Step back in time 10 years, and Tom's Guide called the Pebble Time Round the "most beautiful smartwatch." But watch companies know better than anyone time waits for no man, and after Pebble was sold to Fitbit, the brand seemed dead, buried and destined to be replaced by Apple Watches, Fitbits and Garmins.
But, like the $89 Casio Baby-G strapped to the wrist of my colleague Dan, what's old is new again. We knew Pebble was coming back, but now founder Eric Migicovsky has given us our first look at the final design of the upcoming Pebble Time 2.
The watch is already up for pre-order for $225 at Pebble's online store and brings with it a 1.5-inch, 64 color e-paper touch screen inside a metal frame. Features include step and sleep tracking, a heart rate sensor and IPX8 water resistance, while battery life is stated at 30 days. As before, the open source PebbleOS platform will offer up thousands of watch faces and apps.
Alongside the final design, Migicovsky revealed a few new details about the features, including that the watch will have four colorways and include a second microphone — possibly for noise cancellation. There will also be a compass sensor and a multicolor RGB LED backlight, which sounds cool.
The metal frame will be made from stainless steel and the buttons will have a knurling design like the original Pebble Time Steel.
"The design that we showed off back in March were preliminary designs," Migicovsky wrote in a blog post announcing the design.
"We've been able to tweak and improve the industrial design quite a bit since then. I think it’s turned out fantastically well! I even have a working albeit early engineering sample on my wrist."
The Pebble Time 2 is slated to start shipping to customers in December 2025. The company is also making a second, cheaper watch called the Pebble 2 Duo that's already available.
Back in the day, Pebble gained itself a pretty hardcore following due to the longevity of the devices (30 day battery life!) and the community-led nature of its app development. Whether or not the company can recapture some of that old magic in a world where the Apple Watch Ultra 3 is mere weeks away remains to be seen.
My colleague Mike Prospero actually caught up with Migicovsky earlier this year and asked him why he's bringing Pebble back.
Here was the response: "I've tried every other watch and it just doesn't hit that like the the core set of features that I want out of a smart watch, which is that it's as an e-paper screen [with] long battery life, hackable, something that you can download fun watch races for and is just simple.
"I really don't want that much out of a smart watch. I want it to tell the time, show notifications, let me control my music, do step tracking, sleep tracking, that's it."
Do you think Pebble has a shot with smartwatch fans in 2025? Let us know in the comments box below.
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