I don't really follow Pine, but it's incredible how much progress they make. This is actually the first time I've heard of the PineNote, and damn, it's exciting. I like my ReMarkable tablet, but...
I don't really follow Pine, but it's incredible how much progress they make. This is actually the first time I've heard of the PineNote, and damn, it's exciting. I like my ReMarkable tablet, but it's incredibly limited by the software it runs, so having a functional equivalent that just runs Debian and whatever software you want is pretty exciting, even if it doesn't really have as good of a note-taking application (though admittedly that doesn't make it a true replacement for a ReMarkable - not that I particularly care for it to be personally).
I'm also really hyped to see PineNote moving forward. I currently use an Onyx Boox 8" tablet with a stylus that runs Android. It's nice! But I would love to see something FOSS in this space. All I...
I'm also really hyped to see PineNote moving forward. I currently use an Onyx Boox 8" tablet with a stylus that runs Android. It's nice! But I would love to see something FOSS in this space. All I really need is a web browser, KOReader, a notetaking app, and maybe a terminal. So hopefully things will keep moving.
I mostly want to see something slightly smaller, about 8", potentially with hardware page turning buttons. And maybe a physical keyboard, or a keyboard case. Toss in a fingerprint reader to make it convenient to lock and unlock, and an SD card slot, and I'd probably pay $800!
I also want physical buttons, but IMO the best solution for that is a custom case and wiring in custom batteries. The existing PineNote shipped without an SD card slot specifically because they...
I mostly want to see something slightly smaller, about 8", potentially with hardware page turning buttons. And maybe a physical keyboard, or a keyboard case. Toss in a fingerprint reader to make it convenient to lock and unlock, and an SD card slot, and I'd probably pay $800!
I also want physical buttons, but IMO the best solution for that is a custom case and wiring in custom batteries. The existing PineNote shipped without an SD card slot specifically because they bought an existing shell design, and redesigning it to include an SD card slot would cost money. The first batch sold extremely slowly, so frankly we're lucky we even got a second batch.
Pine makes great hardware things but they are kinda development kits. See my reply here on Tildes about using Pinephone. I love the idea, but you ahve to account there is zero support and you rely...
Pine makes great hardware things but they are kinda development kits. See my reply here on Tildes about using Pinephone.
I love the idea, but you ahve to account there is zero support and you rely on people that may (or may not) make the hardware useful. I wish the PineNote the best! But I also doubt the usability a bit.
Isn't the pinenote almost three years old already? It feels like I saw announcements for development models going out way back then? As far as hardware goes they are a neat company, but software...
Isn't the pinenote almost three years old already? It feels like I saw announcements for development models going out way back then? As far as hardware goes they are a neat company, but software is rough. They basically make everything open source and throw it at the community to fix. To the credit of the community they get a lot done but not everything.
Others here are into hobby electronics! Awesome! I use their PinePowers as my USB power supplies for my electronics bench, as well as the Pinecil as the soldering iron of choice in my field...
Others here are into hobby electronics! Awesome!
I use their PinePowers as my USB power supplies for my electronics bench, as well as the Pinecil as the soldering iron of choice in my field soldering kit.
I'm not the one who you asked, but I have Pinecil too and I would like to share my insight. It's pretty straightforward - I'm hobbyist and since I got Pinecil, I haven't touched any other...
I'm not the one who you asked, but I have Pinecil too and I would like to share my insight. It's pretty straightforward - I'm hobbyist and since I got Pinecil, I haven't touched any other soldering iron. I've got Hakko knock-off soldering station and TS-100 and Pinecil. And in my usage (Arduino and mainly through hole stuff, but also some basic SMD, not much ground planes though) I always pick Pinecil.
The most useful things about it include USB-C PD as I have PinePower that has USB-C PD output on my table and portability as I also have 20V capable USB-C powerbank.
Also new tips don't cost much and Pine has both hefty (more thermal mass and for more brute jobs) and fine tips for sale.
The conrols are very easy too. I have flashed Czech language firmware on it, set it up once and didn't touch settings ever since. You plug the USB-C in (the more voltage it has, the more power you can use because the tip is just resistive load; I believe the least it will work on is 12V), you pres one button and it starts to heat up to your selected temperature which it will keep. You out it down and it stops heating and enters "sleep" where it.maintains much lower temperature. All this can be set up. When you want to stop soldering/heating, you just hold down the other button and it switches back to "ready" state and cools down. Or you just disconnect it and let it cool down before putting it away.
