Pebble Gets Acquired By Fitbit - Ends Production and Ceases Support Of Its Existing Lineup of Smartwatches (getpebble.com) 193
Reader phorm writes: In a notice to Kickstarter backers, pebble has stated that -- following the acquisition by Fitbit (official now) -- they will no longer promote, manufacture, or sell devices. Further, while existing functionality may continue, it is likely to be degraded and warranty support will no longer be provided. This includes any recently shipped Pebble models. For those that were eagerly awaiting shipment of Pebble Time 2 and other newer devices, those devices will not ship at all. Pebble has indicated refunds will be made within 4-8 weeks. Those expecting their money may not want to hold their breath, however, because a contradictory statement made by to backers by email says that refunds will be made via Kickstarter by March 2017.Fitbit said it is only purchasing software assets from Pebble.
Warranty Support? (Score:2)
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It's not purchasing the company, just some engineers and software. The company is disappearing.
Re:Warranty Support? (Score:5, Informative)
So Pebble (the company) continues to exist (perhaps in receivership) until all it's debtors (which includes warranties) are satisfied.
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Citation, please.
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You can't just disband a company and *poof* all your debts are gone.
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Obviously, but Pebble will still have assets and can thus satisfy their contractual commitments to their customers. It seems like FitBit is only acquiring patents (I thought the Pebble ecosystem was promised to be open source at some point) so Pebble as a company will continue to exist until it has settled all debts and claims. If there is an office building, or hell, a desk chair, the company will have 'assets' so it can liquidate those.
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Re:Warranty Support? (Score:5, Informative)
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In this case it turns out that they did do an assignment in bankrupcy, so the bankruptcy approved the disposition of the assets clear of the liabilities. Without that, you don't get to just dispose of the assets to a 3rd party and leave everyone in the lurch - the people left in the lurch also have a legal claim to those same assets, no matter whose hands they are found in.
Try giving away everything you own and then declaring bankruptcy. Any debtor can contest the bankruptcy at that point - one of my frien
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They didn't give away any assets. They sold them.
The money they received is an asset equal in value to what they disposed of (the IP)
That isn't anything like "giving away everything you own and then declaring bankruptcy"
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No, sounds like Fitbit is acquiring people not the actual company and it's assets.
Re:Warranty Support? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Warranty Support? (Score:4, Informative)
No, a fraudulent sale is a reason to have sales unwound by the courts. If you have an arms-length transaction with a willing buyer at a reasonable price, you haven't done anything that a bankruptcy court wouldn't oversee and approve in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
The company is done. Even in bankruptcy (which is likely coming), those assets would be sold, the obligations left with the defunct company and discharged, and the cash doled out first to the secured creditors, then (if any is left) to others. There's a rather complex hierarchy of priority, and who gets what amount of cents on the dollar is frequently negotiated, but customers are essentially unsecured creditors and very low in the priority scheme.
In short, you're not going to be able to force someone who only is interested in buying IP to also take on order, warranty, and support obligations for the product.
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Though technically true the creditors would have to take action and all indications are the Pebble was out of business, with excessive debt and insufficient revenue to cover costs and the indications are they shopped around for a buyer. The creditors could get the sale reversed but only under the assumption that they can locate a better offer, and one of the components of the deal are gone and can't be recovered (the employees). I read a news article that said Pebble had been shopping themselves around for
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Only if the sale wasn't an arms length transaction for fair value.
You are confusing the sale of assets with a company paying SOME of its debts prior to filing for bankruptcy. The bankruptcy court could claw back some of the debt payments.
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Yes. You're a creditor like anyone else. Get in line. (Probably not all of those with secured claims are getting paid).
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Yah, asset sales aren't made in those situations and I'm sure there was competent counsel present.
There's probably no bankruptcy filing now (it's often not advantageous in this type of situation, but --- 99.999% chance this is going chapter 7 or orderly dissolution.
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Sounds like they are acquiring software assets and possible human resources but not the actual company.
According to TFA, Pebble is shutting down.
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Re: Warranty Support? (Score:2, Funny)
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So... if that is possible, why would any company choose to acquire the debts and obligations of the company they are purchasing?
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Because oftentimes they are buying a functioning business and they must. The secured creditors must release their security interests, the unsecured creditors can file suit and argue that there is successor liability [benchmarklaw.com], etc.
