it needs a charge and I was away from home for several hours and couldn’t. Ended up with a dead Fitbit a few times. Never an issue with my Apple Watch, when I take it off, the charger is right there.
Ya, like I said… this is what I do. At home, it’s not a huge deal.
But it’s when I go on travel for a week, that it’s a bigger pain in the ass. Still not a HUGE pain, but still annoying, especially given that watches have proprietary chargers, so it’s not like you can just use any random USB cable.
Generally, from what I’ve seen from a guy who has a pebble, it could do pretty much everything I use my Zenwatch for.
The big issue I had with the older pebles, was that the screen was pretty crappy compared to any android watch. But the Time 2 had what appeared to be a nice screen in terms of resolution and color, and they are WAY easier to view outdoors.
I was really looking forward to having one with a nice color e-ink display.
Having used an OG Pebble and Pebble Time Steel, the only thing I find “more powerful” about my Apple Watch S2 is the heart rate monitoring. I mean, sure, it’ll DO things my Pebble Time Steel won’t – such as let me load up songs on it to play via Bluetooth or track my runs if I leave my phone at home – but I don’t do these things.
What I find myself using on smartphones is notifications and fitness tracking. The only edge there is in heart-rate monitoring, which the Time 2 was going to address. If I need an app, I’m going to pull out my phone; I’ve played with many watch apps on both devices, and other than watchy things like stopwatch, the only one I find myself using is 2048 when I’m bored and want to subtly play a game. :)
I like the sticky notifications better on the Pebble, the sleep tracking was cool, and the ability to go on a week’s vacation without charging was great. At least they addressed the waterproof issue in the Apple Watch S2.
And I really miss custom watch faces. No more LCARS face when I’m hanging out with my geekiest friends. :(
So I guess the Pebble Time 2 never even made it to the production stage? Because I would so buy one even if there was no follow up support. I guess my Pebble Steel still works just fine but the smaller bezel, better battery life and healthy tracking would have been so great. Too bad every other company out there just wants to put a smartphone on your wrist.