For the price I really.believe you can't get anything better than Pinecil. It is fully working thing with great firmware and usability. It may not suit everyone, but it suits me really well.
I have used it only a few times since it's for field use (while at home I use my Aixun bench station, before that I used a Hakko) - I take it with me when I visit my parents and have used it...
I have used it only a few times since it's for field use (while at home I use my Aixun bench station, before that I used a Hakko) - I take it with me when I visit my parents and have used it several times to repair cords their cats have chewed through. It has performed quite well with those tasks, but to be fair we aren't talking about trying to solder on something like a modern graphics card with a heavy backplane designed for high heat dissipation.
It's great for what it is meant for, soldering on pretty much anything short of high-output demanding tasks that call for either pre-heating or very high wattage tip output.
Now, there are price-comparable competitors as of recent days. Fnirsi recently came out with the HS-02 portable iron (for around the $30 range) which is also USB-C powered - but it uses JBC-compatible cartridges which is a major plus in my opinion. I recently bought one, though it is still sitting on my shelf and I haven't tried it yet.
My personal view is that these are excellent tools for their use-case: portable soldering capability. Can they do a fine job and get used at your home bench? Sure. Would a benchtop option provide you with better power output for high-heat dissipation situations? Yes. Still, in terms of value-for-money, it's pretty darn hard to beat either the Pinecil or the Fnirsi.
Thanks! I'm quite excited to get back in to soldering stuff. I used to do it a lot. One of my issues now though is that I don't have a bench I can set up permanently, just scooch a free corner...
Thanks! I'm quite excited to get back in to soldering stuff. I used to do it a lot.
One of my issues now though is that I don't have a bench I can set up permanently, just scooch a free corner somewhere , so I want some gear I can easily pack away. I got a head mounted magnifier that seems to work well, for example. It's no USB scope, but needs must.
I havent used any Pine products, but Im interested in the SOPINE modules. I always thought cluster computing was a neat idea for trying to do larger scale computations without having access to a...
I havent used any Pine products, but Im interested in the SOPINE modules.
I always thought cluster computing was a neat idea for trying to do larger scale computations without having access to a supercomputer.
I have used Pinephone for around one year. And I also have Pinetime. I use Pinecil a lot. Pinephone... Well, don't buy it is the short answer. I will list all the disadvantages or reasons why, but...
I have used Pinephone for around one year. And I also have Pinetime. I use Pinecil a lot.
Pinephone... Well, don't buy it is the short answer. I will list all the disadvantages or reasons why, but I actually liked it to some extent. Now - why no buy it: #1 for me was weak signal (unusable where I live, probanly.ok in city/town), bad software support (it works, but you have to tolerate so many things), bad camera and by this I mean like 2005 bad (K750i had probably better photos), slow SoC (which actually isn't the worst of its problems), some may say 720p screen is bad but you will run into.many other things before realizing this, really bad speaker, unusable front (selfie) camera likely due to bad software support, ...
Main advantage is that you can install many different linux distibutions. I had used Manjaro with Phosh (I beliwv) desktop environment as it was the most usable. KDE while looking better and more mature couldn't even sync Google contacts at the time while Phosh worked fine. I had problems with SMS - both sending amd even bigger receiving, probably because of the bad signal and modem not being able to successfully receive and communicate them to OS. If you use.phone as iem MP3 player, this will make it not sleep and drain battery fast. I use Matrix(.org) and I used desktop Element on Pinephone which worked fine and I even got messages while he phone was asleep (which kinda seems not logical because it means either some kind of push notification worked or I don't really know).
What I really liked on the Pinephone was that it was running full (desktop) linux distro with all the things I know from actual desktop. I liked how they were actually able to make it look like a decent phone (looks) whole basically making Raspberry Pi + LCD + battery + 4G modem development kit and integrating it into smartphone shape. This is what Pinephone really is - it is development kit made into a phone. You are kinda betatester if you buy it. It has its place, it definitely isn't mainstream though. I would say it isn't even hobbyist, this one is for hardcore people.
