Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 July 2023 concerning batteries and waste batteries
Article 11
Removability and replaceability of portable batteries and LMT batteries
1. Any natural or legal person that places on the market products incorporating portable batteries shall ensure that those batteries are readily removable and replaceable by the end-user at any time during the lifetime of the product. That obligation shall only apply to entire batteries and not to individual cells or other parts included in such batteries.
A portable battery shall be considered readily removable by the end-user where it can be removed from a product with the use of commercially available tools, without requiring the use of specialised tools, unless provided free of charge with the product, proprietary tools, thermal energy, or solvents to disassemble the product.
Any natural or legal person that places on the market products incorporating portable batteries shall ensure that those products are accompanied with instructions and safety information on the use, removal and replacement of the batteries. Those instructions and that safety information shall be made available permanently online, on a publicly available website, in an easily understandable way for end-users.
There's an exception for "appliances specifically designed to operate primarily in an environment that is regularly subject to splashing water, water streams or water immersion, and that are intended to be washable or rinseable". This ring is described as water-resistant, so I wonder if it would be allowed?
For something like a smart ring, a user-replacable battery is just totally impractical. Particularly if you want any sort of water resistance. The thing is just too damn small and will require special tools no matter what.
I don't think it's at all reasonable to expect such a product to have a user-replacable battery without doubling the cost. Sure it'd be nice, but the reality is sometimes it just isn't possible to accommodate.
We regularly get contacted by people in Europe who want to buy our product, but we haven't been providing support due to the cost of certs, and other regulatory needs (medical/wellness device).
We want to help people in the EU, but with laws like replaceable batteries, it's going to push us further and further away from being able to do that.
Our product is designed to be refurbished, but not user-replaceable.
At the same time, how many products do people give up on because of battery life, and is this a non-issue with future battery chemistries?
Do people replace their phones because the battery isn't good anymore, or is it more likely they've broken the screen, cameras, etc to the point where it doesn't make sense to replace those anymore? Or they just want the newest thing?
My main concern here is that i live in an area that regularly get's below -20° and my electronic devices are regularly dying around me. And while I try to keep my hands warm-ish, they do get cold sometimes, and it would suck if a non replaceable battery died on me early because of this.
I'm sold enough on this form factor to take a flyer on a pre-order. I've been hunting for ways to minimize friction when quickly capturing random thoughts and this is a novel idea that seems to go further than anything else I've tried.
The lack of battery charging/replacement is a bummer, but slimness is far more critical for a ring than just about any other device so I understand the tradeoff. I've also seen stories of injuries from battery expansion in fitness rings, so if the risk of this is significantly reduced by eliminating charge cycles, I personally consider that a notable benefit.
Even though, IMO, there are enough legitimate benefits to warrant this product's trade-offs, I imagine its disposable nature will ultimately make it unsuccessful. Off the cuff, it's easy to look at this as "saying the quiet part out loud" vis-a-vis planned obsolescence, and I understand why many would find that extremely off-putting.
I don't understand why people who are probably OK with ordering Doordash once in a while are up in arms about a disposable device that weighs a couple of grams, lasts for years, and is recycled. You can easily spend more on a single Doordash meal for two people and I guarantee a few Doordash meals have more impact on the environment than this minuscule device ever could.
> I've been hunting for ways to minimize friction when quickly capturing random thoughts and this is a novel idea that seems to go further than anything else I've tried.
Since you’re the target audience, I’ll ask you: How do you envision you’ll work through all of the captured notes? Do it all at the end of the day? Go back and look for something after you remember making the note?
I’m wondering if this product will have the same problem that many discover after they buy a Moleskin journal and think it will solve specific problems in their life: Recording the thought or idea is the easy part, but it only defers the action. Additional diligence is required to review the notes and act on them.
