We’re excited to announce two new smartwatches that run open source PebbleOS and are compatible with thousands of your beloved Pebble apps.

• Core 2 Duo has an ultra crisp black and white display, polycarbonate frame, costs $149 and starts shipping in July.
• Core Time 2 has a larger 64-colour display, metal frame, costs $225 and starts shipping in December.

Both are available in limited quantities, with worldwide shipping. Prices are in USD. Pre-ordering is the only way to get one - they will not be sold in stores. Pre-order today at store.rePebble.com!

Why are we making new Pebble-like smartwatches?

Pretty simple - because we want one! No company has made a perfect smartwatch for people like us, so we’re going to make the exact smartwatch we want. Read the full story on my blog, but it comes down to 5 key features:

• Always on e-paper screen
• Long battery life
• Simple and beautiful design
• Physical buttons
• Hackable

No smartwatch on the market since Pebble offers this combination of features…until today!

Core 2 Duo

I think you might recognize this one 😉 It’s almost exactly a Pebble 2, upgraded with modern chips and new tricks. Duo is short for ‘Do-over’.

Similar to Pebble 2, it features

• Ultra crisp 1.26” black and white e-paper display
• Runs 10,000+ Pebble apps and watchfaces
• Lightweight polycarbonate frame in two colour options - White or Black
• Water resistant (targeting IPX8)
• Microphone
• Step and sleep tracking
• Standard 22mm watchstrap

Improvements from Pebble 2

• 30 day battery life (up from 7)
• Nordic nRF52840 BLE chip
• Speaker
• Linear resonance actuator (quieter and stronger than vibrating motor)
• More reliable buttons (up to 30% longer lifetime in testing)
• Barometer and compass sensors

Since this watch will look and feel just like a Pebble 2, you can refamiliarize yourself with it via videos, or reviews. For people interested in hacking on PebbleOS firmware, we’re offering an optional JTAG connector. I recommend buying 2 units if you want to hack, just in case!

Pre-order now for $149 on store.rePebble.com. Starts shipping in July.

Core Time 2

This is my dream watch. It’s everything Pebble Time 2 was going to be and more!

Features:

• 64-colour 1.5” e-paper display. Same display as Pebble Time 2 - much more room for text and details (53% bigger and 88% more pixels)
• Runs 10,000+ Pebble apps and watchfaces
• Metal frame and buttons (Black/White and likely a 3rd colour option as well)
• 30 day battery life (estimate)
• Flat glass lens (less glare and reflections than Pebble Time family curved lens)
• Touch screen
• Heart rate monitor
• Water resistant (targeting IPX8)
• Step and sleep tracking
• Linear resonance actuator (vibrator)
• Microphone and speaker
• Standard 22mm watch strap

The industrial design is closely based on Pebble 2, which I really love. It’s slightly bigger to accommodate the larger display. Both the frame and buttons are made of metal (most likely CNC milled aluminum). More details, including final colour options, will be shared later this year.

Pre-order now for $225 on store.rePebble.com. Starts shipping in December.

Left: Core 2 Duo - Right: Core Time 2

Software features

Each watch runs open source PebbleOS. This enables all the baseline Pebble features like receiving notifications, timeline, watchfaces, alarms, timers, calendar, music control, basic fitness tracking, etc.

The really fun part is that most of the existing 10,000+ PebbleOS watchfaces and apps will immediately work on these new watches, though some may try to access web services that no longer exist. Browse the full appstore on apps.rebble.io.

Existing apps/faces will show up with a border on Core Time 2 until developers update them, since it has a larger display (200x228 vs 144x168 pixels). Read more about on the old Pebble dev blog.

We will publish a companion mobile app for Android and iOS. My friend and past Pebble colleague, Steve, recently joined us to lead this effort. He’s joining crc32, long-time Cobble developer, who has been working with me since last summer. We’ll also be working on an updated SDK for creating new PebbleOS watchfaces or apps.

Availability

These watches will be sold exclusively through store.rePebble.com. Due to limited supply of display inventory, both watches will be manufactured in limited quantities. I highly recommend placing a pre-order - we will be manufacturing fewer watches than the number of people who have signed up on rePebble already! A pre-order secures your watch but gives you flexibility if you change your mind - you can get a full refund at any time up until your watch ships.