Pinetime is the same in smawrtwatch space but much more low budget. Pinetime can do like 14 days on one charge, but it can't do much. It has integrated HRM that doesn't run all the time (it could, but battery life would be bad), it has some time stuff like timer, alarm and stopwatch, it can show you time and has like 6 different watchfaces (more can be added but as far as I know nobody made any more), it has decent detection of "wrist up" for turning on the LCD amd it can show you notifications, which is kinda its best value (apart from clock). Really simple device which kinda doesn't have its space anymore as some Amazfit bracelets are (almost) the same price while having more functions (but you rely on third larty servers amd give up on your freedom though).
Pinecil.is the beat portable/USB-C iron. For.theprice you pay it absolutely crushes everything else out there. You may want something reputable if you work in electronis workshop but if you are hobbyist, you can't really buy better iron for this money. Being able to solder from.powerbanks, laptop chargers and alike, Pinecil is the one thing I can truly and wholeheartedly advise anyone to buy.
EDIT: Oh, I forgot I also have their PinePower desktop power supply. Very nice thing. I bought it at the time there were no uch products in the standard market. Nowadays LIDL makes such a thing and it is a bit neater (and likely conforms to all standards; PinePower seems well bult as well I have to add) but lacks the display.
A lot of Amazfit products can use Gadgetbridge on Android which is great, and currently I'm using CMF Pro from Nothing, which also works with Gadgetbridge. In fact, I won't buy a wearable that...
Amazfit bracelets are (almost) the same price while having more functions (but you rely on third larty servers amd give up on your freedom though).
A lot of Amazfit products can use Gadgetbridge on Android which is great, and currently I'm using CMF Pro from Nothing, which also works with Gadgetbridge. In fact, I won't buy a wearable that doesn't work with Gadgetbridge.
I switched from Pinetime to Bangle.js2, I use Gadgetbridge too :-) And I know Amazfit devices work with it quite well. You have to hack around a bit though to get them working. Bangle.js2 is...
I switched from Pinetime to Bangle.js2, I use Gadgetbridge too :-) And I know Amazfit devices work with it quite well. You have to hack around a bit though to get them working.
Bangle.js2 is wonderful! The display is always on (backlight off) and the time is readable even in lower light. For notifications you need more light, so either backlight or standard daylight. Once again - Bangle.js2 is aimed at enthusiasts but has much more variability (like infinitely more) than Pinetime. And it can last for 14 days on one charge! There is spcial Gadgetbridge fork for them so you can upload and update them right from the app. There are compromises once again though... Biggest one being that everything is made by enthusiasts, which means it often made up to the point of "it works" and lacks the final polish. I can live with that but many people won't be able to.
I got a Bangle.js2 and really did not like it. The watch as a web page just didn't do it for me and it was way too easy to wreck battery life, or end up with overlapping things in the top and...
I got a Bangle.js2 and really did not like it. The watch as a web page just didn't do it for me and it was way too easy to wreck battery life, or end up with overlapping things in the top and bottom bars. I had high hopes for it, but the Nothing Pro is just so much better in every way. The best feature for me on the Nothing, is the mic and speaker in the watch, I can make and receive phone calls directly from the bracelet, and the sound quality is surprisingly great.
It's saved me from missing phone calls when I leave my phone at my desk when I go to make coffee so many times, and prevented me from having to get my phone out in the rain on the street to take or make a call or read a message.
Edit: Now i want to try and find my Bangle.js2 because it isn't where I thought it was :(
This is the first time I heard about Nothing Watch. I'm VERY surprised by the price (around 50-60€ where I live). The look like a great choice! If only I knew about them (if they exosted when I...
This is the first time I heard about Nothing Watch. I'm VERY surprised by the price (around 50-60€ where I live). The look like a great choice! If only I knew about them (if they exosted when I bought my Bangle). Well, one can't simply have all the things :-)
The second version is much better than the first. Didn't end up costing much more either. I get a decent week out of it. The only down side of using it with Gadgetbridge, is not being to upload...
The second version is much better than the first. Didn't end up costing much more either. I get a decent week out of it.
The only down side of using it with Gadgetbridge, is not being to upload a-gps to it, so when I want to go for a run, I have to stand out in the rain for 10 minutes whilst it does an unassisted lock on
They look really great for the price! Since you had a few watches already - did you ever experienced disconnects throughout the day? I don't mean when you go out of range, but just straight up...
