honestly just depends on what kind of watchface you want, square is cheaper and in some ways more convenient so if you don’t want an analog clockface there’s no reason to bother
Interesting! I have read that its not capable of a daily driver at this point which isnt such a surprise given the fact that even the fairphone is 500+ $/€. Smartphones are more like computers than phones i guess.
What was your experience with the pinetime? If you want to share I mean.
I use the pinetime as my daily watch now. I got it so I could control my audio book in my helmet while on my motorcycle but it has proven great all around. I use LineageOS on my phone and the pinetime was super easy to set up and use with gadgetbridge. No bullshit, no bloat, and as far as I can see no spying.
@[email protected] do either of you have any particular comparison between the two watches? And maybe how portable the apps can be for each other? For example writing something for the PineTime and porting it to the bangle js2 or vice versa?
I only ask because the former is so cheap and the latter is currently nigh quadruple the price. But my partner and both have been looking for a good smart watch that has the basics from what you want with one but without it being $150 to Samsung and bloated down. And while I’m not a programmer I’m nearly happy enough with the offerings I see on the websites. I do have a couple Pi projects and a home server that I go back and forth on. When I get the motivation I don’t usually have any issues and it’s at least in a usable state by the end, even if it’s not perfect.
The pinetime does not have many apps and you can’t simply install any. I think you have to alter Infinitime to implement the app, then deploy infinitime (with app included).
Idk who downvoted this but that’s literally what the github page says you need to do.
Sounds great! I‘m using a legacy apple device (sigh) so I‘m not sure my phone will do a lot with it. Do you know what it can do on its own? Tell the time probably. It says you can use it with a pc as well. Turning on lights at home would be great. I could also see reverse engineering the key fob of my old bmw and using it as a key replacement. ;)
Its not jailbroken so no, I cant sideload yet. But the EU is currently trying to force apple to allow sideloading. Should be any minute now! :)
I know about linux stuff. Running a daily driver for half a year now and a couple servers for a couple years. The apple thing is just one I bought before all that so I will use it until it breaks. I develop some low effort apps for my linux desktop so the watch should be cool for me.
The dev kit thing scares me a bit though. Says the assembled watch is not for development?
I tinker more with my pinephone than my pinetime, which is basically “waiting for an update and then applying it”. Out of the 2 the Pinetime is the one I use, the Pinephone is currently substituting as a pihole because I broke the Odroid C1.
There’s a lot more to do and play with on the phone compared to the watch, but the watch is reliable to use daily.
It’s a raspberry pi clone so to speak, made by hardkernel. Their latest C board is the C4, pretty happy about em. Running Arch Linux for browsing and light gaming.
Gave a quick check, and it costs more than twice the price to buy it in EU, everything from Pine64, for some reason, odd, will look at this in more detail later at some point in case i missed something because the idea of an open, not locked, not tracking your every move smartwatch is appealing, but that doubling the price thing is a minus.
Yeah I had a similar experience getting mine shipped to Canada, $30 but another $30ish for shipping. I hope one day they are available easier and everywhere.
The stopwatch is only working while it’s on the screen and the screen is active. Notifications stay there until you manually discard them. The heart rate sensor is a complete toy since you can only manually trigger it, and it took 2 years for the infinitime devs to read the sensor docs and realise their algorithm is bad. The step counter can only automatically sync, so when it fails to do so for half a day you need to walk around and shake your wrist while keeping you phone and watch screens active. And the list of fails continues beyond that.
On top of that it costs 65€ ($75) when ordering from the European warehouse, and they don’t allow you to order from the main one because it would end up cheaper. Don’t waste your money unless you need a reason to practice cpp.
The stopwatch does only work with the screen on, but it also keeps the screen on so it doesn’t stop working.
Notifications don’t stay there… You can see the last 5 notifications if you swipe down on the main screen.
You can enable the HR monitor and exit the HR app. It will show on the watch face if it supports it. The HR sensor only works if the screen is on so it doesn’t drain the battery otherwise. It’s not great and takes a while to display the rate.