For a very specific type of person who is both forgetful but also diligent enough to process the notes thoroughly and in a timely manner I could see this being helpful. For the people saying this will help with easily distracted people I’m not so sure. It could easily become a tool which gives a false sense of handling a task when really it just blackholes the thought into an ever growing collection of 3-second notes that are never revisited. Like the person who clicks the “mark as unread” button on every email with the intention of responding later, but then has 100 messages in their inbox by the end of the week.
The advertised use case of recording 20 short thoughts per day means over 100 notes to process every week. For a highly diligent person who clears their inbox (and now audio notes) every day that’s nothing. For all of the commenters thinking this is going to solve their distractability problems, I have my doubts.
Yeah I pre-ordered but for what it's worth I've already been doing this with my pebble for close to a decade but the ring lets me trigger it via a single hand
> Roughly 12 to 15 hours of recording. On average, I use it 10-20 times per day to record 3-6 second thoughts. That’s up to 2 years of usage.
I feel like I’m usually good about being able to imagine a market for different devices even when I’m not the target audience, but I’m having a hard time with this one.
Having 20 different 3-second thoughts transcribed to notes that I have to process every day sounds more like added complications than problem solving. If I stretch, I can think of a few things that flashed into my mind and then I forgot again for a couple days because I wasn’t in a location to immediately pull out my phone and put it on my todo list (which takes about 10 seconds because I put a shortcut in my lock screen). However, those locations weren’t something where I could be “whispering” to a ring, either.
So I don’t know. I hope repebble succeeds with everyone they’re doing, but this product feels like they went too far into the novelty end of the spectrum and neglected some of the actual usability that made the original Pebble popular.
EDIT: On second thought, maybe the lack of recharging is an acknowledgement that they don’t actually expect people to use this product a lot or for very long. Maybe the target audience is people who want to have something new and unique that they can also use as a conversation starter. Once the novelty wears off maybe it doesn’t get worn much. If it does become popular with a niche audience they can release a V2 with charging.
Instead of a stand-alone piece of e-waste, how about this: a device with the same format (a ring and an button) but the only thing it does is trigger the pebble watch to start recording a message. This way the microphone isn't needed, just the radio (and much weaker radio at that), and the battery will last exponentially longer. Then just expose the charging terminals so that we can at least hack the device with custom made external charging controllers, or buy a charger separately.
Might as well bundle the ring with the watch at that point, and increase the price accordingly, as it's then become an accessory particular to the pebble watch. And including a charging circuit means more complexity and bulk, also leading to an increase in price. And cost is a factor they're optimizing for.
UX probably not as good in that case. I am thinking about how buggy my voice-remote is for the TV. 1/3 of the time it works, 1/3 of the time there is some lag before it starts working (and requires waiting for feedback i.e. the listening tone before I can speak) and 1/3 of the time it doesn't work at all (never hears me due to lag or booting up or whatever else).
The biggest downside is I don't think you can directly connect to the pebble for that it'll have to go through the phone. One advantage of the index if it doesn't rely on your phone to be available right then
Hmm... I sort of would've preferred it was JUST a button. I wonder if you could even make it perpetually powered by body heat + buffer battery if it's ONLY job was to emit a couple packets over BLE with some burned in ID that you save on the watch. I don't know how efficient peltier elements are going to be on such a small area, but the cold side would be attached to a big metal ring, which feels like an adequate heat sink. (Peltier elements work on heat differential right? Not an expert.)
I know they mentioned that they thought of making this just a watch app, but didn't like the two-handed button press or raise to wake gesture. Why not just optimize for removing the gesture entirely? The microphone has to be better on a full size watch on your wrist vs the tiny ring further away on your finger.
This hits the same nerve in me as those single-use vapes with screens, except you can't harvest the battery out of this one.
I was typing in my CC info when I went back to read about battery life. This is meant as positive feedback: I won't be ordering a non-rechargeable device with 12 hours of recording for $100.
Imagine I fall asleep with it on my finger and accidentally press the button with my head. It's recording me snore for 3 hours, and 25% battery life gone.