They look really great for the price!
Since you had a few watches already - did you ever experienced disconnects throughout the day? I don't mean when you go out of range, but just straight up lost connection when you have both phone and watch on you. And if you may - what phone are you using?
My phone is a Google Pixel 6a running Graphene OS, so perhaps a little unusual. "ever" is a long time scale, and it's probably happened a few times sure. It's not common though. Especially with...
My phone is a Google Pixel 6a running Graphene OS, so perhaps a little unusual.
"ever" is a long time scale, and it's probably happened a few times sure. It's not common though. Especially with the CMF watch where the phone call facility is hooked up as a standard bluetooth headset profile, that's rock solid, and uses the phone OS to manage that, not Gadgetbridge.
I suspect that the few times I've had a disconnect were either (1) I've wandered out of range (which is surprisingly long range actually) and it didn't auto reconnect, or (2) android power management has yeeted Gadgetbridge into touch.
Those two imaginary scenarios might actually be related as gadgetbridge is /supposed/ (if you set the option) to reconnect periodically. Can only do that if it's still running though
You might want to put the gadgetbridge widget on to a home page so that you can just tap that to reconnect if it's happening frequently. Might even help it stay connected.
Thank you very much for detailed reply. I have budget Nokia G22 and I think my disconnects are due to poor bluetooth software stack in the OS. I had it woth Pinetime and it continues with Bangle....
Thank you very much for detailed reply. I have budget Nokia G22 and I think my disconnects are due to poor bluetooth software stack in the OS. I had it woth Pinetime and it continues with Bangle. And I have one other G22 with Amazfit and it does the same. But another Amazfit disconnects from some kind of Samsung phone (also some budget one), so I'm kinda helpless...
I have Gadgetbridge set to unlimited battery usage, I don't open up many apps at once (no OOM killing), I have bluetooth on all day long, I have auto reconnect on in Gadgrtbridge and yet it keeps on failing. Sometimes it fails after an hour, other times it works for three days straight, but it averages to a few disconnects through each day. At forst I thought it's the Pinetime but now Bangle does the same as Amazfit does.
Also - there are problems with Quick Share on the phones. I yet have to keep an eye on that but I think Qick Share starts working after restarting bluetooth, just as the Bangle does. This makes.me think the bluetooth in the phone is at fault, actually.
To add to this mess - Pinetime keeps disconnecting on Xiaomi Note 9 Pro as well. Didn't test any other watch on that phone.
I guess this is what I got for buying into weird stuff :-)
For PineTime, I don't suppose you've ever had a Pebble to compare it too? I've kind of been going the opposite way with Gamin watches since they imploded, but I do miss the simplicity of the...
For PineTime, I don't suppose you've ever had a Pebble to compare it too?
I've kind of been going the opposite way with Gamin watches since they imploded, but I do miss the simplicity of the Pebble watches.
I didn't have Pebble, though I wanted one so badly at the time. The priorities were on other things. Pinetime is really simple, it shows you the time, it shows you notification and that's it - no...
I didn't have Pebble, though I wanted one so badly at the time. The priorities were on other things.
Pinetime is really simple, it shows you the time, it shows you notification and that's it - no replying to message, not even quick replies, but it can pick up (or hang up/dismiss) voice call or just turn down the ringtone (and still let it "ring" just like your volume button on the phone does). As I said, there is a timer and alarm clock and stopwatch and that really is all. But you can get usable battery life out of it.
I had trouble with Pinetime disconnecting throughout the day (even multiple times), but I have the same problem with Bangle.js 2 and another same phone has problems with Amazfit watch, so I credit these problems to the phones actually. But bear that in mind - if you want really reliable watch, you may not want to spend money on Pinetime. Or do thorough research before buying them. They are kinda cheap, but you may still end up spending money on something that doesn't work for you.
I don't really follow Pine, but it's incredible how much progress they make. This is actually the first time I've heard of the PineNote, and damn, it's exciting. I like my ReMarkable tablet, but it's incredibly limited by the software it runs, so having a functional equivalent that just runs Debian and whatever software you want is pretty exciting, even if it doesn't really have as good of a note-taking application (though admittedly that doesn't make it a true replacement for a ReMarkable - not that I particularly care for it to be personally).
