I have a Pebble back on my wrist. That’s a sentence that’s going to lead to quite a few questions. The biggest one is likely to be “what’s a Pebble?” There will be others who think “Ooh, that’s a different approach to a smartwatch.” And then there will be those with a long memory of wearables who recognize one of the first smartwatch brands and think, “I thought they closed up shop years ago?”
In order, Pebble is a minimalist smartwatch, it moves away from the cumbersome app-focused model found in Apple’s WatchOS and Google’s WearOS toward a more supportive role; and yes, they did close up shop years ago.
I recently spoke with Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky about the relaunch of Pebble in a new decade. I started off with something simple. Why?
“Because my box of working Pebble watches was empty,” Migicovsky laughed. “I tried an Apple Watch. I tried a Garmin. I tried Samsung, Google, nothing did it for me.”
Going Back In Time To Discover Pebble’s Origins
Let’s join the story in 2012, the very early days of Kickstarter. The poster child for Kickstarter, the lighthouse of “this can work” was Pebble. It was one of the earliest visions of a consumer smartwatch that delivered real benefits; it created and was backed by its own community, which helped drag the smartwatch concept to the smartphone, and it knew exactly what it wanted to be. At least at the start.
Pebble looked to other areas, such as introducing a general health smartwatch and a sports smartwatch, and, in chasing these spaces where the grass looked greener, the company’s “hackers and developers” ethos was lost. “We tried to be something that we weren’t,” Migicovsky admitted. “I lost sight of the original vision.”
The company announced it would shut down in December 2016 and was subsequently sold to Fitbit. Resources for Pebble owners wound down and went dark in June 2018.
The community banded together as the Rebble community to continue offering support where possible, but the days of Pebble as a trailblazing wearable were over … until Google (which purchased Fitbit in 2019) announced that it would be open-sourcing PebbleOS.
Open-Sourcing PebbleOS
Unsurprisingly, this is the Rosetta Stone that allows Migicovsky to bring Pebble back to the hardware market.
“If Google hadn’t open-sourced the operating system,” he said, “I wouldn’t have done it because I knew that that was the perfect operating system for me. It was just too much work to reproduce what we built, and i wouldn’t be satisfied if we built a copy of it that wasn’t as good.”
How did that initiative inside Google start? “I asked Google. “There needed [to be] someone inside Google who would just carry it. This was not their job; they were doing it out of a labor of love, and we’re forever appreciative of them.”
What Makes Pebble A Smartwatch?
The landscape for smartwatches has changed since Pebble left the scene in 2016. The major players, including Apple, Google and Samsung, have ideas about what a smartwatch should be. What does Migicovsky think?
“A smartwatch needs to do four things really well,” he laid out.
“First, it shows you notifications; when you get an email, call or text, it vibrates on your wrist, you glance down, and can see what it is. And it has to be a good watch — to me, that is one you don’t have to think about. It sits on your wrist but isn’t there until you need to know the time, which means it needs a long-lasting battery. Our new suite of Pebbles have battery lives of weeks.
“In order to be a good watch, you need to be able to read the time at any time. The watch face is always on, and we chose e-paper for all our watches because I didn’t like the idea of a glowing, bright, tiny smartwatch attached to my wrist.
“Fourth is buttons. That means you can use Pebble without looking at the screen. If I get a call I can just feel the lower button and press to dismiss the call. I know the middle button skips tracks when listening to music. Touchscreens require you to look.”
“Finally, the watch needs to be fun. You know the difference between a Swatch and a Rolex? Pebble to me was always more like a Swatch.”
Pebble’s New Products
Pebble brought itself back to retail life in 2025 with the launch of the Pebble 2 Duo and the Pebble Time 2; effectively bringing the standard models back from Pebble’s first time around.
The former is a rework of the classic Pebble design, which had a small production run, in part because it used parts sourced from the original Pebble 2, including plastic cases, buttons and ePaper screens. The latter is built on an unreleased 2016 design, a sequel to 2015’s Pebble Time.
Two new products have been announced and were on show at CES 2026. The first is the Pebble Round 2. Again, building on a previous Pebble, this circular smartwatch comes with a full-face screen, a smaller bezel and, curiously, a touchscreen.
“There are some things that a touchscreen can do that a button can’t do, and that’s swipe,” Brace said. “People love swiping, especially through notifications, so that’s one of the things we’re working on adding.”
The second announcement is a smart-ring called the Pebble Index 01. It’s not only a departure for Pebble, but also the best illustration of the company’s ethos in 2026. The goal is simple enough: press the single button on the ring to record short audio messages, which are stored and sent over Bluetooth to your phone when available. The battery life is measured in years, so there’s no need for complicated charging circuits.
“It’s indicative of this next phase of Pebble,” Migicovsky pointed out. “We’re a company that builds cool gadgets that we want ourselves. In the world of hardware, it would cost the same amount of money to build them for other people as it would to build them for me. It brings me joy to know that there are other people in the world who are crazy enough like me to want these things.”
Is that enough to ensure Pebble doesn’t fall foul of the same issues in its previous generation?
“The whole company is predicated on that. We tried to be someone that we weren’t. Now we know we are. I think that comes with the benefit of hindsight. We are building our dream products, we’re confident we know what we want, we don’t have to ask someone for permission.”
The new range of Pebble smartwatches and smartwear can be found at repebble.com.