The situation is entirely different when the business is failing. Sure, you can't fraudulently sell assets for less than their reasonable value, carve up lines o
New type of Kickstarter scam (Score:3)
Get bought out before dropping support. Laugh all the way to the bank.
Re:New type of Kickstarter scam (Score:5, Insightful)
More like.. go bankrupt but partially manage to pay off your bank debt by selling some assets to FitBit.
Sad (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sad (Score:5, Insightful)
And shame on Fitbit for not honoring support or warranty for the company they are buying.
But they're not buying the company.
This is from TFA: "We have made the tough decision to shut down the company and no longer manufacture Pebble devices"
Sounds like they sold software right to FitBit and are shutting Pebble down.
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Which is a really great cop-out.
"No man, we didn't buy the company, we just bought its heart. All the rest of that trash belongs in the dumpster. Fuck your watch!"
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In a situation like this, Pebble has the choice between stiffing all of its creditors (e.g. the bank, new kickstarter backers, etc) or selling some assets and only stiffing some.
FitBit has a choice between buying some assets that they think are worth $10M to them, say, for a discount price of $7.5M... or paying off the bank for more than that and incurring all kinds of potential obligations by acquiring the whole company and getting those assets for a total price of more... or doing nothing.
It's not great f
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In the end, the buyer backed out and the startup folded, leaving customers without service, employees that were suddenly out of work and hadn't been paid in several weeks, and all kinds of vendors that were owed money.
Wha
Re:Sad (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, I dunno. It seems like blaming Fitbit for Pebble's financial failure.
Let's take a consequentialist view of matters. If the rule is you have to buy the whole business and continue to operate it, even though it's losing money, Pebble goes out of business and it's customers and debt holders suffer. If you can sell of just the good bits without the obligation to continue running the failing as before, the customers suffer but the debt holders get some relief. Which approach is better?
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So to summarize...
1) This is a dick move by the people in charge of Pebble, since they did nothing to ensure any existing obligations to their existing customers would be met.
2) This is a dick move by FitBit, since they're basically going out of their way to make sure they're not spending a penny on any Pebble customers.
And, most importantly,
3) If, from today onward, you ever buy a FitBit product - you're telling FitBit "I'm okay with the way you treated Pebble's existing customers".
Word of mouth is the onl
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2) This is a dick move by FitBit, since they're basically going out of their way to make sure they're not spending a penny on any Pebble customers.
3) If, from today onward, you ever buy a FitBit product - you're telling FitBit "I'm okay with the way you treated Pebble's existing customers".
Ridiculous.
Why should they? Those people are Pebble's customers, not Fitbits. Fitbit has zero connection to those people. They never sold them a product.
Look at it this way. If Fitbit had bought the office chairs from Pebble's offices, would you feel the same way? It's no different. They aren't taking over Pebble's products, or continuing them in any way. As for the employees, they are only interviewing some of Pebble's old, now unemployed workers. Those people have no obligation to Fitbit, and ANY company
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However, it would be a very good gesture if Fitbit had the rights to the platform and unlocked it for the community. Personally I think the best course of action would be to avoid smart watches altogether in their present form.
Check out Huawei Fit (Score:2)
It looks decent:
http://consumer.huawei.com/en/... [huawei.com]
Fitness oriented but nevertheless it has 6-14 day battery life and always on LCD screen.
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No color on the display, no apps, no voice use, lame.
Re: Check out Huawei Fit (Score:2)
It's the "fluff" that made it good...
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If your core function is to track your activity, sleep, and heart rate only, sure. Some of us liked being able to handle calls (reject or answer if wearing a headset), handle our playlists, handle calendar events, and deal with notifications without whipping out our phones all the time.
Re: Sad (Score:2)
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I have to say, I'm not that shocked. I got a good deal on one of the original Pebbles and, while it's kind of neat, I really don't use it much. It's too goofy to use as man-jewelry with a suit (which I rarely wear anyway), and I just don't usually need to know the time from a watch - I can look at my screen when I'm orking, and my phone is a fancy pocket watch too. I don't need to see notifications on my wrist, since I can just look at the phone99% of the time. So that leaves the novelty faces, and the nove
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>"I tried a Android Wear watch but grew dissatisfied with it as the battery on both those and Apple watches in most cases do not even last a full day and are not *always on* display like ePaper watches are."