Based on the description, this doesn't seem plausible. If the button is as clicky as it sounds, it would hurt your head/hand/both to do the thing you describe.
One aspect about e-waste is really the size, this has by volume less than an AA-battery, which means the e-waste is pretty much within this realm. For a decently size powerbank, you could have a lifetime of those rings and probably still create less e-waste.
I think it's an interesting approach, in terms of hack-ability a non-rechargable device is pretty much bad - also just imagining that any sort of software or hardware glitch could easily just permanently render the device useless is not super decent either.
You can buy a rechargeable e-ring with several sensors and even a tiny screen for like 20$ on AliExpress. 75$ for a non-rechargeable, e-waste ring with just a button and a mic is insane.
Point is to not having to take it off at all, as next thing is going out without it and losing that convenience. Though I guess they can also invent a finger-mounted powerbank for it; I remember buying a case with an embedded powerbank for one of my earlier Android phones...
This sounds kind of cool, but I'm more worried about the e-waste. A device that is cheap, will get "recycled", and sounds cool, will get a tiny amount of use after the initial wow factor wears off or doesn't fit the needs, then gets thrown away or lost. And is this feature in the new repebble watches? I would rather have it there with a bigger battery.
Random note to whoever put the Pebble blog together - you don't need 2-4 megabyte images inline in the article! Since the images are limited to ~544px wide, make thumbnails of that size rather than using the original full-size image inline. They already link to the full size so you're already halfway there.
"Roughly 12 to 15 hours of recording. On average, I use it 10-20 times per day to record 3-6 second thoughts. That’s up to 2 years of usage." They really don't seem have tested the battery life, so 2 years is probably the best case scenario here. He says there's no subscription but if you need to buy one every 2 years or less, then that's the subscription. The primary reason given for not having an option to charge is just awful: "You would probably lose the charger before the battery ran out". This is seriously a device for reviewers and youtubers to hype, make a video about it, and then it's gone.
Wow I was just looking for finding like this, but.. can't be recharged? It would be one thing if it had like 500 hours of recording, but this has 12-15.
The only thing that matters here is how good the transcription is. You absolutely have to save the recording. You also have to enable the user to connect to their own transcription service and preserve the recording for that if yours sucks or is not trusted. People have accents. Third party transcription vendors can sell data. Do not mess this up. Enable users to add their own trusted transcription.
If we want to give this to grandparents to save their stories, we can want to have the stories too. If we want it for ourselves, we have to trust it.
I think the design is bad: my girlfriend would never wear it. Maybe they know already and that's why the webpage contains only picture of male hands.
Given the many smartwatches on the market which can do so much more, are lightweight and some of them with acceptable battery life (Garmin, Suunto, Amazfit), a smartring is of very little interest to me. But I often struggle to understand why certain products fascinate people, so I may be totally wrong and I wish the makers best of luck.
Hmm does it actually set reminders? Or does it just take a note and you have to manually set the reminder later? I would love this if it actually could create reminders like "remind me when I get home" etc. Otherwise I'm sure I'll never go back and look at notes I took.
Edit: "It’s converted to text on-device, then processed by an on-device large language model (LLM) which selects an action to take (create note, add to reminders, etc)." This is perfect!
My first concern is that this looks very difficult to remove if the battery begins to swell, as silver-oxide batteries are wont to do. Perhaps that's less likely with single use batteries.
For what it's worth, I 100% perfectly solved this problem for myself MANY years ago and still use it just about every day.
On Android, it's called "Blitzmail," I'm pretty sure there's an Apple equivalent.
Beautifully simple app; on one touch it pops open a text box (which you can type, dictate to, also do "shares/attachments")
And emails to one and only one pre-specified address, usually "yourself."
From there, pick your poison. I personally have a dedicated address/account for these, and I have some bash scripts that pick them up and move them around, but I imagine for many "checking that email address periodically" would be sufficient.
