[creinhardt]

I wish someone would take all the Fitness sensors of the Apple Watch, and put it in something with a simple e-ink display like these Pebble devices. I don’t care about apps, I just want a thing that measures my heart rate, notifies me if I get a call or text, has more than a couple days of battery life, and that’s it.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

> I don’t care about apps, I just want a thing that measures my heart rate, notifies me if I get a call or text, has more than a couple days of battery life, and that’s it.

https://repebble.com/watch says the Pebble Time 2 has

> Heart rate, step and sleep tracking

Isn't that what you want?

[creinhardt]

Basically! Is heart rate recorded to a Pebble specific app, or can it be synced with things like Apple Health?

I guess the one other feature I like of the Apple Watch is the rings/daily fitness goals functionality. I'll have to look into the Pebble more to see if that's possible. I also like the background monitoring features the Watch has (hypertension, etc.), but I'm assuming that's a little too much for the Pebble.

[shikshake]

I believe you can see that stuff on the Pebble app but you can't sync with Apple health. See this previous pebble blog post: https://ericmigi.com/blog/apple-restricts-pebble-from-being-...

[dnlzro]

That’s not true. There’s an API to read from and write to Apple Health: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/healthkit

I’m not sure if that’s something the Pebble app uses right now, but it’s certainly possible, and a third-party app could make it happen as well.

[petemir]

My Garmin syncs its data to Apple Health. I don't see why Pebble wouldn't be able to do it. My understanding of the post is that it mostly refers to internal iOS APIs that are not available to third parties (e.g. actionable notifications).

[jerlam]

The Pebble 2 could write data to Apple Health ten years ago. It would be surprising to have that missing now.

[chias]

Not so surprising. In the interim, Apple watch became a thing, and Apple has since locked down the ability for third-party smart-watches to do things in the iOS ecosystem.

Some info from Eric: https://ericmigi.com/blog/apple-restricts-pebble-from-being-...

[Lutzb]

Garmin watches might fit your requirements.

[LeifCarrotson]

I've been a Garmin user for 14 years and I wish someone would take the GPS, heart rate, and IMU sensors out of my Fenix and put it in an open-source product.

But GPS is really hard to get right, especially if you want weeks of battery life.

Garmin have been a decent company (in the ethical/moral sense) to be a customer of for many years, but I think they're slowly losing that reputation. Yes, my 2018 hardware still does everything it did in 2018, no, I don't pay for or currently have a need for Connect+, but they're running out of hardware optimization opportunities to push people to new devices, and appear to be seeking alternative ways to maintain growth.

[justapassenger]

Watches are now roughly in the same spot as phones - form factory is largely complete and each new version is a small iteration over previous generation, with changes that most people don’t care about.

That being said - feature I LOVE added recently-ish that made really happy I’ve upgraded my many years old garmin was a flashlight (proper one, not screen brightness). It seemed like a gimmick but it’s now one of most used features on my watch - walking dog at night, looking for kids toys under the bed, fixing things around the house, looking for things in the bag, etc.

[LeifCarrotson]

I use the white screen backlight "flashlight" on my Fenix 6 every day for getting out of the bedroom without waking my wife in the morning. It's good enough to do that, not nearly bright enough to be useful for taking the dog out at night or fixing stuff around the house, for those tasks I'd use the screen backlight to search for my headlamp in my backpack and then use that!

The only change I'd want from the new watches would be the emergency satellite messenger that the new Fenix 8 Pros have. The feature isn't as good as my dedicated InReach Mini 2, but like the flashlight it would be always on my wrist. However, the new watches are $1300 luxury items now, that's not the price of a fitness watch: it feels like they're no longer marketing to my tax bracket.

[jerlam]

That's cool, Garmin finally integrated their 2016 acquisition of InReach into watches.

I grew up hearing about a luxury watch that had a satellite antenna built into it - the Breitling Emergency - that now costs over $18K and apparently could never have connected to satellites since the signal was too weak. Now a better version of that feature is on a Garmin and an Apple Watch.

[Lutzb]

Fully agree, the led flashlight is ridicously useful.

[hobo_mark]

My pebble 2 has a heart rate sensor, and the battery still lasts for a week after almost a decade of daily use.

[albatrosstrophy]

If battery life really is high up your list, look up Amazfit. The Bip 6 can last up to a month as a dumb watch health tracker. It's got some decent watchfaces too. Another Amazfit product that's popular is their Helio Strap, essentially a Whoop band rip off that does not require a monthly subscription but works just as well.

[wishfish]

My Garmin Instinct 2 does all of the above. I charge it every 2 or 3 weeks. Sounds like that would meet your needs.

[markb139]

I’ve got the solar version. It runs a long time between charges. Maybe I haven’t done enough tracked exercise recently

[maxglute]

The only comparable to Apple Watch Sensor suite is Huawei watch, with 10-15 day battery life, but due to obvious geopolitics, that's not viable for most people, i.e. even EKG is region locked (unless hoop jumping).

[LtdJorge]

Exactly, why does nobody think about this!

[z0mghii]

Withings scanwatch 2?

[SV_BubbleTime]

I have an older generation Withings scale that is so bad that I just would never buy another thing from them.

Eats batteries, loses WiFi, changes scale settings on its own every few days… no way I would trust them with a watch if they couldn’t handle a scale.