An Apple Watch Series 6 costs at least $399, but now you can save over 90% of your cash and opt for a Linux smartwatch instead.
Back in 2019, Pine64 announced that it was working on a $25 Linux smartwatch. It turns out $25 was a little optimistic because, as OMG! Ubuntu! reports, the PineTime has now launched carrying a $29.99 price tag. I think we can all forgive Pine64 for charging an extra $5, and the current Community launch price is only $26.99.
Keeping in mind how little this smartwatch costs, you’re getting a device that weights 38 grams and is made from a mix of zinc alloy and plastic. The display is a 1.3-inch IPS touch screen panel with a 240-by-240 pixel resolution and 65,000 colors. The internal memory consists of 64KB of RAM, 512KB of Flash system storage, and 4MB of additional flash storage. The watch is powered by a 64MHz ARM Cortex-M4F as part of the Nordic Semiconductor nRF52832 SoC.
Connectivity is achieved using Bluetooth 5.2 and on-board sensors include an accelerometer, PPG heart rate sensor, and vibration actuator. Power is provided by a 180mAh battery charged via a proprietary 2-pin 5V connector with the other end of the cable being USB Type-A. Battery life is rated at up to five days.
As this is an open source device, it doesn’t run Android or iOS. Pine64 opted for the InfiniTime 1.0 firmware which includes a number of useful apps (stopwatch, music navigation, heart rate monitor, and step counter). Also because this is an open source device, the list of available apps will grow, as will support for interacting with Android and iOS smartphones. There’s also multiple alternative firmware options available, but this is a sealed version of the PineTime making it more difficult to recover a bricked device if you experiment.
Anyone interested in developing software for the PineTime can buy a development kit instead of the sealed watch. It’s only $50 and includes both a dev kit version and sealed version of the smartwatch.