Project Progress

Left: Core 2 Duo running PebbleOS - Right: Engineering samples

Schedule-wise, Core 2 Duo is quite far along. We’ve already produced dozens of Core 2 Duo watches for testing and development. We’ve tested and confirmed our button improvements. PebbleOS has been compiled for the new architecture and runs on the watch. All firmware development is open source - you can follow the fun on Github and Discord. Our current schedule calls for shipments to begin in July.

How are we so far along, given that PebbleOS was only open-sourced in January? Two things helped: a) I took a monetary risk and began product development a bit earlier 😉, and b) we found a supplier who still had inventory of some Pebble 2 components.

Core Time 2 display lighting up!

For Core Time 2, we’ve finished component selection, initial industrial and mechanical design, and found sources for long lead time components. Now, we’re in the middle of creating the first prototypes.

The grand irony of hardware development is that software development is usually the slowest part of the project. Not this time! We’re extraordinarily thankful to Google for open sourcing PebbleOS, which gave us a massive boost.

We’ll share more details (like Core Time 2 frame colour options) later this year, as we get closer to mass production. Our current schedule shows shipments beginning in December. Follow along on this blog, via email, on Bluesky or Twitter.

Why were these specific specifications selected?

Building a smartwatch is an exhausting (😂) exercise of constraint maximization. Think of it as linear algebra - we’re solving multiple equations with multiple unknown variables. The primary constraint is display selection. This choice governs the size and shape of the physical design, as well as being the component with the most power drain and biggest cost. Other variables are Bluetooth chip (governs: cost, software compatibility, engineering time), factory selection (cost, quality, speed, risk), sensors (power, cost, software), battery (size, battery life, cost) and more!

Despite what Pebble’s second Kickstarter branding proclaimed, solving this inherently requires compromise. It’s a fine line to walk and generally the data is not 100% known upfront, so it inevitably requires some degree of trusting your gut.

Touchscreen: we’re adding a touchscreen to Core Time 2. Why? Very specifically, I want to add the concept of ‘complications’ to watchfaces and widgets. Like on Apple Watch, these complications/widgets will show glanceable information like weather, next calendar event, step count, etc. The touch screen adds the ability to tap on the complication and directly open the associated app. This is much faster to use than opening an app via the button menu, and saves your quick launch (long-press on the buttons) for other apps. The touchscreen may be used for other interactions, like swiping to rapidly scroll down a list, but that will be lower priority.

Core Time 2 will be the first PebbleOS watch to ship with a touchscreen, but not the first that we designed! In 2015, Pebble designed it into a watch called Cutts (or C2) and did some (very) preliminary software development work to integrate a touchscreen into PebbleOS.

Battery life: I’m really excited that battery life will be increased from 7 days to 1 month! This is due to massive improvements in Bluetooth chip power efficiency over the last 10 years.

Speaker: we’re adding this primarily for potential use in apps that benefit from audio output, like a ChatGPT or other AI agent app. It can’t easily be used for making voice calls, since the watches will not support Bluetooth Classic (required for headset profiles), but theoretically someone could write a custom voice calling client (eg SIP or something).

Smartstraps: neither watch will support smartstraps. Sorry. Most people don’t even remember this feature even existed, which is kinda the answer to why it will not be supported. RIP.

You shouldn’t get one if…

You need a perfectly polished smartwatch. This project is a labour of love rather than a startup trying to sell millions of watches. There may be some rough edges (literally). Things will get delayed. Some features will not be ready at launch. Things could break. Things could not last as long as you’d like. The only thing we can guarantee is that it will be awesome and a lot of fun! Every time you look down at your watch, you will smile 🙂

You’re looking for a fitness or sports watch. That’s not what we’re making. From what we hear, Garmin watches are great for runners/cyclists/triathletes!

You’re comparing this to an Apple Watch. There is NO way for a 3rd party smartwatch to compete with Apple Watch. Apple restricts 3rd parties in major ways - read my blog post for more information. For example, 3rd party watches on iOS cannot send replies to notifications.

These watches are not made for everyone. We want to be upfront with you about what to expect.

Watch images above feature impeccably designed watchfaces from TTMM, including one of my all-time favourites - TTMMBRN. Thank you Albert!