Pebble Announces Return, New E-Ink Smartwatch in Development; Google Open Sources OS Source Code

Pebble on Tuesday announced that it is back to developing smartwatches, years after the company shut shop due to financial troubles. The Palo Alto-based company said it will introduce a new smartwatch with the “rePebble” branding. The device is claimed to come with a unique feature which may set it apart from competitors — an e-ink screen with always-on display capability. To aid in the company's ambitions, Google has open-sourced the operating system (OS) which Pebble smartwatches run on.

New Pebble Smartwatch in Development

In a blog post, Pebble co-founder and CEO Eric Migicovsky highlighted that while there are a boatload of smartwatch options to choose from in today's time, none of them have the “core set of features” that they want. This includes an e-ink screen with always-on display capabilities. It should have a reflective surface instead of an emissive one which is readable under sunlight. Further, its user interface (UI) should be based on the core set of features including tracking time, notifications, music control, alarms, weather, calendar, and sleep/step tracking.

Migicovsky said that such a product is required to have buttons to play, pause, or skip music from the watch directly, instead of having to glance at the smartphone's screen regularly. The official desired that the product should be “hackable”, while taking a dig at Apple which does not allow users to write their own watch faces.

Thus, Pebble is going back to the drawing board to develop a new smartwatch which could build upon the aforementioned set of features. The upcoming Pebble (or rePebble) smartwatch will have the same set of features and specifications as the original watch which shipped between 2013 and 2016. The company claims it is now easier to build a smartwatch compared to a decade ago due to the emergence of capable factories and Bluetooth chips which are “cheaper, more powerful, and energy efficient.”

PebbleOS Becomes Open-Sourced

To further aid in its ambitions, Pebble has worked with Google to make the smartwatch's OS open-sourced. The product's IP was owned by Fitbit which itself was acquired by the Mountain View-based technology company in January 2021. Dubbed PebbleOS, its source code is now available on GitHub.

Google says it contains the entire OS which provides standard functionality including notifications, media controls, fitness tracking, and support for custom apps and watchfaces for running on ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers. Following its availability, the company aims to assist the community and volunteers from Rebble — a community-driven project for keeping the Pebble smartwatch functionality active which surfaced after the OEM ceased its operations.