The Pebble E-Paper Smartwatch Is Back. Just Don't Call It Pebble

Nearly a decennary aft its demise, smartwatch shaper Pebble is back—sort of. Today, the company's founder, Eric Migicovsky, has unveiled caller hardware moving unfastened root PebbleOS. However, since Google owns the Pebble trademark, these are not Pebble smartwatches. Instead, accidental hullo to the archetypal watches from a caller marque called Core Devices: Core 2 Duo and Core Time 2.

For a little past lesson, Pebble skyrocketed to fame successful 2012 done a wildly palmy Kickstarter campaign. The company's smartwatches had e-paper displays and arrived up of the archetypal Apple Watch, offering wearers the quality to spot notifications, make customized ticker faces, and adjacent entree an app store—all with artillery beingness that lasted a week contempt an always-on screen.

But the institution scaled excessively rapidly and past didn't conscionable its income targets, yet deciding to merchantability to Fitbit. A fewer years later, Google bought Fitbit, which meant it owned Pebble's assets.

The archetypal Pebble smartwatches didn't dice off—Fitbit kept the lights connected for immoderate time, and acknowledgment to Pebble's cult-like fanbase, a conjugation of developers and enthusiasts helped motorboat the Rebble task to regenerate Pebble's web services erstwhile Fitbit yet unopen everything down, truthful that halfway functions of the watches kept working.

But what's enabled Migicovsky to present caller hardware moving PebbleOS is Google's determination to merchandise the root codification successful January. “I asked politely if they would unfastened root the operating system, and they precise graciously did,” Migicovsky tells WIRED. “We wouldn't beryllium capable to bash what we're doing present if Google hadn't done that, truthful we're ace appreciative.”

New Leaf

That brings america to Migicovsky's caller brand—Core Devices—a motion to the Pebble Core, the screen-less wearable that ne'er shipped. This is simply a precise tiny cognition that consists of Migicovsky, different full-time employee, and a fewer contractors—he says he's taking things a spot much cautiously this clip around. That's wherefore determination volition lone beryllium astir 10,000 units disposable for the Core 2 Duo and a small much of the Core Time 2—preorders are unrecorded contiguous if you privation to reserve one.

“I’m intentionally trying to physique thing that’s sustainable, alternatively than a fast-growing do-or-die company," Migicovsky says. "We’re taking tiny risks, we're doing a mates of products, 1 astatine a time—and cautiously, cautiously gathering this institution to beryllium sustainable. If we tin bash our jobs, physique these watches and marque radical happy, we'll physique more. There's ever much time."