Index 01 uses silver-oxide batteries.
Why can’t it be recharged?
We considered this but decided not to for several reasons:
You’d probably lose the charger before the battery runs out! Adding charge circuitry and including a charger would make the product larger and more expensive. You send it back to us to recycle. Wait, it’s single use?
Yes. We know this sounds a bit odd, but in this particular circumstance we believe it’s the best solution to the given set of constraints. Other smart rings like Oura cost $250+ and need to be charged every few days. We didn’t want to build a device like that. Before the battery runs out, the Pebble app notifies and asks if you’d like to order another ring."
Uhhh... Huh... Ok. Welp, that's a nope from me then.
I shared your concerns but I read this bit and I think it's all pretty reasonable if you ask me. They're open and upfront about it, and you can very quickly choose not to buy one.
Who's recycling their Oura battery anyway? Probably nobody.
The target market might not be exclusively other engineers and tinkerers, but as an engineer and tinkerer, I'm eager for more details about the testing, verification, construction, etc., of such a solution.
On the other hand, cool!
This comes across much more dystopian than I imagine the author intended.
Not even an attempt to make a replaceable or chargeable battery?
Also they point out oura rings need to be charged every few days, but that’s because they’re constantly chewing through battery monitoring your health stats. I’m willing to bet if they were in a constant state of deep sleep and only woken up to record short audio clips they’d also last for months at a time.
I know folks around here love pebble, but this feels like a miss to me.
That's a pretty long life, TBF. I appreciate your concerns, though, and do wonder if there was a better middle ground (maybe a micro sterling engine leveraging the heat gradient from my finger to ambient, ha!).
People are buying Fitbit charge6 products today and those probably have an 18 shelf life and cost more.. so maybe it's not totally left field - although the charge6 isn't advertised to fail so soon lol.
Honestly I can see a niche use but this device strikes me as quite weird and I'm not sure why it isn't a button on their new watch.
How much of it is even recyclable?
Water resistant, like how water resistant? Wearing in the shower OK? That's where I have all my best ideas!
Isn't my watch always with me? Why not use that instead of have some new device?
> Initially, we experimented by building this as an app on Pebble, since it has a mic and I’m always wearing one. But, I realized quickly that this was suboptimal - it required me to use my other hand to press the button to start recording (lift-to-wake gestures and wake-words are too unreliable). This was tough to use while bicycling or carrying stuff.
Other watches detect gestures like pinching fingers on the hand wearing the watch.
I wonder how many years?
> The battery lasts for up to years of average use.
...how many?
> a battery that lasts for years
How many years does the battery last?
> That’s up to 2 years of usage.
Ah.
I guess "2" is the absolute minimum that you could describe as "years".
It's a shame because it does look like an interesting proposition. It might be more compelling if it was "send your ring back to us for recycling - and we'll send you a new one". I doubt the economics would work at this price point though.
Sure a phone or watch can burst into flames, but at least you’ve got a chance of dropping it or taking it off.
I also don’t see the bother of talking to your wrist rather than your hand.
>No charging: The battery lasts for up to years of average use. After the end of its life, send your ring back to us for recycling.
this is ridiculous...
Edit FTA:
> How long does the battery last?
> Roughly 12 to 15 hours of recording. On average, I use it 10-20 times per day to record 3-6 second thoughts. That’s up to 2 years of usage.
“Two” is not “years” in my opinion. “Years” implies at least 3-5.
But I did have a similar thought when I read it was only “two”
Think of it more like this: If I was selling you a car and said it would last for years, then would you expect it to fall apart after two years? I certainly wouldn’t. When talking about small quantities we tend to specify an exact number (two, three), however as the range becomes larger and less exact we use generalities (years). Because of this “years” would typically refer to a span of at least 3-5 years, and I would argue even longer.
3 years: Few years
4 years: Several years
5+ years: Years
> Roughly 12 to 15 hours of recording. On average, I use it 10-20 times per day to record 3-6 second thoughts. That’s up to 2 years of usage.
Two years isn’t too bad, but at $99 the price is still a bit high for that.
At $99 every 2 years it might as well be a subscription.
It's a memo recorder in ring form. Neat idea that seems really obvious but somehow I haven't seen it before
Edit: ah. "No charging: The battery lasts for up to years of average use. After the end of its life, send your ring back to us for recycling." Planned obsolescence
Apple hire this man.
Not sure how long my iphone can record for, but it's probably close to that. Afterwards I get to charge my phone instead of recycle it, though.
Apple, don't hire this man.
Edit for the downvoters: can my iphone not record that long or something? iphones can't recharge? Just hate Apple and love e-waste rings? Enlighten me.
Is that based on anything, or is that just a guess?
Anyway, 12 hours' worth of 30 second recordings is a total of 1440 recordings. I guess three a day for a year does seem a little low?
It’s easy to make a battery last years if it doesn’t do anything. You can send your devices to Apple as well for recycling.
This seems like a gadget just for the sake of having another gadget...
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wont
Also: I agree with your concern
There is no risk of swelling with Index 01
Take the phone, open app, done.
If their goal truly is "New Pebble", then surely something that could connect to a phone could connect to a computer, granted you have the available radios connected to your computer. Seems to be BT in this case.
> and had a rechargeable battery
Yeah, seems like a weird thing to do, but I guess trying to solve this would make the device a lot harder. Hoping at least there will be a DIY route to replace the batteries, I don't have the will to be sending back an electrical device every second month because the battery died, and then waiting for a new device to arrive in the mail.
Edit: I was just about to ask if you think they'll send the replacement device before you've sent in the one that had the expired battery, but now I realize it isn't even clear if they expect us to buy a brand new device when the battery runs out, or if they provide a replacement? The former would be an absolutely bananas proposition.
Happy to answer any questions you have!
I generally like the idea. I use my Apple Watch for Siri and needing the other hand to hold Siri is not ideal. I do use “hey siri” a lot but it doesn’t always work, though pretty reliable.
Seeing them introducing One More Thing on the other side of the spectrum, deep in big-corp, locked down, consumerist throwaway territory makes me reevaluate that.
I guess they might overestimate the fanboyness of their clientele. I hope enough people find this as laughable as I do and ignore this.
I know they mentioned that they thought of making this just a watch app, but didn't like the two-handed button press or raise to wake gesture. Why not just optimize for removing the gesture entirely? The microphone has to be better on a full size watch on your wrist vs the tiny ring further away on your finger.
This hits the same nerve in me as those single-use vapes with screens, except you can't harvest the battery out of this one.
Battery would last for decades just as a button.
On Android, it's called "Blitzmail," I'm pretty sure there's an Apple equivalent.
Beautifully simple app; on one touch it pops open a text box (which you can type, dictate to, also do "shares/attachments")
And emails to one and only one pre-specified address, usually "yourself."
From there, pick your poison. I personally have a dedicated address/account for these, and I have some bash scripts that pick them up and move them around, but I imagine for many "checking that email address periodically" would be sufficient.
More broadly: Invisible wearable microphones are coming for everyone and perfect memory will follow. I'm incredibly excited about this for myself and simultaneously terrified about everyone else having it.
It's coming fast enough that I'm beginning to assume in any decently sized crowd of tech folks /someone/ is recording everything.
eptcyka•46m ago
micromacrofoot•42m ago
4ggr0•41m ago
or a search for 'voice': https://apps.repebble.com/en_US/search/watchapps/1?query=Voi...