I'm also really hyped to see PineNote moving forward. I currently use an Onyx Boox 8" tablet with a stylus that runs Android. It's nice! But I would love to see something FOSS in this space. All I really need is a web browser, KOReader, a notetaking app, and maybe a terminal. So hopefully things will keep moving.
I mostly want to see something slightly smaller, about 8", potentially with hardware page turning buttons. And maybe a physical keyboard, or a keyboard case. Toss in a fingerprint reader to make it convenient to lock and unlock, and an SD card slot, and I'd probably pay $800!
I also want physical buttons, but IMO the best solution for that is a custom case and wiring in custom batteries. The existing PineNote shipped without an SD card slot specifically because they bought an existing shell design, and redesigning it to include an SD card slot would cost money. The first batch sold extremely slowly, so frankly we're lucky we even got a second batch.
Pine makes great hardware things but they are kinda development kits. See my reply here on Tildes about using Pinephone.
I love the idea, but you ahve to account there is zero support and you rely on people that may (or may not) make the hardware useful. I wish the PineNote the best! But I also doubt the usability a bit.
Isn't the pinenote almost three years old already? It feels like I saw announcements for development models going out way back then? As far as hardware goes they are a neat company, but software is rough. They basically make everything open source and throw it at the community to fix. To the credit of the community they get a lot done but not everything.
Others here are into hobby electronics! Awesome!
I use their PinePowers as my USB power supplies for my electronics bench, as well as the Pinecil as the soldering iron of choice in my field soldering kit.
How do you find the Pinecil? I've been looking at one to replace my venerable 240V non temperature controlled Weller iron.
I'm not the one who you asked, but I have Pinecil too and I would like to share my insight. It's pretty straightforward - I'm hobbyist and since I got Pinecil, I haven't touched any other soldering iron. I've got Hakko knock-off soldering station and TS-100 and Pinecil. And in my usage (Arduino and mainly through hole stuff, but also some basic SMD, not much ground planes though) I always pick Pinecil.
The most useful things about it include USB-C PD as I have PinePower that has USB-C PD output on my table and portability as I also have 20V capable USB-C powerbank.
Also new tips don't cost much and Pine has both hefty (more thermal mass and for more brute jobs) and fine tips for sale.
The conrols are very easy too. I have flashed Czech language firmware on it, set it up once and didn't touch settings ever since. You plug the USB-C in (the more voltage it has, the more power you can use because the tip is just resistive load; I believe the least it will work on is 12V), you pres one button and it starts to heat up to your selected temperature which it will keep. You out it down and it stops heating and enters "sleep" where it.maintains much lower temperature. All this can be set up. When you want to stop soldering/heating, you just hold down the other button and it switches back to "ready" state and cools down. Or you just disconnect it and let it cool down before putting it away.
For the price I really.believe you can't get anything better than Pinecil. It is fully working thing with great firmware and usability. It may not suit everyone, but it suits me really well.
Thanks for that :) I will see in January about getting one
I have used it only a few times since it's for field use (while at home I use my Aixun bench station, before that I used a Hakko) - I take it with me when I visit my parents and have used it several times to repair cords their cats have chewed through. It has performed quite well with those tasks, but to be fair we aren't talking about trying to solder on something like a modern graphics card with a heavy backplane designed for high heat dissipation.
It's great for what it is meant for, soldering on pretty much anything short of high-output demanding tasks that call for either pre-heating or very high wattage tip output.
Now, there are price-comparable competitors as of recent days. Fnirsi recently came out with the HS-02 portable iron (for around the $30 range) which is also USB-C powered - but it uses JBC-compatible cartridges which is a major plus in my opinion. I recently bought one, though it is still sitting on my shelf and I haven't tried it yet.
My personal view is that these are excellent tools for their use-case: portable soldering capability. Can they do a fine job and get used at your home bench? Sure. Would a benchtop option provide you with better power output for high-heat dissipation situations? Yes. Still, in terms of value-for-money, it's pretty darn hard to beat either the Pinecil or the Fnirsi.
Thanks! I'm quite excited to get back in to soldering stuff. I used to do it a lot.