Idk about the step counter. It’s the most useless feature on any smartwatch so I never use it. What does it count as a step? What’s the use of counting the steps? You know how you did or didn’t walk…
I don’t have many other fails. The alarm works great, the flashlight gets daily use and I use it to control the music app on my phone. It does everything I need for an open source device, which is the primary reason I have it.
It shouldn’t restart the stopwatch when you want to check the time on your watch, or receive a notification. Also, it was fixed in 2021 pr, rebased a year later, and it’s still not accepted.
I meant that they aren’t synced with the device they originated from. Also, am I misremembering or did they remove the new notification icon?
Isn’t the whole point of a heart rate monitor on a watch to take periodic measurements and record them so you can track your BPM during exercise? It works much better if you wear it on the inside of your arm.
A watch isn’t going to exactly count the number of steps you did, but it will tell you how active you were on what days and at what time. That can be useful.
I checked gadgetbridge, the app I use with the pinetime, and it shows a history of my heart rate and steps and tries to determine if I was “active”. Apparently it does keep track of HR intervals, but it only checks my rate when the watch has the screen active (so whenever checking time, notifications,etc) so random intervals rather than fixed.
I think it’s reliable though. It does what I want out of it and it’s open source, which to me is the main attraction for that price. Idk why they had to make it more expensive for the EU market though. Triple the USD cost, but still. I don’t know if there’s other smart watches that do more or cost less that are also open source and similarly usable?
If it’s dismissed on one device, it should also be dismissed on the other. Besides that, answering 5 calls shouldn’t leave you with 5 “Incoming call” notifications, especially so if you answered them from the watch.
Apparently it does keep track of HR intervals
No, it’s either measuring or not, it can’t do intervals nor save the data. The gaps you’re seeing is just data not getting synced because the screen needs to be active for it to maybe decide to sync at some point when it feels like it.
I think it’s reliable though.
The Osama Casio costs 23$, is also water resistant, the battery lasts ~7 years and can be easily replaced when it runs out, it has a working stopwatch, and a timer that can go for over 24h. Meanwhile with the pinetime you have to chose between risking it dying when you wash your hands, or throwing it away in a few years when the battery dies and you can’t replace it. What reliability are you talking about?
I don’t know if there’s other smart watches that do more or cost less that are also open source and similarly usable?
Lilygo ones have a really crappy battery life but the models have a combination of WIFI, IR, LORA, GPS, and mic + speaker. So, they’re much better as programmer toys, but even worse as watches.
Banglejs 2 costs about as much as the EU version, but the device is so much better it’s not even funny. I’m pretty sure a lot of programmable Aliexpress watches are also running espruino, and it’s got community ports for other watches.
TLDR
It’s crap, and I’m still salty because the person ordering it for me (of course the EU store won’t ship to non-EU European countries) got scammed without checking in with me whether there’s something off about paying 3 times as much as what’s shown in the link that I sent them…
If it’s been in the drawer for all this time, charge it again, it will ptobably boot. I had a similar issue, but didn’t let the thing shut down conpletely (by making sure the battery is completely drained).
Why does every manufacturer fall for the IPS/OLED meme instead of using a transflective LCD (like what a calculator has)?? My Amazfit Bip gets 6 weeks on a single charge with the screen on 24/7
transflective LCD is like magic tho, the things are floating. Jokes aside is there a smartwatch that has this screen, but with actual pixels, so that it’s just as “smart”? I know thag amazfit can show you all the info, but having a mini-mini-pc is cool.
Whatever floats your boat ig. For me it’s 50% looks and 50% sleep tracking. I don’t think a wristband can track how much calories I burn, and sport tracking is basically a meme. But for checking if I get enough sleep, and a fashion piece. Yes, pls.
The step tracking is far less accurate than any other fitness watch I’ve had.
The raise-to-wake is not reliable regardless of how it’s calibrated.
The heart rate monitor I can’t provide evidence of accuracy, but based on the experience I had with the other features it’s safe to guess it’s not very accurate. More importantly it’s a battery killer and turns itself off constantly.
The interface in total is severely lacking.
Coding custom features is highly unenjoyable.
A large part of it relies on the companion apps which just don’t provide much support for the pinetime, especially in comparison to other devices.
The timer/stopwatch/alarm is laughable as it buzzes once and that’s it.
