Eric Migicovsky, whose smartwatch startup Pebble Technology was bought by Fitbit in 2016, is returning to the space with a new company, Core Devices, and two products modeled after Pebble’s original hardware.
“I’m not trying to sell this to everybody,” Migicovsky said of the new devices in an interview. “It’s for the people who don’t feel served by Apple Watch, Pixel Watch or Garmin,” he added.
Founded in 2008, Pebble was one of the pioneers of the smartwatch category with minimalist, retro-styled products that were ultimately overtaken by more premium offerings from Apple and others. The company’s sale to Fitbit was followed by further consolidation in the sector when Google acquired Fitbit in 2021.
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The new watches from Core Devices include a $149 model with a 1.26-inch black-and-white non-touch screen display and a higher-end $225 version with a 1.5-inch touch screen that shows basic colors.
The lower-end option, dubbed the Core 2 Duo, is so similar to the earlier Pebble 2 that “Duo is short for ‘do-over,’ ” the company said in an online announcement. With a design that strongly resembles the Pebble 2 from 2016, the improvements mostly include longer battery life and newer internal components.
The more premium watch, called the Core Time 2, adds a touch screen and heart rate sensor. It also has an enclosure that’s made of metal, not plastic. The company will share more details on that model later this year ahead of a December launch, it said. The cheaper Core 2 Duo will go on sale first, with shipments expected to begin in July.
The two devices can last as long as 30 days on a single charge, the company said, an improvement over the claimed seven-day runtime of Pebble hardware released nearly a decade ago. Both have a built-in microphone and speaker, are water resistant and offer features including smartphone notifications, a calendar app, music controls, and sleep and step tracking. They also both run PebbleOS software, which the company says is compatible with more than 10,000 apps and watch faces.
Google made the PebbleOS platform available as open source code earlier this year.
“We’re extraordinarily thankful to Google for open sourcing PebbleOS, which gave us a massive head start towards creating these new watches,” the company said in the announcement.
Migicovsky suggested that building an operating system would otherwise have been a major hurdle in designing new smartwatches. “Hardware is so hard primarily because software is difficult,” he said in the interview, adding that the new devices are meant to be “hackable” — meaning, for a certain kind of user who enjoys customizing and tinkering with software.
The company cautioned in its online post that if would-be buyers want a sports-focused device, they would be better off considering one from Garmin. It similarly claimed that its products are not meant to compete directly with the Apple Watch.
Vlad Savov.