You didn't try the Motorola 360.2. It is always-on, and battery lasts almost 2 days with light use. Inductive charging, nice round design, lots of apps, nice looking, full touchscreen, swappable bands. Just saying. Not cheap nor terribly thin, though. Of course, now we read that there are no plan
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battery lasts almost 2 days with light use.
In other words, the battery life is abysmal? "Almost" 2 days of light use from a charge is not a selling point.
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I would have loved to have what I paid for. And shame on Fitbit for not honoring support or warranty for the company they are buying. The worst of it is there are users with BRAND NEW Pebble 2 devices, only days old, that now have no warranty and no support period.
Welcome to the KickStarter Business Model(tm).
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I see there that Fitbit did the same thing to Coin last May. It's nice to keep track of these things.
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Pebbles are also sold in stores, as well as via Kickstarter. I got mine from Amazon.
For those that were eagerly awaiting.... (Score:2)
Who on earth is eagerly awaiting a Pebble Time 2? Who actually wants a Pebble Time 2?
Apparently not even FitBit wants one...and that's saying something because there is little in the world more useless than a FitBit. We have two Charge HR's in the house and they are not durable and not accurate for their intended use.
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*I* wanted a Pebble Time 2. I backed one. There were almost 60 thousand of us!
*I* am currently wearing a Pebble Time and have been since it arrived.
My wife has a Charge HR and only keeps putting up with it because she's addicted to looking at her numbers at the end of the day and beating mine. She hates when she has trouble getting the screen to come on (About 30% of the time) and she hates how it doesn't show the date (Like her previous Charge did, before the band broke irreparably, and since it's integrat
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I have a Garmin VivoActive HR which I'm a pretty big fan of as an activity tracker. It beats the FitBit in every way. If you're looking for a tracker with smartwatchy features check out the Garmin line.
While I ended up recently getting an Apple Watch, I can second this (before the AW I wore a Vivosmart). If the fitness-oriented features are what's most important to you - with the smart stuff as "nice to have" add-ons - Garmin beats FitBit handily. Battery life is great (I got 8-11 days from my Vivosmart, even after a year); and when I had to deal with customer support they've been responsive and helpful. Great company.
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Who on earth is eagerly awaiting a Pebble Time 2? Who actually wants a Pebble Time 2?
Me
No Fitbit then (Score:2, Troll)
Legalities aside, if this is how Fitbit treats existing customers now during an acquisition, I have no faith they'll do any better on their other products whenever they can get out of it.
I've seen some Garmin products at the store - probably I'll get one of those instead. At least they have a reputation for long-term support of their products.
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The problem is that your statement about there being no company acquisition is plainly contradicted by the actual article title!!! Look here:
"Pebble Gets Acquired By Fitbit - Ends Production and Ceases Support Of Its Existing Lineup of Smartwatches" (emphasis mine)
Then, in the first line of the fucking summary, it again says that Pebble is being acquired: "In a notice to Kickstarter backers, pebble has stated that -- following the acquisition by Fitbit (official now) -- ..."
It's only at the very end of TF
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I see there's at least one FitBit employee lurking on Slashdot...
The Lesson? Kickstarter money is for entertainment (Score:2)
Let's hope people have learned their lesson: any money they give through Kickstarter should be for entertainment purposes only. You're basically buying movie popcorn, at best.
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But Pebble was an actual product, sold as an actual product outside Kickstarter.
Brick and Mortar stores sold Pebble.
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But Pebble was an actual product, sold as an actual product outside Kickstarter.
Yes, but in the end, Pebble closed up shop like a Kickstarter project. The problem is the culture. A solid company would have found *some* buyer at some price point before it came to this, so if nothing else the lights could be kept on for a few years. In the end they walked away from all of their customers leaving them with a piece of cheap plastic.
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I bought a number of Pebbles, but not a single one of them through Kickstarter.
They should release the keys / apis (Score:2)
And on a general point this just demonstrates why "smart" watches suck. They're closed platforms and when the platform is discontinued you're left with a bitrotten brain dead piece of crap. Just one more reason to buy a dumb wa
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Why on earth would FitBit do that? It would just enable people to continue using the devices after whatever services are officially shut down. FitBit bought they to eliminate a competitor, not to continue to support their competitor's product.
