We’ve earlier covered information on the Pebble smartwatch which was brought to this world with the help of Kickstarter, a crowd funding site that has become very popular for undertaking new projects. The Pebble watch has already started shipping to those who have pre-ordered it.
iFixit has disassembled the Pebble smartwatch and the results are in. They found that since the watch is waterproof, there’s no way to repair it internally. There are no screws and that’s why there are only two ways to open it – break its e-ink display which will render the watch useless, or open it from back. One can easily replace the watch band as it is of the standard size.
It is impossible to open the device without destroying it or at least compromising its waterproofing, making internal repairs unfeasible.
Talking about the battery, then the watch can run for 7 days without being recharged. The battery cannot be repaired, but iFixit says that the watch boasts Fullriver-branded battery, which is rated at 3.7 Volts and 130 mAh, which should last for some 6 to 10 years.
These are the components found inside the Pebble watch:
- E-paper display with three LED backlights
- Micron N25Q032A11ESE40F with 32 megabytes of serial flash
- STMicroelectronics STM32F205RE high-performance ARM Cortex-M3 MCU, with a maximum speed of 120 megahertz
- STMicroelectronics LIS3DH 3-axis accelerometer
- Panasonic pan1316 RF module
- Texas Instruments CC2560A Bluetooth Controller, which does not support Bluetooth Low Energy
- Fullriver battery rated at 3.7 volts and 130 mAh
iFixit also got in touch with Pebble’s design team and raised their concern on the end-of-life recycling. The company informed that they have a plan in the works for recycling dead or broken Pebbles.
Initially, it was found that Bluetooth 4.0 was not supported on the device, but Pebble then responded with a post on Reddit.
Many chip vendors make silicon consistent between product lines but simply flash different firmware to enable features. Our chips were labeled CC2560 because TI asked us if we wouldn’t mind using them with CC2564 firmware to speed up our order. Pebble most definitely has Bluetooth LE support, though it has not yet been enabled in our operating system.
By this tear down of this Pebble smartwatch, one thing’s clear – we’re heading to an age where repairability score are going lower by day. We already know how low repairability scores Apple’s product gets (depending on the model), and now we have this smartwatch that’s next to impossible to repair.
