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Pebble Core Duo 2<\/p>\n
Ewan Spence<\/p>\n
I have a Pebble back on my wrist. That\u2019s a sentence that\u2019s going to lead to quite a few questions. The biggest one is likely to be \u201cwhat\u2019s a Pebble?\u201d There will be others who think \u201cOoh, that\u2019s a different approach to a smartwatch.\u201d And then there will be those with a long memory of wearables who recognize one of the first smartwatch brands and think, \u201cI thought they closed up shop years ago?”<\/p>\n
In order, Pebble is a minimalist smartwatch, it moves away from the cumbersome app-focused model found in Apple\u2019s WatchOS and Google\u2019s WearOS toward a more supportive role; and yes, they did close up shop years ago.<\/p>\n
I recently spoke with Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky about the relaunch of Pebble in a new decade<\/a>. I started off with something simple. Why?<\/p>\n \u201cBecause my box of working Pebble watches was empty,\u201d Migicovsky laughed. \u201cI tried an Apple Watch. I tried a Garmin. I tried Samsung, Google, nothing did it for me.”<\/p>\n Going Back In Time To Discover Pebble\u2019s Origins<\/p>\n Let\u2019s join the story in 2012, the very early days of Kickstarter. The poster child for Kickstarter, the lighthouse of \u201cthis can work\u201d was Pebble. It was one of the earliest visions of a consumer smartwatch<\/a> that delivered real benefits; it created and was backed by its own community, which helped drag the smartwatch concept to the smartphone, and it knew exactly what it wanted to be. At least at the start.<\/p>\n Pebble looked to other areas, such as introducing a general health smartwatch and a sports smartwatch, and, in chasing these spaces where the grass looked greener, the company\u2019s \u201chackers and developers\u201d ethos was lost. \u201cWe tried to be something that we weren\u2019t,\u201d Migicovsky admitted. “I lost sight of the original vision.”<\/p>\n The company announced it would shut down in December 2016 and was subsequently sold to Fitbit. Resources for Pebble owners wound down and went dark in June 2018.<\/p>\n The community banded together as the Rebble community to continue offering support where possible, but the days of Pebble as a trailblazing wearable were over \u2026 until Google (which purchased Fitbit in 2019) announced that it would be open-sourcing PebbleOS.<\/p>\n Three Pebbles from 13 years<\/p>\n Ewan SpenceOpen-Sourcing PebbleOS<\/p>\n Unsurprisingly, this is the Rosetta Stone that allows Migicovsky to bring Pebble back to the hardware market.<\/p>\n \u201cIf Google hadn\u2019t open-sourced the operating system,” he said, “I wouldn\u2019t have done it because I knew that that was the perfect operating system for me. It was just too much work to reproduce what we built, and i wouldn\u2019t be satisfied if we built a copy of it that wasn\u2019t as good.”<\/p>\n How did that initiative inside Google start? \u201cI asked Google. \u201cThere needed [to be] someone inside Google who would just carry it. This was not their job; they were doing it out of a labor of love, and we\u2019re forever appreciative of them.”<\/p>\n What Makes Pebble A Smartwatch?<\/p>\n The landscape for smartwatches has changed since Pebble left the scene in 2016. The major players, including Apple, Google and Samsung, have ideas about what a smartwatch should be. What does Migicovsky think?<\/p>\n \u201cA smartwatch needs to do four things really well,\u201d he laid out.<\/p>\n \u201cFirst, it shows you notifications; when you get an email, call or text, it vibrates on your wrist, you glance down, and can see what it is. And it has to be a good watch \u2014 to me, that is one you don\u2019t have to think about. It sits on your wrist but isn’t there until you need to know the time, which means it needs a long-lasting battery. Our new suite of Pebbles have battery lives of weeks.<\/p>\n \u201cIn order to be a good watch, you need to be able to read the time at any time. The watch face is always on, and we chose e-paper for all our watches because I didn\u2019t like the idea of a glowing, bright, tiny smartwatch attached to my wrist.<\/p>\n \u201cFourth is buttons. That means you can use Pebble without looking at the screen. If I get a call I can just feel the lower button and press to dismiss the call. I know the middle button skips tracks when listening to music. Touchscreens require you to look.”<\/p>\n \u201cFinally, the watch needs to be fun. You know the difference between a Swatch and a Rolex? Pebble to me was always more like a Swatch.”<\/p>\n The Pebble Core 2 Duo with music controller<\/p>\n Ewan Spence<\/p>\n Contrast that with Apple. Last year\u2019s Apple Watch 11<\/a> still needs to be charged daily, even with the upgrade from 18 to 24 hours of battery life. That short endurance is balanced by many more features, including heart rate and blood pressure monitors, temperature sensors, fall detection, exercise tracking an more. Connectivity-wise, the Pebble has Bluetooth, while the Apple Watch, in addition, has Wi-Fi, 5G and NFC to interact with the world.<\/p>\n Apple\u2019s view of smartphones, matched by Samsung and Google, is a maximalist view to pack in as much as possible. Pebble\u2019s focus has always been much tighter and minimalist.<\/p>\n Pebble\u2019s New Products<\/p>\n Pebble brought itself back to retail life in 2025 with the launch of the Pebble 2 Duo and the Pebble Time 2<\/a>; effectively bringing the standard models back from Pebble\u2019s first time around.<\/p>\n The former is a rework of the classic Pebble design, which had a small production run, in part because it used parts sourced from the original Pebble 2, including plastic cases, buttons and ePaper screens. The latter is built on an unreleased 2016 design, a sequel to 2015\u2019s Pebble Time.<\/p>\n Two new products have been announced and were on show at CES 2026. The first is the Pebble Round 2. Again, building on a previous Pebble, this circular smartwatch comes with a full-face screen, a smaller bezel and, curiously, a touchscreen.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are some things that a touchscreen can do that a button can\u2019t do, and that\u2019s swipe,\u201d Migicovsky said. \u201cPeople love swiping, especially through notifications, so that\u2019s one of the things we\u2019re working on adding.”<\/p>\n