I have both a PineTime and BangleJS . . . but I am eagerly awaiting the release of the new Pebble watches. The round looks great . . . but does not include pulse. Whereas the square one look a bit more tech . . and does include a pulse monitor.
this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2026
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Privacy
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I have a few smart watches, namely PineTime and Watchy by SQFMI but... honestly I don't wear them anymore simply because I try to be as minimalist as possible. In fact just yesterday afternoon I was wondering if I could do without GrapheneOS because I might actually NOT need a phone.
So... what do you want out of watch?
I can recommend both but honestly it depends on your need.
What the goal of the watch is does seem important, Thinking about it a little bit I think these are what I'm interested in:
- Telling the time
- Media control
- Notifications
- Sleep / exercise tracking
So for the PineTime the most popular firmware is https://infinitime.io/ and by default you get
- Watchfaces for telling the time
- Steps (displays the number of steps of the day and the daily goal)
- Heart rate (controls the heart rate sensor and display current heartbeat)
- Music (control the playback of the music on your phone)
and the PineTime is relatively slick, large bezel but frequently people told me, surprised if they knew me, they though I had an Apple watch, which was a brilliant moment to open up the discussion about open source, free software, open hardware.
Meanwhile Watchy has e-ink and the 3D printed frame is very bulky. It's definitely a lot more noticeable and I received few compliments for it. By default its firmware is https://github.com/sqfmi/Watchy and...
- time (+ weather if connected to network, not mobile phone, via WiFi not BT)
- Steps
... and that's about it. Honestly the Watchy ecosystem is a lot less lively than InfiniTime. Sure you get some different watchfaces but that's about it in terms of popular customization AFAICT. Basically I'd only recommend it if you only want a watch for time and if you are adamant about e-ink.
Look out for devices supported by Gadgetbridge, completely frees you from any intrusive manufacturer clouds!
Seems like Garmin fits the bill, I am still figuring out if that’s my future solution for NFC payments.
Garmin is what I was looking at, but it seems to only have experimental support in GadgetBridge
You can also just use your Garmin watch on its own without any app. You can plug your Garmin watch into your PC and export your data into a self hosted fitness tracker like endurain for example.
Does a Garmin watch by itself share any data with Garmin servers?
I'm not sure about all Garmin watches, but most of them don't have wifi. So in those cases their only way of getting data to Garmin servers is via syncing with the app.
That's a good point I hadn't considered! The biggest take away from this thread is I need to explore GadgetBridge
Garmin Vivoactive 6 works extremely well with Gadgetbridge. Looks like it would check each of your requirements.
I have been using my Garmin Fenix 7x for over a year with GadgetBridge. 10/10 recommend it
Check out the Huawei Watch Fit 3. Amazing battery life even with AOD, very accurate fitness tracking, and it's cheap af
I've got Monzo working with my Garmin. I use Graphene, so it's literally my only option for payments considering Curve failed my ID check and refuse to reply to my emails trying to sort it out.
considering Curve failed my ID check and refuse to reply to my emails trying to sort it out.
I had this exact problem with Curve on graphene back in September. Curve didn't even ask for an ID and the app just kept saying my ID (the one it didn't ask for) couldn't be verified.
But a few weeks ago I tried Curve again, in exploit compatibility mode, and this time it worked. And NFC payments are working for me.
Might be worth trying it again after some time has passed?
I'm using a Pinetime
It's not the best smartwatch, but for the price it's awesome. Fully open source and open hardware, it does what it has to do and does not shares a single thing with some shitty 3rd party
It connects with gadgetbridge
How useful is the heart rate tracker on the PineTime? I've seen comments saying it hurts the battery life and isn't accurate, but I don't know if that's been addressed with more recent updates.
I have PineTime setup with the heart rate tracker and always-on screen, the battery lasts all day if I charge it every night. In the latest update you can set the heart rate tracker to only poll every 1/5/10/30min if you're concerned about the power. The always-on screen uses much more power than the heart rate tracker.
Seriously though, one of the major smartwatch manufacturers made a smartwatch in retro style like this but it didn't sell.
Yeah! I want a calculator watch style.
I don't know how well it measures up to privacy standards at the level of GrapheneOS, but Ollee might be of interest to you if you want to go the retro route. It lets you convert a standard Casio F-91W into a smartwatch.
How about a Casio calculator watch teamed up with a Garmin vivosmart band?
The Garmin works with Gadgetbridge.
Casio still makes them, and they're dirt cheap.
Any thing that works with gadgetbridge. My huwai watch worked perfect and had a week battery life.
If you want a watch the lines up with FOSS ideals you'd want something like banglejs, pinetime or pebble. If you want the best experience while still being private, I would recomended Amazfit paired with gadgetbridge. Their watches are cheap, look nice and they get great battery life. Works perfectly with gadgetbridge.
Amazfit watches are a nightmare to pair with gadgetbridge, getting the auth key necessary to pair them is a completely ridiculous process.
I suppose. I didn't have any trouble. I was up and running and paired with gadgetbridge within an hour of opening the box, and it was a one time thing.
I can concur. I completely believe that the process could have got worse as they enshittified though.
Last time I checked the best corpo watches for gadgetbridge were the CMF 2 or 3
Or Mi bands (with GB). Xiaomi hardware is great ignoring their newer phones, but their privacy is horrendous(but as far as I know, they don't profit from their hardware sales at all, so you don't support the company).
If you want the official app, Garmin is relatively private, but it forces you to cloud sync if you use the app (the app works without GMS, but doesn't display the map.)
I've not used one of these, but they look promising:
Well, there is no GPS/HR tracking, so it isn't very useful apart from telling the time.
I use it on an older Ticwatch C2+ with gadget bridge.
I like it. It works well for what I need it for. They just released 2.0, which means it's still actively developed (though development is slow)
My only issue is that with newer versions of android, something about the bluetooth makes it disconnect randomly. Don't know if that's just my device, or my phone, or common. But I randomly have to forget the device and re-pair it. Which is kind of annoying.
Thanks for bringing this up. I personally switched to a Casio ABL-100WE because it counts steps and found a smartwatch too distracting (and was annoyed to have to charge it all the time). I don't miss my Google watch at all but now I'm curious about Gadgetbridge
I don't have any recommendations buy will say that my watch is one thing that I've changed over the last 2 years to be "just" a watch. I used to have a Huawei and Samsung and use it for tracking everything but I decided to get a Citizen Eco-Drive and haven't looked back since. Can't get more private than that :D
Depends on what features you need. For some people the whole idea is that you can take and make calls on your watch, as well as messaging. Sometimes the health tracking stuff requires a proprietary app instead of Gadget Bridge.
The most private watches are glorified notification machines. I got my wife a Garmin Venu and she uses their app. It's not perfect but they're fairly private as far as smart watches go. She needs all the bells and whistles so that's the best I was able to find that is high end.
I don't have any watch recommendations because I don't use one, but you might take a look at Asteroid OS, which I believe is an open source watch system.
I have an Amazfit GTR 2 which works well for me. The trick that I found is, you can actually use their official app to get the most features, and then just deny internet access, so that they cannot spy on you. Otherwise, it also works well with Gadgetbridge, which is a really nice app. In general I can advice to get one that works well with gadgetbridge!
I’ve seen some pretty cool results with DIY smartwatches… but other than that I don’t know