Smartwatches are commonplace in 2025. Look around on any street and you’ll probably see one of the tiny computers strapped to somebody’s wrist. You might even be wearing one right now. But despite the ubiquity of the Apple Watch, Fitbit and Samsung Galaxy Watch today, it all started out with a little company called Pebble – and, to the delight of its hardcore fans, Pebble has just announced its return.
The tech fan favourite firm launched its first smartwatch (and one of the first smartwatches full stop) on crowdfunding platform Kickstarter way back in 2012. It had a small E Ink screen similar to that of a Kindle, a few buttons, and decent battery life to bring in notifications and reminders from your phone and calendar.
In four short years, Pebble built up a huge community who designed their own watch faces and bought the smartwatches, several of which were released including the excellent Pebble Time, whuch raised millions on Kickstarter.
But in 2016 Pebble declared it was shutting down, and Fitbit acquired the company’s assets and several employees. In 2021, Google acquired Fitbit, and with it all of Pebble’s intelletual property.
But on January 27, Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky posted a blog titled “Why We’re Bringing Pebble Back”, announcing that he and a small team are working towards releasing a brand new Pebble smartwatch.
“I had really, really, really hoped that someone else would come along and build a Pebble replacement,” Migicovsky said. “But no one has. So… a small team and I are diving back into the world of hardware to bring Pebble back!
“This time round, we’re keeping things simple. Lessons were learned last time! I’m building a small, narrowly focused company to make these watches. I don’t envision raising money from investors, or hiring a big team. The emphasis is on sustainability. I want to keep making cool gadgets and keep Pebble going long into the future.”
The announcement has been met with huge enthusiasm from the online Pebble community who are still active on Reddit and other social media platforms.
“I could literally cry from happiness right now. I am still rocking my pebble time round as I write this message,” Reddit user ArekusandaMagni posted on the r/pebble subreddit.
“I was here to witness the rebirth. Let’s gooo! Hell yeah, this was not on my 2025 bingo list but this is amazing news. Nothing felt as good as Pebble,” user ShinNL said.
A service called Rebble, not affiliated with Pebble, has been keeping the software and operating system going ever since Pebble closed down in 2016, but it has been removed from App Stores and can be tricky to install.
Also announced this week by Migicovsky is that he asked Google to make the Pebble operating system, PebbleOS, open source, and Google obliged. Open source means the code is free online for anyone to use and build services and apps for.
That means that anyone could now make a smartwatch and freely and legally run PebbleOS on it.
But the main news is that it looks as though there will finally be another official Pebble watch made by the original founder, who claims he still wears a 10 year old Pebble watch today. If you want to get your hands on the new Pebble, you can sign up for the so-called ‘rePebble’ project mailing list. The sign up site says those registered to this list will get priority shipping when the watch is ready.
Click here to sign up to receive information on the new Pebble smartwatch.
I used to love my Pebble Time and I still have it – I’ve signed up to the mailing list and will be excited to see what the return of Pebble will bring.