One of my issues now though is that I don't have a bench I can set up permanently, just scooch a free corner somewhere , so I want some gear I can easily pack away. I got a head mounted magnifier that seems to work well, for example. It's no USB scope, but needs must.
Oh! Ok.
Yeah, then it's perfect for your use case. Definitely a great option to make soldering available while taking up no space at all.
I havent used any Pine products, but Im interested in the SOPINE modules.
I always thought cluster computing was a neat idea for trying to do larger scale computations without having access to a supercomputer.
I have used Pinephone for around one year. And I also have Pinetime. I use Pinecil a lot.
Pinephone... Well, don't buy it is the short answer. I will list all the disadvantages or reasons why, but I actually liked it to some extent. Now - why no buy it: #1 for me was weak signal (unusable where I live, probanly.ok in city/town), bad software support (it works, but you have to tolerate so many things), bad camera and by this I mean like 2005 bad (K750i had probably better photos), slow SoC (which actually isn't the worst of its problems), some may say 720p screen is bad but you will run into.many other things before realizing this, really bad speaker, unusable front (selfie) camera likely due to bad software support, ...
Main advantage is that you can install many different linux distibutions. I had used Manjaro with Phosh (I beliwv) desktop environment as it was the most usable. KDE while looking better and more mature couldn't even sync Google contacts at the time while Phosh worked fine. I had problems with SMS - both sending amd even bigger receiving, probably because of the bad signal and modem not being able to successfully receive and communicate them to OS. If you use.phone as iem MP3 player, this will make it not sleep and drain battery fast. I use Matrix(.org) and I used desktop Element on Pinephone which worked fine and I even got messages while he phone was asleep (which kinda seems not logical because it means either some kind of push notification worked or I don't really know).
What I really liked on the Pinephone was that it was running full (desktop) linux distro with all the things I know from actual desktop. I liked how they were actually able to make it look like a decent phone (looks) whole basically making Raspberry Pi + LCD + battery + 4G modem development kit and integrating it into smartphone shape. This is what Pinephone really is - it is development kit made into a phone. You are kinda betatester if you buy it. It has its place, it definitely isn't mainstream though. I would say it isn't even hobbyist, this one is for hardcore people.
Pinetime is the same in smawrtwatch space but much more low budget. Pinetime can do like 14 days on one charge, but it can't do much. It has integrated HRM that doesn't run all the time (it could, but battery life would be bad), it has some time stuff like timer, alarm and stopwatch, it can show you time and has like 6 different watchfaces (more can be added but as far as I know nobody made any more), it has decent detection of "wrist up" for turning on the LCD amd it can show you notifications, which is kinda its best value (apart from clock). Really simple device which kinda doesn't have its space anymore as some Amazfit bracelets are (almost) the same price while having more functions (but you rely on third larty servers amd give up on your freedom though).
Pinecil.is the beat portable/USB-C iron. For.theprice you pay it absolutely crushes everything else out there. You may want something reputable if you work in electronis workshop but if you are hobbyist, you can't really buy better iron for this money. Being able to solder from.powerbanks, laptop chargers and alike, Pinecil is the one thing I can truly and wholeheartedly advise anyone to buy.
EDIT: Oh, I forgot I also have their PinePower desktop power supply. Very nice thing. I bought it at the time there were no uch products in the standard market. Nowadays LIDL makes such a thing and it is a bit neater (and likely conforms to all standards; PinePower seems well bult as well I have to add) but lacks the display.
A lot of Amazfit products can use Gadgetbridge on Android which is great, and currently I'm using CMF Pro from Nothing, which also works with Gadgetbridge. In fact, I won't buy a wearable that doesn't work with Gadgetbridge.
I switched from Pinetime to Bangle.js2, I use Gadgetbridge too :-) And I know Amazfit devices work with it quite well. You have to hack around a bit though to get them working.
Bangle.js2 is wonderful! The display is always on (backlight off) and the time is readable even in lower light. For notifications you need more light, so either backlight or standard daylight. Once again - Bangle.js2 is aimed at enthusiasts but has much more variability (like infinitely more) than Pinetime. And it can last for 14 days on one charge! There is spcial Gadgetbridge fork for them so you can upload and update them right from the app. There are compromises once again though... Biggest one being that everything is made by enthusiasts, which means it often made up to the point of "it works" and lacks the final polish. I can live with that but many people won't be able to.
