Google has released the source code of the Pebble watches of yesteryear as open source. Enthusiastic developers of the Rebble initiative can thereby revive old Pebble watches. Pebble's founder is also stirring, already announcing a new watch.
When you try something over and over but fail, are you a go-getter or are you stubborn? With Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky, I don't know what it is yet. Yes, a smartwatch with an e-ink screen gives it a long battery life, but the Apple Watch and Samsung Galaxy Watch prove that people don't mind daily charging.

And yet, I have a soft spot for Pebble's watches. In fact, I have purchased two of them. The last one, the Time Steel is now sitting like a paperweight gathering dust in a drawer, but that may soon change. PebbleOS is back! With the help of Google.
History of Pebble
Founded in 2012 by Eric Migicovsky, Pebble released its first smartwatch with an e-ink screen via Kickstarter in 2013. That was well before Apple targeted this market. There was an app for Android and iOS and apps were being written that could run on the watch. Everything looked good for the company.
But behind the scenes, it continued to struggle to attract investors and poor financial choices were made. In early 2016, a quarter of the staff was let go. At the end of that year, it really ran out of money and filed for a moratorium. The company was eventually sold to Fitbit for $23 million.
Rebble
In 2018, Fitbit pulled the plug on the Pebble service after which the watches became inoperable. That didn't stop some developers from building their own version of PebbleOS, called Rebble. Development was painstaking, particularly because it had to completely reverse engineer the software.

But that's no longer necessary because Google has now made the PebbleOS code open-source. That will make it easier for the Rebble community to bring the full functionality of PebbleOS back to numerous Pebble watches. This will again prevent a lot of e-waste, provided all those owners still have their watches.
New Watch
Eric Migicovsky is so confident about this that he is already announcing a new Pebble-like watch with at least the following features:
- Always-on e-ink display
- Long battery life
- Simple and beautiful interface
- Buttons!
- Hackable
In essence, this is very reminiscent of the Pebble watches as we once knew them. The question is, are others waiting for that too? After all, Apple and Samsung have taught us that people are also willing to lay down a lot of money for watches that don't have all that.