Pebble Brings Open Wearables to Your Wrist (or Finger)

History repeated itself at CES 2026. At this 12 months’s occasion, Pebble—a well-liked however short-lived smartwatch pioneer of the 2010s—was on the present flooring displaying its newest wearables, a lot because it had a decade in the past. And the particular person offering that demonstration was once more Eric Migicovsky, Pebble’s authentic founder.

Of course, not every part is identical. Pebble’s first launch adopted a startup playbook. The firm acquired VC funding, grew to a number of hundred staff, and shortly offered to Fitbitin 2016. This time round, Pebble is extra like a ardour undertaking. The firm is self-funded with simply 5 full-time staff, PebbleOS is open supply, and Migicovsky’s objective is to not revolutionize wearables however as an alternative to return them to their roots.

“I had a box of Pebbles, and I used them. Over the years, eventually, I realized I would have to use someone else’s smartwatch. I tried everything. And I found I have a very esoteric set of needs,” mentioned Migicovsky.

Pebble returns with not one, however three devices

Pebble’s large CES 2026 reveal was the Pebble Round 2, a smartwatch with a 1.3-inch round e-paper show. It ditches some widespread wearable options, like a coronary heart charge monitor, to ship an ultrathin 8.1-millimeter profile.

However, Pebble additionally confirmed two different wearables that had been introduced within the months earlier than the present: the Pebble Time 2 and the Pebble Index. The Pebble Time 2 is a bigger smartwatch with a 1.5-inch rectangular e-paper show, a coronary heart charge monitor, and a speaker. The Pebble Index is a hoop with a microphone, a battery, and a button, and is supposed as a companion machine for fast audio notes.

What these gadgets share is Migicovsky’s “esoteric” method to wearable design. “I don’t want a smartphone on my wrist. I want a companion to my smartphone. I like my smartphone, so I don’t go for a run and expect it to do everything. And I also don’t want to worry about it as another gadget that needs to be charged every day.”

That final half is vital for Migicovsky and a big departure from most wearables. The slim Pebble Round guarantees as much as two weeks of battery life, whereas the bigger Pebble Time 2 guarantees as much as a month on a cost.

To obtain that, the smartwatches depend on an e-paper show. This will not be an digital ink show however slightly a low-power, low-refresh LCD that shows simply 64 colours.This, after all, means the picture high quality is much much less spectacular than an Apple Watch or Google Pixel watch, but it surely extends the battery life whereas sustaining an always-on show. The watches additionally preserve energy by counting on a easy microcontroller slightly than a extra feature-rich, and power-hungry, chip.

The ring, which doesn’t have a show, lasts even longer. It ships with a lifetime battery that ought to final for years. It’s not user-replaceable, nonetheless, so the ring won’t operate as soon as the battery depletes. Migicovsky sees the ring as a tool for fast questions or notes, which may even be directed to an AI assistant (extra on that later). But it’s not an always-on recording machine, as an alternative recording solely when the button on the ring is pressed.

The Pebble Index ring can file your ideas on the contact of a button. Pebble

PebbleOS is an open-source wearable working system

Pebble’s new {hardware} ought to fill a spot within the wearable world. Smartwatches and rings have developed into elaborate gadgets with a number of sensors and highly effective SoCs, and I count on there’s room for a less complicated different. The pricing displays that, too: The Index prices US $75, the Round is $199, and the Time 2 is $225.

However, the brand new gadgets are simply half the story. The different half is PebbleOS, which is now open supply, and the Pebble app ecosystem.

A couple of years after Fitbit acquired Pebble, Fitbit itself offered to Google, which did nothing with the Pebble model. So, Migicovsky questioned: Would Google be prepared to half with it?

“I asked some friends that I know at Google, would you consider open-sourcing the operating system, so the community can build on that foundation? And they said yes. It took a year, but they said yes,” mentioned Migicovsky.

PebbleOS is available on GitHub with an Apache 2.0 license. Anyone can obtain, modify, and distribute the OS, as long as the license is included within the distribution. There are at the moment 91 forks listed on GitHub—although, as is typical, most look like minor forks by curious software program engineers. Pebble additionally wrote new open-source cellular purposes for Android and iOS, that are used to sync Pebble gadgets with a smartphone.

The {hardware} will not be totally open, and Migicovsky mentioned he doesn’t intend to take the corporate in that route. However, Pebble will present schematics and .STL recordsdata for its gadgets, which can give customers the chance to make modifications.

Pebble additionally has an app retailer that builders can use to distribute their apps. Though it’s no match for Apple’s app retailer, it’s surprisingly populated. In idea, apps which can be a part of this ecosystem might run on different gadgets utilizing PebbleOS, or a fork of PebbleOS, although it could rely on the specifics of the machine and the fork.

Yes, there’s an AI angle (sort of)

The design and philosophy behind Pebble borders on nostalgic. However, Migicovsky was fast to emphasize that Pebble is supposed as a companion to—not a rejection of—trendy tendencies in client electronics.

That contains AI.

Pressing the button on the Index will seize audio. Pebble’s smartphone app can then convert that into textual content notes utilizing OpenAI’s WhisperAI speech-to-text mannequin. The microphone may also be used to talk to well-liked on-line fashions, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude. Responses can seem on a Pebble smartwatch or a linked smartphone.The Pebble app retailer’s present featured app is Bobby, an AI assistant that may deal with dictation and brief questions.

Still, Pebble’s AI options should not the principle occasion. The low-performance microcontroller in Pebble’s gadgets means it’s reliant on web connectivity, or the Pebble smartphone app, for AI options. As a consequence, the apps tackle a extra playable and kooky look than the remainder of the AI trade. Bobby, for instance, is embodied by a pixel-art animal that appears straight out of a 1980’s Nintendo recreation.

“I just love the idea of a fun device that doesn’t take itself too seriously. I love looking forward to gadgets. So, we’re just going to build gadgets that we love,” mentioned Migicovsky.