From: Joann Mõndresku Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2021 09:00:35 +0000 (+0300) Subject: PineTime - a promising open smartwatch X-Git-Url: https://git.based.quest/?p=web-old.git;a=commitdiff_plain;h=1f695a51e3db6021cf7d8c9c9b9b2884636955eb PineTime - a promising open smartwatch --- diff --git a/articles/pinetime-a-promising-open-smartwatch.md b/articles/pinetime-a-promising-open-smartwatch.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..02b4093 --- /dev/null +++ b/articles/pinetime-a-promising-open-smartwatch.md @@ -0,0 +1,51 @@ +PineTime - A promising open-source smartwatch and my experience + +## A PineWhatNow? + +[PineTime](https://www.pine64.org/pinetime/) is a open-source smartwatch built by Pine64 +and the community. It rocks a 1.3 inch IPS capacitive touchscreen and boasts a week long +(yet to verify, but seems likely!) battery life and it communicates over BLE and Bluetooth 5. +It has the typical features of your usual smartwatch such as step counting and heart rate +sensor, ability to control your music and view notifications - all that on very low specs. +It runs on a nRF52832 SoC with a 64MHz ARM Cortex-M4F CPU coupled with 512KB Flash and 64KB +of RAM. It also has additional SPI NOR 4MB Flash which community software has recently taken +advantage of. + +Now that you know fundamentally what a PineTime is, what sets this apart is the openness +of device, you can replace the firmware and bootloader with anything of your choice. You +do not have to use the preinstalled [InfiniTime](https://github.com/JF002/InfiniTime) and +can install a firmware of your own choice such as [WaspOS](https://github.com/daniel-thompson/wasp-os). +Other smartwatches often depend on sending telemetry or constant feed of your data to a +centralised server - it is convenient for sure, but it comes with a large invasion of your +privacy. You are in charge of your own data, you do not need to send your data anywhere in +order to access it, you can simply use open-source companion apps that only keep track of data +offline. + +## Ok, but how nice is it to actually use? + +My experience with PineTime is rather recent, I got my hands on it on July 22th, 2021. +It shipped with InfiniTime 1.2.0 and MCUBoot 1.0.0 which was the most recent at the time. +Setting it up was very simple, all I needed was GadgetBridge on my phone and connect it +over Bluetooth. Time and date synced immediately after making a connection without a hitch. +I was also pleasantly surprised with how easily the menu was navigatable - so UI/UX gets +another point from me. The step counter on PineTime is also surprisingly good for a device +that retails only for $26.99 - I had zero false positives when in any moving vehicle, my last +smartwatch (regrettably, Garmin) got a ton of false positives constantly. The music program +also worked very nicely with my phone which runs clean Android 11, found it really intuitive +to use. There are a few shortcomings, though - for one, touch registering currently works via +constant polling, so single taps may not exactly register or get delayed quite a bit - fortunately, +[this is being addressed](https://github.com/JF002/InfiniTime/issues/471). The next issue I +had only once, woke up one morning to the watch being unpaired from my phone, rebooting the watch +fixed it at cost of losing all the steps I had gotten during my morning routine - and at the time +of the issue occuring, InfiniTime 1.2.0 had issues with keeping settings saved. This has been +addressed by InfiniTime 1.3.0 with introduction of LittleFS. + +Overall, it's been a solid experience - as of the time of writing, I am running InfiniTime 1.3.0 +with PineTimeStyle watchface ([+ color picker PR applied](https://github.com/JF002/InfiniTime/pull/458)) +and I am very much satisfied. [This is how the PineTime looks like](https://based.quest/img/pinetime_review_pic.jpg). + +Thanks for reading +- Cernodile + +;tags:pine64 smartwatch opensource review +;description:PineTime is a open-source smartwtch built by Pine64 and the community on the budget. Does it hold up to Cernodile's standards - is he satisifed, is it any good or a fail? Find out in this blog post! diff --git a/data/img/pinetime_review_pic.jpg b/data/img/pinetime_review_pic.jpg new file mode 100644 index 0000000..be69d8f Binary files /dev/null and b/data/img/pinetime_review_pic.jpg differ