I mentioned already that notifications are ugly and bare minimum. Most information is cut off and it can only handle up to 5 notifications in memory before it’s cut off and you don’t get any more until you check them or it just clears the oldest one. I’m not exactly sure how it handles that because to me it’s just unusable.
It does not track sleep as that would require too much info to be sent to a third party. The battery is insane on it as well I get 5 plus days on mine.
Not enough processing on the watch I think. You can look it up on the pinetime gethub (https://github.com/topics/pinetime) somewhere in the mess of projects it is mentioned.
It’s just bad coding. Half a year ago they released a patch to more than double the battery life. 2 weeks is reasonable, especially when you limit the useless notifications.
What Android software could you use for managing it? Gadgetbridge seems to not have fully-developed support for it, even with their preferred firmware.
I’m using Gadgetbridge with a hacked Amazfit Bip and I’m pretty happy. I like the multicolor TFT LCD w/no default backlight on the Bip, which is very readable in bright light and only requires a quick button press to get the backlight on in the dark, or you can waste more battery life and have it turn on when you turn it towards yourself. It’s also got built-in GPS/workout tracking (you have to manually flash the A-GPS data occasionally…), the ability to load little open source apps, sleep tracking, heart rate tracking, notifications, custom watchfaces, etc which I’m sure the Pinetime has most of. The battery also lasts ages since it uses such a low-power LCD.
I’m not saying the Pinetime isn’t good, but decent alternatives exist. I would love a truly open-source smart watch, but maybe when the project is slightly more mature. I guess I could always get one and contribute to it… $30 is really not much. I’ll definitely try it if my Bip breaks.
I have found nothing that worked, was not spying on you, was not some hipster pipedream, and has lots of people working on it. Oh and gadgetbridge seems to work good, what do you mean not supported?
Also the Bip cannot spy on you unless you install the official app. It’s limited to its interactions with apps over bluetooth, and I just use Gadgetbridge.
If you want a successor to the Pebble, also consider Bangle.js 2.
It’s a little more expensive compared with the PineTime but I got one and I’m very happy!
Ultimately the Pebble is still working fine though I know it will pack in eventually. All I need is something I can use to read notifications and control music, always-listening health stuff and fancy battery-depleting screens are a negative!
It doesn’t rely on phone navigation for starters :)
I find it to be especially useful for running, or really sports in general where it’s not practical to carry a phone. Accelerometer step counting alone isn’t very accurate. Having GNSS on the watch is very helpful in a lot of ways.
This is a pinetime it looks like.
You should get one, open source and $30.
Does it support the
watchcommand?user@watch:~ $ watch nowOtherwise, who knows when “now” was…
/s
Watches should be round IMO. I’m happy with my Samsung Watch 4 Classic.
Yeah, but square screens are way cheaper to procure and to program for, and every little helps in an open source project aiming for $30.
honestly just depends on what kind of watchface you want, square is cheaper and in some ways more convenient so if you don’t want an analog clockface there’s no reason to bother
it’s ugly and sticks out too much when it’s square. round is classy
It’s a chunk of plastic on your wrist. It’s always going to be a bit tacky.
True but it can also look sleek/modern, or at least rectangular can imo.
Thanks for posting! I was looking at the pinephone esrlier but this would be an even better tinker device for me atm!
The pinephone is not really usable now. The pinetime is awesome though.
Interesting! I have read that its not capable of a daily driver at this point which isnt such a surprise given the fact that even the fairphone is 500+ $/€. Smartphones are more like computers than phones i guess.
What was your experience with the pinetime? If you want to share I mean.
I use the pinetime as my daily watch now. I got it so I could control my audio book in my helmet while on my motorcycle but it has proven great all around. I use LineageOS on my phone and the pinetime was super easy to set up and use with gadgetbridge. No bullshit, no bloat, and as far as I can see no spying.
@[email protected] do either of you have any particular comparison between the two watches? And maybe how portable the apps can be for each other? For example writing something for the PineTime and porting it to the bangle js2 or vice versa?
