PineTime

[...] i've been using my pinetime as my only watch for several years now, and it does everything i need it to do. [...] the battery life on each of mine was awesome, the buttons were handy for things like quick music playback without having to look at my watch, and it had a great little 'app store' with tons of cool watchfaces and stuff from the community. [...]

[...] I still swallowed real hard before buying it, but I'm satisfied enough with it that even with the 7, I've been nosing around to see if any 8-solar (presumably transflective, not OLED) are around in the $500 price range. [...] That's why a comeback pebble is worth supporting (for me). [...] I still get confused about which button to use to get to apps vs quicklooks vs data widgets vs shortcuts, and setting a 15 minute timer is way more confusing than it should be. Apple: max 3 days battery life, and that's in the $800+ price range AmazFit: maybe? but never enough to risk over $100-200 and no great "has buttons" option BangleJS: no buttons. PineTime: no buttons. YadaYadaYada: no battery, oled screen, no buttons, or no customization Getting another Pebble for $300 retail or $200 used with full backwards compat, their SDK and emulator, and a path forward? [...]

It's an interesting experience, I have github send me an email on the odd occasion the community developed "OS" gets an update. Then I download the zip file on my phone browser and upload the file on Gadgetbridge for the update. [...] pros: decent battery life (1-2 weeks, i turn off bluetooth and gps on my phone overnights which helps both devices) "good enough" design (durable enough for all but swimming/showering) easily replaced or modified (even takes standard watch bands) flashlight, notifications and all traditional digital watch functions multiple community "OS" options cons: community development can be slow, buggy water droplets particularly from natural rain can trigger the touchscreen, not amazing if you bike in seattle or something anemic hardware The charger is cheap and isn't that quick but again, the pinetime kind of excels in knowing the difference between good and good enough, as I once heard an engineer say (about something else), and I rarely find myself bothered by it's lack of luxuries.

it took me two weeks to get the sealed pinetime working back when it launched. for some reason it would get stuck on the initial boot screen, and it would be in a state to where I couldn't update the firmware. [...] It turned out, even with a firmware update months later applied to it, that whenever it gets rebooted, I have to do the above movement until it finally decides to boot, and it's random. [...] This was the second Pine purchase of mine, the first being the PinePhone Pro, which A) I couldn't get activated on AT&T (not Pine's fault with the 3g phase out and whitelist approach, but I digress), and when I used TMobile, I couldn't make a call with it without having audio problems or etc. Look, I wanted to support them, and the idea of less expensive open hardware/software, even if it meant rough edges, but completely non functional for even the most basic usages... I might as well just build my own and understand all of the reasons why something doesn't work instead of spending days or months getting it to do what it said it would do on the tin out of the box.

If I do cardio exercise for an hour and am measuring my BPM the whole time, a little less than 20% of the battery is drained. They changed the BPM algorithm in the latest Infinitime update, not sure what the battery hit was in the old one. I turned off Bluetooth and put the watch on the shelf five days ago, the battery drained maybe 14% over that time. [...] On Android there is a Sleep as Android app, which I have never used, which says it integrates with PineTime. [...] I have never tried to get sleep readings on Gadgetbridge and don't see any talk about Pinetime and Gadgetbridge for sleep on the net. I know someone who has a Fitbit where the sleep measurement from watch to Fitbit app is very extensive, and even tries to estimate when someone is in REM sleep and such - Pinetime doesn't have anything like this yet. [...] Some of the more expensive watches seem to have more capabilities, but I like it for my purposes.

[...] Then I tried the PineTime, this one was less of a mess trying to get it to work, but only because it has been effectively abandoned--waspos is dead, infinitime is getting there, and neither offer an easy on ramp for someone to take them over. Really shows that open source hardware vendors are useless if they aren't also open source software vendors.

I primarily program Android phones, but instead of getting an Android watch I decided to get a PineTime in November. [...] I also connected it to my phone notifications so if I get a notification on my phone that I got a Signal message, the message appears on my watch. [...] I upgraded the firmware via Bluetooth - the newer firmware is said to do BPMs better (I checked before and after, and it does seem to). They sell a dev kit for the same price, although you don't need the dev kit to develop unless you're really getting into it. [...]

