Acceptable Clones? Perhaps passed through Gordon?

Gordon, I was thinking on why I am using the p8 instead of the bangle.js2 those last years. When I started playing with espruino, I had perfect vision. I have a dear friend that uses glassed to see close, we were using the euc to ride together, so when I was coding the p8, I made everything huge, he was my tester, he always wanted bigger, no text if possible, symbols were better, so I even made two dash versions, one with details for me, one simple for him. Color coding states in fields of interest was also a way to help him.

time has passed, I now too use glasses to see close, old age :) I cannot use the settings on the bangle.js2 if I have no glasses on, on the p8 I can, just as a feedback.

Sounds promising about the separate app loader...

Interesting about the screen. But the P8's (basically PineTime?) screen is very similar size-wise? It's 1.3 inch still?

So it's more about the contrast you get inside?

Interesting about the screen. But the P8's (basically PineTime?) screen is very similar size-wise? It's 1.3 inch still?

So it's more about the contrast you get inside?

I tried to explain to me, why is my bangle.js2 unused for so long? The watch it self I like, maybe the p8 a bit better because I have the bangle in blue, but I like it, nice watch. The screen is indeed a bit smaller, less contrast as you said, with older age contrast gets lower along with the difficulty so see close, so yes, inside the p8 is a lot easier to use. Outside the p8 is good too, better that pinetime, better contrast, visible at direct sunlight, not nice, but visible, I can easily tell if a field is red or yellow. 1.4 inches the P8 is.

But I also can explain why the potential of using the bangle apps, and a more mature environment, did not drive me to choose the bangle anyway. In eucwatch everything is fixed, to change the brightness I do 3 moves. When running on the bangle, it is not as easy to see, but I can mechanically do the moves, everything is in known positions, no scrolling lists. The official settings, the old ones I have maybe, I cannot see, I cannot change the brightness, even with glasses I have to pay attention a bit.

I just checked a few apps from the official store I had already installed on the bangle, barometer, a bike speedometer, gps info, gps navigation, health, heart rate monitor, those apps I cannot really use if not wearing glasses and paying attention, and there are a few text fields I need a magnifying glass for.

I think one cannot really feel how it is to not have perfect vision until it happens, I remember I could not understand my friend. I think this is why I haven't put a real effort towards integration, I bought the bangle after my close sight was not perfect, and was not wearing glasses in hopes to delay it, I can not use the menu that pops when I call Bangle.showLauncher() without glasses now, I am old :(

Hi guys. First of all I want to thank Gordon, fanoush, enaon, jeffmer, yngv126399 for your contribution to this fascinating world of open source watches. It's a great hobby for me.

Unfortunately in my region it's not so easy to buy bangle js 2, delivery time is 3 months and the cost is 35 times! more expensive than P8 or P22. That's why I bought P8 and P22. Everything is fine, but the SPI speed is not enough for fast screen update. Now I'm trying to figure out TK78G on nfr52840, it's a little faster. But watches on Nordic chips are almost completely disappearing from sale.

Now there are many watches on RTL8762 chip (ARM Cortex-M4) on sale. Full documentation and SDK are available, on freertos. Programming by uart. I bought one such watch leef planex. Easy to disassemble, there are UART pads on the board for programming, a large display and fast display update (maybe there is an i8080 parallel interface, the chip supports it). There is also an amplifier for audio and microphone. The cost is the same as P8. Unfortunately, my knowledge of hardware is not enough to figure out this watch on my own, much less port espruino to it. But it seems to me that together we could do it.

Here are some useful links on RTL8762:
Official documentation and SDK of the manufacturer
rtl8762c ble uart
rtl8762c gcc examples

Thanks! Sorry to hear it's such a pain to get a Bangle where you are.

I believe there are some things you can do to improve SPI on the nRF52. With the Starfield watch we managed to get it pretty quick. On the nRF52840 you may have enough RAM for an offscreen buffer which means you can blit the data to the screen in the background.

But yes, there do seem to be a bunch of watches based on RTL8762 now - and I guess someone could hack something up to get Espruino built for it - but actually getting things like the Bluetooth working well on it (eg more than just the UART) is something that'd take months and months of effort. It's not something I personally have time for at the moment, but I guess it's possible someone else might pick it up.

Potentially you could look at one of the ESP32-based watches. They're more like hacker-devices at the moment, but at least we have builds for ESP32 that you could work off.