I only ask because the former is so cheap and the latter is currently nigh quadruple the price. But my partner and both have been looking for a good smart watch that has the basics from what you want with one but without it being $150 to Samsung and bloated down. And while I’m not a programmer I’m nearly happy enough with the offerings I see on the websites. I do have a couple Pi projects and a home server that I go back and forth on. When I get the motivation I don’t usually have any issues and it’s at least in a usable state by the end, even if it’s not perfect.
Thanks for any input!
The pinetime does not have many apps and you can’t simply install any. I think you have to alter Infinitime to implement the app, then deploy infinitime (with app included).
Idk who downvoted this but that’s literally what the github page says you need to do.
Ah thanks, I was just reading what was listed for each on their website, I didn’t even think to check the git for them.
Sounds great! I‘m using a legacy apple device (sigh) so I‘m not sure my phone will do a lot with it. Do you know what it can do on its own? Tell the time probably. It says you can use it with a pc as well. Turning on lights at home would be great. I could also see reverse engineering the key fob of my old bmw and using it as a key replacement. ;)
There is a lot of stuff people mess with, but with all linux people only some of it is useful or works. Can you side load on old apple stuff?
Its not jailbroken so no, I cant sideload yet. But the EU is currently trying to force apple to allow sideloading. Should be any minute now! :)
I know about linux stuff. Running a daily driver for half a year now and a couple servers for a couple years. The apple thing is just one I bought before all that so I will use it until it breaks. I develop some low effort apps for my linux desktop so the watch should be cool for me.
The dev kit thing scares me a bit though. Says the assembled watch is not for development?
Oh yeah don’t get the dev kit, its just the watch bits really. The normal watch is sealed and whatnot, that is the one to get.
I tinker more with my pinephone than my pinetime, which is basically “waiting for an update and then applying it”. Out of the 2 the Pinetime is the one I use, the Pinephone is currently substituting as a pihole because I broke the Odroid C1.
There’s a lot more to do and play with on the phone compared to the watch, but the watch is reliable to use daily.
Thanks a lot for elaborating. What is an Odroid C1?
It’s a raspberry pi clone so to speak, made by hardkernel. Their latest C board is the C4, pretty happy about em. Running Arch Linux for browsing and light gaming.
That sounds pretty awesome!
Gave a quick check, and it costs more than twice the price to buy it in EU, everything from Pine64, for some reason, odd, will look at this in more detail later at some point in case i missed something because the idea of an open, not locked, not tracking your every move smartwatch is appealing, but that doubling the price thing is a minus.
Yeah I had a similar experience getting mine shipped to Canada, $30 but another $30ish for shipping. I hope one day they are available easier and everywhere.
The stopwatch is only working while it’s on the screen and the screen is active. Notifications stay there until you manually discard them. The heart rate sensor is a complete toy since you can only manually trigger it, and it took 2 years for the infinitime devs to read the sensor docs and realise their algorithm is bad. The step counter can only automatically sync, so when it fails to do so for half a day you need to walk around and shake your wrist while keeping you phone and watch screens active. And the list of fails continues beyond that.
On top of that it costs 65€ ($75) when ordering from the European warehouse, and they don’t allow you to order from the main one because it would end up cheaper. Don’t waste your money unless you need a reason to practice cpp.
The stopwatch does only work with the screen on, but it also keeps the screen on so it doesn’t stop working.
Notifications don’t stay there… You can see the last 5 notifications if you swipe down on the main screen.
You can enable the HR monitor and exit the HR app. It will show on the watch face if it supports it. The HR sensor only works if the screen is on so it doesn’t drain the battery otherwise. It’s not great and takes a while to display the rate.
Idk about the step counter. It’s the most useless feature on any smartwatch so I never use it. What does it count as a step? What’s the use of counting the steps? You know how you did or didn’t walk…
I don’t have many other fails. The alarm works great, the flashlight gets daily use and I use it to control the music app on my phone. It does everything I need for an open source device, which is the primary reason I have it.
It shouldn’t restart the stopwatch when you want to check the time on your watch, or receive a notification. Also, it was fixed in 2021 pr, rebased a year later, and it’s still not accepted.
I meant that they aren’t synced with the device they originated from. Also, am I misremembering or did they remove the new notification icon?
