• Meet Fitbit’s newest device, the Fitbit Ionic smartwatch
    9 replies, posted
[url]https://arstechnica.com/?p=1152635[/url]
So they bought out Pebble, threw away the only distinguishing factor (the e-paper display) that let it have an always-on screen for over a week, and just released a typical smartwatch. Wow, thanks Fitbit. The Apple Watch is $269-299. The Gear S4 is coming out soon so I'm betting the S3 is going to get bumped down to $299. They're pricing it against the Apple Watch and the S3, the two best smartwatches right now. Yet it's already outpaced in features, and it honestly looks as ugly as the OG Pebble. Rumor is that the S4 is going to add even more health features as well, chipping away at Fitbit's only tenuous advantage. Boy, they really blew the Pebble acquisition.
So they're still making the same shit for the sake of making it and not actually addressing the reason they're hemorrhaging money. I give you another year unless you start making shit that people actually want, Fitbit. Everyone I know who ever had a Fitbit sold it for something else because it was inaccurate\got water damaged\whatever.
What a piece of shit. They killed off Pebble to make this? Rather than just continuing the line and using the Fitbit brand name to advertise and sell them? [editline]a[/editline] If my Gen1 Pebble Classic ever dies I guarantee I'm going to go hunting for another version of the Pebble from a thirdparty seller on Amazon or something unless they bring it back, new and improved.
[QUOTE=gk99;52623157]What a piece of shit. They killed off Pebble to make this? Rather than just continuing the line and using the Fitbit brand name to advertise and sell them? [editline]a[/editline] If my Gen1 Pebble Classic ever dies I guarantee I'm going to go hunting for another version of the Pebble from a thirdparty seller on Amazon or something unless they bring it back, new and improved.[/QUOTE] To be fair Pebble was going to either go bankrupt or get bought out.
[QUOTE=gk99;52623157]If my Gen1 Pebble Classic ever dies I guarantee I'm going to go hunting for another version of the Pebble from a thirdparty seller on Amazon or something unless they bring it back, new and improved.[/QUOTE] I really liked the concept when I was thinking of buying one about 2 years ago. Are they still relevant with modern phones?
[QUOTE=halfer;52624037]I really liked the concept when I was thinking of buying one about 2 years ago. Are they still relevant with modern phones?[/QUOTE] Honestly the only reason I would recommend a Pebble anymore is for the smart alarm that wakes you up based on your sleep movement, which doesn't require an internet connection or a phone. I don't even have the Pebble app anymore. It still works but I just feel like the support isn't there at all and as time goes on it's going to become more and more broken.
[QUOTE=Snowmew;52623275]To be fair Pebble was going to either go bankrupt or get bought out.[/QUOTE] I don't have a problem with them being bought out, I have a problem with Fitbit buying them seemingly to just squash them and completely kill any and all support or production of the product. I feel like with Fitibit resources the watch would done much better, rather than being one that I only found out existed by reading a random post on some obscure forum while looking for a ~$100 or less smartwatch that actually worked with my phone since the previous one I bought didn't. I saw a lot of people who didn't even know it existed until it was sold to Fitbit, and I don't know the details of it, but I can't imagine being the watch of choice in Resident Evil 7 was out of the kindness of Capcom's heart, despite the only note of the brand name being on the back of the case. Their #1 downfall, to me, seemed to be advertising. [editline]28th August 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=Snowmew;52624364]I don't even have the Pebble app anymore. It still works but I just feel like the support isn't there at all and as time goes on it's going to become more and more broken.[/QUOTE] Because the support [I]isn't[/I] there. Fitbit killed it with the acquisition of the company. I use my Pebble watch and plan to keep using it because it does everything I want it to. It's not some stupid fashion piece, it's something that gives me text messages on my wrist, lets me customize my watchface to show what I want, has a screen that's always-on for a week when the watch finally dies, is waterproof, and when I'm bored in class and not allowed to have my phone out because college professors get really upset when they realize you've quit listening to the rap song about math they put on the smartboard, I can play Tetris. It's raw usability, which is something a lot of other watches don't have because they're missing the point.
[QUOTE=gk99;52624438]I don't have a problem with them being bought out, I have a problem with Fitbit buying them seemingly to just squash them and completely kill any and all support or production of the product. I feel like with Fitibit resources the watch would done much better, rather than being one that I only found out existed by reading a random post on some obscure forum while looking for a ~$100 or less smartwatch that actually worked with my phone since the previous one I bought didn't. I saw a lot of people who didn't even know it existed until it was sold to Fitbit, and I don't know the details of it, but I can't imagine being the watch of choice in Resident Evil 7 was out of the kindness of Capcom's heart, despite the only note of the brand name being on the back of the case. Their #1 downfall, to me, seemed to be advertising. [editline]28th August 2017[/editline] Because the support [I]isn't[/I] there. Fitbit killed it with the acquisition of the company. I use my Pebble watch and plan to keep using it because it does everything I want it to. It's not some stupid fashion piece, it's something that gives me text messages on my wrist, lets me customize my watchface to show what I want, has a screen that's always-on for a week when the watch finally dies, is waterproof, and when I'm bored in class and not allowed to have my phone out because college professors get really upset when they realize you've quit listening to the rap song about math they put on the smartboard, I can play Tetris. It's raw usability, which is something a lot of other watches don't have because they're missing the point.[/QUOTE] I meant support as in the servers and the app still working. I think Fitbit pledged to keep the servers up. I like my S3 a lot, it looks professional, and I don't have a problem with 2 day battery life with always-on. If I'm honest, I'm over the whole battery life thing, since you just drop it on the cradle and that's it. (The Pebble is kind of screwy with the dumb not-strong-enough magnetic charger, especially so since I have a NATO strap that covers it, although that's more my fault.) I've gotten a lot more questions about it than I did with my PTS. It does way more (except the smart alarm, but I don't wear it at night anyway). It doesn't have the strange extremely-delayed-notification bug that plagued my Pebble. When someone asks me about smartwatches I point them straight to the S3. But fuck me dude, besides that bug, the Pebble just worked and did everything so intuitively. Samsung's mobile apps are fucking atrociously bad, they are broken half the time and they just don't make sense at all. You have to create like 3 different accounts in different apps that get installed and hidden - I have a Samsung Pay app but it's like, hidden in the Gear app, there's no way to access it otherwise. The app store is so awkward and slow, I ended up using a default watchface just because all of the free ones are just garbage and the creators actively insult reviewers who leave bad ratings, it's nuts. The music app is basically useless because it'll reset back to the watchface after a minute, which makes it impossible to use while driving. I mean, it does have a lot more useful apps and games, and the touchscreen/bezel interface makes way more sense, but everything about it seems like it is just barely better than a no-name Chinese knockoff brand tablet interface. It's so strange. Nobody was going to buy Pebble. It was toast. Fitbit tossed them an offer as a saving grace purely to monetize everyone abandoning the Pebble over time, and if this is their idea of effecting that switch, they really did a shit job at figuring out what Pebble users want. They want cheap, that's basically the end of it. Fitbit completely missed the mark. Although I did cannibalize the bigger PTS straps for use on the S3, as part homage and part because the included S3 straps could only fit a tiny Asian wrist or something.
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