Making a homebrew smartwatch sounds like a fun side-project. Any chance you would be willing to share your progress so far? I'm a student with an interest in electronics manufacturing so making one would be more of a learning experience.

Also, for a one-off screen have you looked at contacting a manufacturer on something like Alibaba? They are usually more than willing to send a discounted/free one-off sample of a product.

I wish I had much progress!

I looked at a pebble teardown, and saw that it didn't seem to involve very complex production strategies. From that I decided to try building a list of components! I know how to do some microcontroller programming so wasn't too worried about that part, but felt like getting an efficient screen was important.

I've had a hard time finding power efficient screens that I can purchase in very small quantites so I've been stuck there. I've been trawling around parts websites but I almost always end up on things like screens for RasPis.

EDIT: Got some luck on Alibaba searching for "sunlight readable". Going to contact some suppliers to see if I can get something

I don't have this, but this book is supposed to be good for procurement: https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/the-essential-gui...

It won't help for the screen... Those are made by Sharp and would be exceedingly hard to get hold of in Shenzhen.

Massdrop or a similar platform might make a good option for organizing a group buy. You need to find enough other people with the same desire for a given part or item, but everything else seems pretty well handled; I know plenty of folks who've participated in Massdrop buys for keyboards, Cherry-stem keycaps, and the like, and haven't heard any complaints about the service. (Haven't used it myself, though - I'm just going to get two sets of PBT caps off eBay when this year's keyboard-cleaning cycle comes around - so can't speak to it personally.)

...Buy everyone's old Pebbles? :p