Isn’t the whole point of a heart rate monitor on a watch to take periodic measurements and record them so you can track your BPM during exercise? It works much better if you wear it on the inside of your arm.
A watch isn’t going to exactly count the number of steps you did, but it will tell you how active you were on what days and at what time. That can be useful.
For $75 it’s janky as hell
I agree with the stopwatch.
I don’t understand your second point.
I checked gadgetbridge, the app I use with the pinetime, and it shows a history of my heart rate and steps and tries to determine if I was “active”. Apparently it does keep track of HR intervals, but it only checks my rate when the watch has the screen active (so whenever checking time, notifications,etc) so random intervals rather than fixed.
I think it’s reliable though. It does what I want out of it and it’s open source, which to me is the main attraction for that price. Idk why they had to make it more expensive for the EU market though. Triple the USD cost, but still. I don’t know if there’s other smart watches that do more or cost less that are also open source and similarly usable?
If it’s dismissed on one device, it should also be dismissed on the other. Besides that, answering 5 calls shouldn’t leave you with 5 “Incoming call” notifications, especially so if you answered them from the watch.
No, it’s either measuring or not, it can’t do intervals nor save the data. The gaps you’re seeing is just data not getting synced because the screen needs to be active for it to maybe decide to sync at some point when it feels like it.
The Osama Casio costs 23$, is also water resistant, the battery lasts ~7 years and can be easily replaced when it runs out, it has a working stopwatch, and a timer that can go for over 24h. Meanwhile with the pinetime you have to chose between risking it dying when you wash your hands, or throwing it away in a few years when the battery dies and you can’t replace it. What reliability are you talking about?
Lilygo ones have a really crappy battery life but the models have a combination of WIFI, IR, LORA, GPS, and mic + speaker. So, they’re much better as programmer toys, but even worse as watches.
Banglejs 2 costs about as much as the EU version, but the device is so much better it’s not even funny. I’m pretty sure a lot of programmable Aliexpress watches are also running espruino, and it’s got community ports for other watches.
TLDR
It’s crap, and I’m still salty because the person ordering it for me (of course the EU store won’t ship to non-EU European countries) got scammed without checking in with me whether there’s something off about paying 3 times as much as what’s shown in the link that I sent them…
Ayy this is exactly what I’m wearing
I bought one and wqs quite happy with it until it just randomly got stuck in a bootloop and no amount of resetting or letting it drain helped
If it’s been in the drawer for all this time, charge it again, it will ptobably boot. I had a similar issue, but didn’t let the thing shut down conpletely (by making sure the battery is completely drained).
I already tried it after multiple months (i had to charhe it to boot at all) but it didn’t work… I will prob. Try again later
u sold me if it has hearthrate and stuff (idk what tracks sleep)
I would not say that any of the features work well enough to consider them as actual features. The only thing that is truly reliable is telling time.
My battery life is about 3 days. The notifications are ugly and bare minimum. It does not store more than 5 at a time.
Why does every manufacturer fall for the IPS/OLED meme instead of using a transflective LCD (like what a calculator has)?? My Amazfit Bip gets 6 weeks on a single charge with the screen on 24/7
transflective LCD is like magic tho, the things are floating. Jokes aside is there a smartwatch that has this screen, but with actual pixels, so that it’s just as “smart”? I know thag amazfit can show you all the info, but having a mini-mini-pc is cool.
I basically just want a smart watch to be an extension of my phone’s lockscreen:
Tell me the time, and tell me why my phone just buzzed, almost anything else is bloat that’s shaving literal weeks off of the battery life
Whatever floats your boat ig. For me it’s 50% looks and 50% sleep tracking. I don’t think a wristband can track how much calories I burn, and sport tracking is basically a meme. But for checking if I get enough sleep, and a fashion piece. Yes, pls.
Different market.
Have you updated it this year? 1.13 improved the battery life from 3-5 days to 10+
What does not work for you? Other then the one player pong sucking I have had the opposite experience.
That is a bold statement. I as someone who was considering purchasing one, could you elaborate?
The step tracking is far less accurate than any other fitness watch I’ve had.
The raise-to-wake is not reliable regardless of how it’s calibrated.
