I’m looking for any suggestions for smartwatch that it similar like Google Pixel Phones with GrapheneOS. Is there such a thing?
Big fan of the PineTime for minimalism and extraordinary battery life, but the Bangle looks compelling. Maybe once the PineTime dies.
PineTime
Bangle.js 2
TIL
Gatgetbridge (your link) has a breakdown of devices they support https://gadgetbridge.org/gadgets/ . You can click through the vendors to find devices which are both “highly supported” and “no vendor-pair”. Meaning most/all the features work without any reliance on the vendor app.
As for the similarity you are asking about with pixel->GrapheneOS, there are very few watches that can run an alternative open source firmware or operating systems apart from the ones that are already open source, like bangle.js, pinetime, etc. Wearables are even more specialized than phones, they require specialized code designed specifically for them and would likely require pretty extreme effort to reverse-engineer.
I use a pebble 2 HR with gadgetbridge but the watch it self runs the old pebble firmware which gadgetbridge talks to. This is fine for me, but if you are looking for a more modern watch you may have to make some compromises.
The Bangle.js 2 is pretty cool
That’s what I use. It’s way more stripped down than a modern smart watch, but it has good battery life, a transflexive LCD, can discretely give me notifications so I can keep my phone on silent, and can show me the weather at a glance.
There are more things it can do, I just find my phone is better for the majority of them.
Are the notifications actionable? (Snoozing alarms, canned replies to messages, etc)
I couldn’t find that important detail on the website easily.
You can snooze alarms, play/pause/ff/rw media, and mark messages as read
Lilygo T-Watch. Sorry, I know I’m late to the party but no one mentioned these. They’re a little closer to a development platform, but basic enough for anyone to pick up and learn. They’re similar to the PineTime in terms of being low-power, more simple options. But this uses a more powerful ESP32-S3 SoC and is a lot more responsive.
I have a PineTime, but I’d have to go with the Bangle.js.
I have a pinetime and I basically just stopped using it. I thought it being open source would mean I could add my own features, but development for it sucks and it’s massively limited.
Can you expand more, why it is limited?
It has 512kb of flash, and Over 400kb is already taken by the base firmware. Also, you have to flash a new firmware every time you want to try a new feature.
64kb of ram, too. So you have to be extremely cautious and careful about how you code any features.
It’s just not worth it.
