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Re:Pebble's next step by fest on Wednesday December 07, 2016 @12:35PM (#13124334)
There are Chinese companies working on similar products, for example WeLoop[0], Goclever[1].

People are already working on open-source firmware for some of these watches[2], so I think there's a reasonably good chance that either some of these companies will create a decent alternative to pebble, or at least good enough hardware which can be used with community-developed firmware (and even more importantly: apps on the phone side).

[0]: http://www.weloop.cn/

[1]: http://www.goclever.com/uk/products,c1/smart-wear,c114/

[2]: https://ossw.github.io/

Re:Pebble's next step by tonyplee on Wednesday December 07, 2016 @06:40PM (#13127240)
One problem for open source HW watch is that a lot of other folks will just use their factories in ShenZhen to clone the HW sell it for cheap without any R&D and marketing.

Similar to how OrangePI leverage Raspberry Pi situations.

It becomes race to the bottom ($5-10 pi zero) and no one can make $ in the market in both short and long term.

There seem to be a lot of sub $20 watch base on following links - not sure how good/bad are they.

https://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb=y&IndexArea=product...

Re:Pebble's next step by fest on Thursday December 08, 2016 @05:31AM (#13129516)
Yeah, there are a bunch of crappy "let's see how much we can pack into this for under $20" smartwatches coming from companies in SZ. Most have terrible UI, terrible battery life nad terrible apps on phone side.

However I think that brands focused on quality will emerge. Xiaomi for example don't make the cheapest gadgets but instead focus on quality. If they decide that there is a market for pebble-like smartwatch, I'm certain they would execute well.

Re:Pebble's next step by problems on Wednesday December 07, 2016 @02:08PM (#13125219)
Are the Goclever products actually released? They look quite interesting to me.
Re:Pebble's next step by Relys on Wednesday December 07, 2016 @03:04PM (#13125714)
It doesn't look like either of these are in production anymore. :(