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FitBit bought they to eliminate a competitor, not to continue to support their competitor's product.
FitBit makes no products that compete with Pebble watches, and Pebble watches don't compete with FitBit devices. Nothing FitBit makes can replace my Pebble, and everything they've said about this deal indicates that they have no intention of developing a new device that would.
FitBit bought technology and expertise that they want to use in their own products, not a competitor. If it were just about eliminating competition, all they would have had to do is wait -- Pebble was already in deep trouble.
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Without their needed displays Pebble was doomed (Score:5, Interesting)
That source is in financial trouble and unable to produce the displays Pebble depends on.
Therefore Pebble has no products to sell and thus no cash flow.
Therefore Pebble has had to wind down operations and pay off creditors.
Pebble's IP has some value to Fitbit and hiring a few of Pebble's suddenly-available engineers is a no-brainer but Fitbit has no interest in the Pebble company or it's products.
The lesson is to be very leery of DEPENDING on a single source supplier. Pebble was a healthy going concern until they could no longer get their needed displays. Then it went off the rails.
Re:Without their needed displays Pebble was doomed (Score:5, Informative)
The problem here is that it's very hard to build a technological product without depending on a single source supplier somewhere. Just look at any smartphone: they all have at least semi-custom CPUs; you can't just drop in a different one, even if they are all ARM-based. Usually all the other complex chips are the same. You can design a new product (or maybe a new version that mostly looks and works the same from the user's perspective) with an alternate part, in many cases, but that's a more serious undertaking.
Unfortunately for Pebble, it sounds like their product design was based on a type of display (e-ink) that just isn't all that widely used, especially now that e-books seem to have abandoned them. You can't make a smart-watch with a backlit LCD that runs for over a week without recharging; this is simply against the laws of physics, so e-ink was the obvious choice to make a product like this. I don't see how they really could have done anything different in regards to their screen supply choice.
So sad (Score:2)
It was the only smartwatch that met my needs, and it did so well enough that it has become indispensable to me. Now there's nothing on the market that I'm aware of that can replace it.
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Same here. I'm going to hold onto my PT until it no longer functions. Even if I lose things that required servers, I'll still keep my notifications, call and music control until I am forced to give them up.
Re: So sad (Score:4, Interesting)
They can pry my pebble watch off my cold, dead, wrist.... Huge loss... at least the developer forum says that the cloud stuff will continue to run and they are planning to spin it off to the user community to run in the future.
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A lot of it, which always made me nervous as a user about its future availability. Timeline, weather, almost anything that connected to the Internet went through their servers first--a shortsighted design choice. Voice dictation could also likely be effected. The development kit is also on the cloud, as is the app store, of course.
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The development kit is also on the cloud, as is the app store, of course.
Fortunately, it was always possible to develop entirely without the cloud -- I've been doing that for quite a while now. Also, app stores aren't necessary to distribute watch apps. The app store was just a convenience, not a requirement.
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I should add that according to Pebble, they will update the software to be more self sufficient and not require their (or anyone else's) servers.
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Ditto. Really disappointing. I'm really fond of my Pebble Steel. I was thinking about moving to the Pebble Time Round, but I guess that won't happen now.
I think this comes down to a case of a company being run by engineers; one that produces a great product, but can't run a business effectively. They have to sell to FitBit for $35 million, when they were reportedly offered $740 million from Citizen last year.
https://techcrunch.com/2016/11... [techcrunch.com]
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You can get one cheap on amazon as we speak.... $100 for a refurbished one. Since you don't need to worry about the warranty, refurbished should be fine.
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Yep. I guess it's something I should consider before it becomes a collectors item ;-)
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Pebble wasn't a smart watch company... (Score:2, Troll)
The hardware product was just barely a thing to allow them to collect the data they wanted (where their real attempt at money was in data collection and sales). "Big Data" is going belly up it seems.
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What data were they collecting? There weren't any shopping apps or anything like that, and pebble User ID's were email addresses, not linked to anything significant.
Who writes this crap? (Score:2)
I read this blog post and wish I could get a refund for the minute of my time wasted on this companies rank nonsense.