What do you think is the PineTime's biggest strength when compared with a mainstream smartwatch? Frankly, I think the combination of price/replaceability and privacy are the only things unique (besides niche FOSS modding) to it among smart watches; and I like the open aspect of essentially every detail. It makes it the only smart watch I've used that feels like it respects my dignity, frankly. [...] I actually got it hoping I'd have the inclination to tinker with it, but my only idea that wasn't already being worked on by the default "OS" is a red flashlight mode, which with the IPS screen is a moot point anyways, since the black pixels when turned on make for a low-light flashlight anyways, heh. [...]

[...] a Watchy, an Oscilloscope Watch, the PineTime, numerous LilyGo ESP32 thingies, the M5Stick, and so on. [...] its kind of fun to have a database of the last months heart rates ("see honey, I did enjoy our date last week"), step counts, and so on. But I just can't comfortably work with a watch on my wrist, so I don't wear them. For sure, I'm putting "make a custom watchface for the PineTime and Watchy" on my list of things to do next time I open that particular drawer of forgotten things ..

[...] These days I also have a set of watches - from the PineTime to some TTGO vendor-machine clones, an Oscilloscope Watch and a Watchy by SQFMI. [...] Well, except for the Pinetime, which I've lately taken to wearing more often to count steps and track heart rate metrics. That said, this article has lit a fire on the subject of PineTime extensions, and I think I am seeing a future series of watchfaces and smaller apps inspired by the Casio era, on my horizon .. would be fun to have a Casio simulator with a few of their watchfaces on the PineTime - which, for all of its quirks, is a darn cheap way to carry time, even if the current set of watchfaces/apps for it is a bit .. [...] Anyone up for some CASIO inspired PineTime watchfaces, or know of any already? [...] Maybe its time to crack out the devtools ..

[...] I bought a PineTime as a sort of replacement for my Pebble Time about 18 months ago. [...]

[...] Before the Pebbles came back and PebbleOS open-sourced, the only real open smartwatch option we had around that I'm aware of is the PineTime, which I currently wear every day rocking Infinitime. Will be fun to pick up one of these again and be able to hop back and forth between it and the PineTime! [...]

Can confirm, I regularly get about 9 days of charge on my PineTime, running the latest PineTimeOS release. Its gotten better and better over the years, and the functionality keeps coming ..

It most likely has a lot to do with the display tech. I got 8 days out of the PineTime, which was LED (I assume). You couldn't see anything if the display wasn't turned on. I just bought a BangleJS (quite a bit cheaper than the Core 2 Duo, but no speaker and only one button) and the estimated battery life is a month. It uses a colour LCD, making the display visible whenever there is light. For example, daylight makes the display bright. It has a light source that gets turned on by the button. The Core 2 Duo has an e-paper display that only draws power when the display changes.

[...] I learned a lot reading your article and I don't think that using a PineTime as a base would have been nearly as cool

PineTime is nice and cheap and does a little BlueTooth. [...]

[...] As much as I love my PineTime watch, its getting a little long in the tooth and I'd love to see some upgrades to it, hardware-wise.. That said, there are a lot of other open-source watches in the pipeline that could use a bit of motivation to update their designs .. [...]

[...] I've hoped the PineTime would be the new Pebble, but hasn't really materialized (though, it has gotten pretty good! [...] I actually held off from buying a Pebble back in the day because the software wasn't open source and I was worried about getting dependent on a product I had no control over. [...]

I personally have gotten better stability out of a BangleJS with OSD than I got with a PineTime. OSD isn't perfect but the source is open and it wasn't too difficult to build locally (you mention you are an iOS dev, and OSD is a Java Android app, I bet there are still many similarities). [...]

I have a PineTime. [...] It shows the time, the date, a basic step counter, and not a heck of a lot more. [...]

I get some of this (have an unused Pinephone), but I'm still thankful they tried (built up a stir) and, FWIW, the PineTime is OK and the Pinecil is the best soldering iron I've seen anyone use Surprised to see someone else echo my thoughts exactly, this is exactly what I've been saying for some years now whenever someone asks about buying Pine products. The PineTime is pretty decent (though the strap included OOTB is atrocious) and the pinecil is honestly awesome. The PinePhone is of course a disappointment, though that's par for the course for most of Pine64's stuff.

I get some of this (have an unused Pinephone), but I'm still thankful they tried (built up a stir) and, FWIW, the PineTime is OK and the Pinecil is the best soldering iron I've seen anyone use

Bought a PineTime for $27 plus shipping. [...] I send the BPM to the Gadgetbridge Android app via Bluetooth. Upgraded Infinitime via Bluetooth. [...]