I got a Bangle.js2 and really did not like it. The watch as a web page just didn't do it for me and it was way too easy to wreck battery life, or end up with overlapping things in the top and bottom bars. I had high hopes for it, but the Nothing Pro is just so much better in every way. The best feature for me on the Nothing, is the mic and speaker in the watch, I can make and receive phone calls directly from the bracelet, and the sound quality is surprisingly great.
It's saved me from missing phone calls when I leave my phone at my desk when I go to make coffee so many times, and prevented me from having to get my phone out in the rain on the street to take or make a call or read a message.
Edit: Now i want to try and find my Bangle.js2 because it isn't where I thought it was :(
This is the first time I heard about Nothing Watch. I'm VERY surprised by the price (around 50-60€ where I live). The look like a great choice! If only I knew about them (if they exosted when I bought my Bangle). Well, one can't simply have all the things :-)
The second version is much better than the first. Didn't end up costing much more either. I get a decent week out of it.
The only down side of using it with Gadgetbridge, is not being to upload a-gps to it, so when I want to go for a run, I have to stand out in the rain for 10 minutes whilst it does an unassisted lock on
They look really great for the price!
Since you had a few watches already - did you ever experienced disconnects throughout the day? I don't mean when you go out of range, but just straight up lost connection when you have both phone and watch on you. And if you may - what phone are you using?
My phone is a Google Pixel 6a running Graphene OS, so perhaps a little unusual.
"ever" is a long time scale, and it's probably happened a few times sure. It's not common though. Especially with the CMF watch where the phone call facility is hooked up as a standard bluetooth headset profile, that's rock solid, and uses the phone OS to manage that, not Gadgetbridge.
I suspect that the few times I've had a disconnect were either (1) I've wandered out of range (which is surprisingly long range actually) and it didn't auto reconnect, or (2) android power management has yeeted Gadgetbridge into touch.
Those two imaginary scenarios might actually be related as gadgetbridge is /supposed/ (if you set the option) to reconnect periodically. Can only do that if it's still running though
You might want to put the gadgetbridge widget on to a home page so that you can just tap that to reconnect if it's happening frequently. Might even help it stay connected.
Thank you very much for detailed reply. I have budget Nokia G22 and I think my disconnects are due to poor bluetooth software stack in the OS. I had it woth Pinetime and it continues with Bangle. And I have one other G22 with Amazfit and it does the same. But another Amazfit disconnects from some kind of Samsung phone (also some budget one), so I'm kinda helpless...
I have Gadgetbridge set to unlimited battery usage, I don't open up many apps at once (no OOM killing), I have bluetooth on all day long, I have auto reconnect on in Gadgrtbridge and yet it keeps on failing. Sometimes it fails after an hour, other times it works for three days straight, but it averages to a few disconnects through each day. At forst I thought it's the Pinetime but now Bangle does the same as Amazfit does.
Also - there are problems with Quick Share on the phones. I yet have to keep an eye on that but I think Qick Share starts working after restarting bluetooth, just as the Bangle does. This makes.me think the bluetooth in the phone is at fault, actually.
To add to this mess - Pinetime keeps disconnecting on Xiaomi Note 9 Pro as well. Didn't test any other watch on that phone.
I guess this is what I got for buying into weird stuff :-)
For PineTime, I don't suppose you've ever had a Pebble to compare it too?
I've kind of been going the opposite way with Gamin watches since they imploded, but I do miss the simplicity of the Pebble watches.
I didn't have Pebble, though I wanted one so badly at the time. The priorities were on other things.
Pinetime is really simple, it shows you the time, it shows you notification and that's it - no replying to message, not even quick replies, but it can pick up (or hang up/dismiss) voice call or just turn down the ringtone (and still let it "ring" just like your volume button on the phone does). As I said, there is a timer and alarm clock and stopwatch and that really is all. But you can get usable battery life out of it.
I had trouble with Pinetime disconnecting throughout the day (even multiple times), but I have the same problem with Bangle.js 2 and another same phone has problems with Amazfit watch, so I credit these problems to the phones actually. But bear that in mind - if you want really reliable watch, you may not want to spend money on Pinetime. Or do thorough research before buying them. They are kinda cheap, but you may still end up spending money on something that doesn't work for you.