They dump everything, say you should expect what you purchased to fail to work properly, assert all warranties retroactively null and void attempting to zero out all outstanding liabilities... They then sell all assets to another company and finally have the guts to promote that new company.
If I owned a pebble I would sue them to just to prove a point. There is something really wrong with t
8 weeks from now is February 2017 (Score:3)
Sad (Score:2)
I've wanted a Pebble for a while after playing with one in the store. I actually liked it better and the Apple Watch and Android offerings. Sad to see them go. Maybe I can pick one up cheap now.
sad, but inevitable (Score:3)
I own an original Pebble from Kickstarter, which I bought before owning a compatible smartphone. Since I'm into running, I ended up replacing my Pebble with a Garmin smartwatch that also provided GPS and a heartrate monitor. (Were I not into running, I'd still be using that original Pebble, since it did everything else I wanted.) I feel like Pebble really started the smart watch revolution, and they did it right -- a simple watch that works with your phone, without attempting to replace it. Unfortunately for them, once the idea was out, any other company could copy it, and that's exactly what happened.
Sadly, the first to market is rarely the one who lasts the longest. Hydrox is gone, but Oreos are here to stay.
Well that sucks (Score:2)
I will boycott fitbit if they completely kill off pebble support and don't open source code either.
Re:Fitbit is next (Score:5, Funny)
Who on their right mind is going to spend hundreds of dollars for some minor functionality?
Back in the 1980s, I remember thinking "If only there was a way to have my girlfriend (at the time) send me her pulse so I could feel her love on my own wrist in real-time. Of course the technology wasn't there, and wouldn't be for some time, so I had to settle for her bloody heart in a jar and 25 years in a psychiatric hospital.
TV ref time (Score:2, Funny)
And now its watch has ended
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Personally.... I don't agree.
However, it's not about any objection to Apple Watches, but to the idea behind them. Think about what you get with one of these and tell me it's worth what you pay for them. Except for the "coolness" factor, I don't really see where the things a smart watch can do are all that useful.
They tell time: but my analog watch does that, even when I don't have my phone around.
They can buzz and show you text messages or phone calls, but they have to be within Bluetooth range of your
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They can buzz and show you text messages or phone calls, but they have to be within Bluetooth range of your phone anyway, so you will have your phone on your person and it can buzz you too. I don't see the advantage of this feature
No they don't. They have wifi.
I hear you can use your apple watch to originate a text, but for the life of me I cannot imagine it being worth the extra effort to text with an obviously clunky user interface over using that phone in your pocket.
You can speak into it.
dubious accuracy
All pedometers are inaccurate. The important thing is that it consistent from day to day (which they are).
limited application
I guess you need to ask all of the people that bought fitbits and other fitness trackers and use fitness tracking apps on their other non-dedicated fitness tracker devices if it's limited application.
However, some of us are not impressed
Some of us at least understand the features and limitations which help us make decisions.
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Sure you can. The Apple Watch is an entirely different device than the Pebble, and is trying to accomplish very different goals. For my needs, the Apple Watch would be an absolutely awful choice, mostly due to it's dismal battery life and lack of an always-on screen.
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Why on earth would I do that? I don't own an iPhone.
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i bought my first one in march of this year. it was dead by september. i complained to support and they gave me a new one. my friend who suggested i get a fitbit got hers in february, and it was dead by october. wayyyyyyyyyy too much money for the cheap piece of plastic junk that you get.
You know you have to charge them, right? ;-)
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And thus begins the consolidation of smart watch companies. We saw that Basis was killed off a few months ago by Intel. At least Intel was so kind as to offer full refunds for all of the watches.
It's more like "thus begins the end of smart watches, last one going down the swirly-swirly please give an extra courtesy flush, just to be sure."
A smartphone without a smartwatch is like a dog without a laptop.
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My Pebble Time Steel died Dec 4th. No wonder I was not getting any replies to my warranty support requests and emails.
I think that, in retrospect, you mis-spelled "Pebble Steal".
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They improved over time... the hardware on the original pebbles was a little flaky, with screen tearing that could be fixed with some tape and a screwdriver. Mempry was also in short supply, which is why it crashed a lot more than later pebbles.