The heart rate monitor I can’t provide evidence of accuracy, but based on the experience I had with the other features it’s safe to guess it’s not very accurate. More importantly it’s a battery killer and turns itself off constantly.
The interface in total is severely lacking.
Coding custom features is highly unenjoyable.
A large part of it relies on the companion apps which just don’t provide much support for the pinetime, especially in comparison to other devices.
The timer/stopwatch/alarm is laughable as it buzzes once and that’s it.
I mentioned already that notifications are ugly and bare minimum. Most information is cut off and it can only handle up to 5 notifications in memory before it’s cut off and you don’t get any more until you check them or it just clears the oldest one. I’m not exactly sure how it handles that because to me it’s just unusable.
It does not track sleep as that would require too much info to be sent to a third party. The battery is insane on it as well I get 5 plus days on mine.
Why would it require any info to be sent to a third party? My P32 tracks sleep and I keep it entirely offline.
Not enough processing on the watch I think. You can look it up on the pinetime gethub (https://github.com/topics/pinetime) somewhere in the mess of projects it is mentioned.
Couldn’t it connect to a phone and have that do the math
They have not made a phone side app yet. That would be the third party I think.
How far the smart watch has fallen that 5 days of battery life is now “insane”, these things should last weeks
sobs in Pebble
It’s just bad coding. Half a year ago they released a patch to more than double the battery life. 2 weeks is reasonable, especially when you limit the useless notifications.
Maybe they meant insanely short 🤔
What Android software could you use for managing it? Gadgetbridge seems to not have fully-developed support for it, even with their preferred firmware.
I’m using Gadgetbridge with a hacked Amazfit Bip and I’m pretty happy. I like the multicolor TFT LCD w/no default backlight on the Bip, which is very readable in bright light and only requires a quick button press to get the backlight on in the dark, or you can waste more battery life and have it turn on when you turn it towards yourself. It’s also got built-in GPS/workout tracking (you have to manually flash the A-GPS data occasionally…), the ability to load little open source apps, sleep tracking, heart rate tracking, notifications, custom watchfaces, etc which I’m sure the Pinetime has most of. The battery also lasts ages since it uses such a low-power LCD.
I’m not saying the Pinetime isn’t good, but decent alternatives exist. I would love a truly open-source smart watch, but maybe when the project is slightly more mature. I guess I could always get one and contribute to it… $30 is really not much. I’ll definitely try it if my Bip breaks.
I have found nothing that worked, was not spying on you, was not some hipster pipedream, and has lots of people working on it. Oh and gadgetbridge seems to work good, what do you mean not supported?
Also the Bip cannot spy on you unless you install the official app. It’s limited to its interactions with apps over bluetooth, and I just use Gadgetbridge.
Glad you worked around the spying. I just wanted to give my money to a company that did not start by spying on me.
According to the wiki, only one firmware is supported, and it’s early support with missing features. The wiki may be outdated, though.
Yeah, I have updated my firmware and its just fine. Like a lot of this type of development there is not great oversight or up to date documents.
What is a good OS for a dummy?
IIRC it comes with a firmware called InfiniTime preinstalled. So I guess that one.
What about for a dummy that wants to feel smart by installing a custom one?
The latest version of infinitime. The update process will make you feel smart.
Hell yeah
First I’ve heard of it, is it a worthy successor to the Pebble?
If you want a successor to the Pebble, also consider Bangle.js 2. It’s a little more expensive compared with the PineTime but I got one and I’m very happy!
Ultimately the Pebble is still working fine though I know it will pack in eventually. All I need is something I can use to read notifications and control music, always-listening health stuff and fancy battery-depleting screens are a negative!
Never owned a Pebble, But I think as they still make the pinetime it bodes well.
Thanks for the heads up!
Or a Bangle.JS 2 if you like GPS :-)
But the pinetime uses the phones navigation/gps. I am not sure what that would do?
It doesn’t rely on phone navigation for starters :)
I find it to be especially useful for running, or really sports in general where it’s not practical to carry a phone. Accelerometer step counting alone isn’t very accurate. Having GNSS on the watch is very helpful in a lot of ways.
Ah, that explains it then. I have not run in 10 years and would not have thought of that.