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Gordon - I really admire that you are open to feedback and I appreciate you taking the time to respond and engage in this discussion which I have found very interesting. To be honest I was considering not posting this at all because I'm not really one to complain and I'm not trying to get anything out of it other than trying to shed some light to this community about my experience in the hope that it might be helpful to the development.
As for the pebble comparisons, I completely understand and I wouldn't feel too bad about not meeting that standard considering that I don't think there are any better smartwatch offerings including from Apple, Samsung, Amazfit, Garmin, etc.
From the sounds of it I did get unlucky as well. Maybe I managed to get water in it or something but to have poor battery, intermittent boot issues, and a broken button it seems like all the holes in the Swiss cheese lined up for me. I don't recall ever getting more than a few days battery life even as new, and I can't imagine it was due to loaded apps. I think the most custom I loaded was a different watch face and a battery gauge.
I am sorry that you have to field more complaints and I hope that I haven't come across as an entitled and grouchy customer. I can't imagine that is particularly rewarding for a project you are so passionate about. For what's it is worth I think the vast majority of people on this forum can see how much you are invested in this and can see the work you are putting in to make it as good as it can be with the limitations you have.
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JustSomeGuy
@Gordon
Hi,
I'm sorry to hear that - but I do really appreciate the feedback. It's really good to know what went wrong.
It's interesting about the vibration strength - personally I haven't found it a big deal, but it seems pretty much every ex-pebble owner really misses the vibration power. I did try and get a bigger motor put in the newest batch, but because of the watch design the manufacturer didn't want to do it in case it caused issues by shaking the battery too much.
The battery life is a very odd one. Out of the box with the default apps it really should have been as advertised - 2+ weeks, so maybe there was some problem with it... although if it got soaked at some point then it's possible that water damage could have had that effect on it too.
... obviously depending what you install/set up you can get the battery to flatten pretty quick though, and I think one thing that really makes it difficult is there's no real way to know what is eating your battery when you've installed apps.
The boot loop thing is a bit sad too - it sounds like you've been really unlucky there. Looking at the forums things like that do seem to be pretty rare now, and obviously I mess with Bangles all day every day and haven't had any boot loops in a long long time now.
But as others have said, I think it's important that Bangle.js isn't 'oversold' as something it's not. Hopefully as a watch for developers looking to fiddle around it's actually pretty good - but it doesn't have the polish of proper consumer hardware (but hopefully not the price tag either!).
I'd have loved for it to be the next Pebble, but Pebble was a big company that was able to throw a ton of money and developer time into R&D, and unfortunately we just don't sell enough Bangles (or sell them for enough money!) to be able to justify that.
For me, the whole thing's a bit frustrating too. With Espruino generally people were very happy and I was able to spend my time constantly making improvements, but it feels more that with Bangle.js there are a much higher proportion of people complaining - but maybe it's that now more people are using things more of the time? I spend basically half my day every day dealing with complaints and bug reports, but also trying to check through contributions, most of which are excellent - but maybe 25% of which will actively break things and then I have to find a way to break it to the contributor. It feels like a constant struggle just to stay in one place and it's not a great deal of fun.
So I am sorry to those of you who who have been disappointed by Bangle.js - I really don't want to sell Bangle.js watches to people who're not going to like them, so if there are certain things I can add to the description on the shop page for example that might help to make sure potential buyers know what to expect, I'm all for it.