[...] They needed to write some generic software to use, then open sourced it if anyone found it useful. [...] Most of what I use is open source - from my System76 laptop and desktop, to my Android and LineageOS phones, to my Pinetime watch. [...]

[...] I have a mild prepper tendency and I had to eventually kill my romantic views of mechanicals when I realized it just time drift and wouldn't last long without regular maintenance from someone with the tools and knowledge/skill, not to mention someone in this very comment section mentions a mechanical watch suffering a death from drop onto carpeted floor. Mechanical watches are cool, but I easily spend less time without my PineTime (which I'm surprised nobody else in these comments has even mentioned) working than my friend spends manually syncing his seiko back to time/maintaining it.

[...] I've only ever used it for upgrading Pinetime firmware iirc That makes this a seriously good option, I was looking for this a while ago but didn't find anything besides Pinetime, so I ordered a Pinetime and found out the heartbeat sensor is about as accurate on my wrist as tarot cards (I know it works for a few people, but most seemed to have the same issue). [...]

For a while, I had a PineTime watch. [...] The charger stopped reliably charging it and I couldn't get it to sync back up to my phone. [...]

i got a pinetime watch cause they're cheap and i have a history of missing morning alarms atm and wow its heart rate readings are scuffed

day 18: GadgetBridge A little while ago, I bought a PineTime watch. GadgetBridge is the software I use to connect it to my phone, so that it can display notifications etc. [1/2]

FreeSoftwareAdvent day 18: GadgetBridge A little while ago, I bought a PineTime watch. GadgetBridge is the software I use to connect it to my phone, so that it can display notifications etc. [...] It shows me graphs of battery life and steps over time, and I've used it to […]

I got a PineTime and it's the second best smartwatch I've ever used lol. It's like wearing a microcontroller on your wrist

I used to use the PineTime with PineTimeOS, but mine eventually broke (corroded inside), but not having WiFi made it annoying to develop for. With WiFi suddenly you don't need to communicate regularly with a phone and the possibilities really open up.

Generally speaking I agree and accept everything here, except the idea that 40% of the respondents "still" use an iPhone: I switched to one, because Android is absolutely atrocious for privacy and security, and running a hacked up custom OS is no longer something I have spoons for. I long for a better alternative, but until then, yeah, here I am accepting my current PineTime is... a little bit worse, until Tim Sweeney manages to bust up Tim Cook's little garden.

[...] Honestly I don’t remember why I ruled out the PineTime. [...]

[...] The closest OSS one I've seen (and also worked on) is InfiniTime for PineTime, it's great but it still needs tons of work. [...]

[...] The anti-corporate pro-FOSS thing is just disconnected online idealism. FWIW I own a PineTime and enjoy hacking on it quite a bit but a commercial smartwatch it is not. For me that's fine as I don't use a smartwatch as a daily driver, but if I did a PineWatch would be a nonstarter. I do hope that the PineTime can drive an ecosystem of open smart watches that occupy different points in the cost, functionality, customizability, and reusability space than commercial smartwatches do, especially those that may not be profitable to tape out large runs for, but I'm also thankful for commercial product development to drive new innovative products into our hands.

There's a reason wrist watches largely displaced pocket watches, and as far as telling the time goes, a phone is basically a pocket watch. I would like a fitness monitoring watch, and used a PineTime for it for a while. But having a completely bulletproof timepiece is more important, and a retro Casio fulfills that need in spades.

It's my first time wearing my PineTime since I cracked the screen a couple months ago. Trying to decide if I want to pick up a new one, pre-order a new Pebble, or give up on smart watches. I mainly use them for the time and step counting, and prefer to keep Bluetooth on my phone off.

Now I'm probably going to buy a rebble watch (or whatever they get called) regardless, but in the meantime there's a pinetime sitting on my desk. I wonder if it's possible to port the pebbleos software to that existing hardware.

Watches are cool, I wish I was a watch person but I am not. Pinetime for example seemed neat. edit: there is one use case I'm considering it's for sleep tracking since my ideal life I sleep whenever and it seems my ideal operating mode is to be slightly sleep deprived (about 5 hours each night) so it knows when I fell asleep and sets a 5hr timer from there.

[...] It's not local-first by definition, because you still need a phone with an app, but it's the best I got for now (apart from finally assembling my PineTime watch). [...]

No microphone on the PineTime. The Lilygo T Watch S3 does have microphone. [...] And 16 MB of FLASH limits how much audio can be stored.

I actually bought a PineTime referenced in the article, but it ended up going in a box and I never ended up tinkering