I do exactly the same, except via a button in the quick settings panel, using Tasker, so I don't have to go to the home screen. It's incredibly useful. I hope this can be configured to make the notes emails to yourself.
I wanted to use it to capture my musical ideas. They usually come unexpectedly and in bundles. There's a problem though – one of them is 0:40-1:30 min in duration; the ring wouldn't last half a year for me.
I'm sure other musicians would love it as well, but are disqualified completely from the userbase. That's a shame as I think for us it would be really, really useful.
(The first iteration of a musical idea usually emerges somewhat spontaneously from an emotional state, and repetition always loses some important part of it. This ring could be an always-on photocamera for these spontaneous, naturally arising states.)
This is a great example of use outside the box they got themselves in.
The solution is simple: market this as a trigger for the pebble voice. Only thatz. Nothing else. Make the electronics as simple and cheap as possible. Sell it as an option to the watch. Less than 30$ would be ideal.
I very much enjoy Eric's commitment to new and novel and imaginative hardware.
Bought and am loving my Pebble 2 Duo etc - still yet to charge it once in fact!
This device doesn't quite hit the mark for me, but I love the commitment to thinking about what's novel and useful, and putting a prototype out into the world. To use an Irish phrase, "more luck to them" - and hope we see many more projects from them!
[+] [-] rendx|3 months ago|reply
Article 11
Removability and replaceability of portable batteries and LMT batteries
1. Any natural or legal person that places on the market products incorporating portable batteries shall ensure that those batteries are readily removable and replaceable by the end-user at any time during the lifetime of the product. That obligation shall only apply to entire batteries and not to individual cells or other parts included in such batteries.
A portable battery shall be considered readily removable by the end-user where it can be removed from a product with the use of commercially available tools, without requiring the use of specialised tools, unless provided free of charge with the product, proprietary tools, thermal energy, or solvents to disassemble the product.
Any natural or legal person that places on the market products incorporating portable batteries shall ensure that those products are accompanied with instructions and safety information on the use, removal and replacement of the batteries. Those instructions and that safety information shall be made available permanently online, on a publicly available website, in an easily understandable way for end-users.
[…]
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...
(This is active law; there is however a grace period for products until 2027.)
[+] [-] munchler|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] estimator7292|3 months ago|reply
I don't think it's at all reasonable to expect such a product to have a user-replacable battery without doubling the cost. Sure it'd be nice, but the reality is sometimes it just isn't possible to accommodate.
[+] [-] pedalpete|3 months ago|reply
We want to help people in the EU, but with laws like replaceable batteries, it's going to push us further and further away from being able to do that.
Our product is designed to be refurbished, but not user-replaceable.
At the same time, how many products do people give up on because of battery life, and is this a non-issue with future battery chemistries?
Do people replace their phones because the battery isn't good anymore, or is it more likely they've broken the screen, cameras, etc to the point where it doesn't make sense to replace those anymore? Or they just want the newest thing?
[+] [-] tacker2000|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] ddoeth|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] afandian|3 months ago|reply
Eric said that the lifetime of the product is 'up to years'. Presumably because that's the limitation imposed by a disposable battery.
I wonder if the circular reasoning would fly in the EU.
[+] [-] apparent|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] clnhlzmn|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] dmitrygr|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] h14h|3 months ago|reply
The lack of battery charging/replacement is a bummer, but slimness is far more critical for a ring than just about any other device so I understand the tradeoff. I've also seen stories of injuries from battery expansion in fitness rings, so if the risk of this is significantly reduced by eliminating charge cycles, I personally consider that a notable benefit.
Even though, IMO, there are enough legitimate benefits to warrant this product's trade-offs, I imagine its disposable nature will ultimately make it unsuccessful. Off the cuff, it's easy to look at this as "saying the quiet part out loud" vis-a-vis planned obsolescence, and I understand why many would find that extremely off-putting.
[+] [-] modeless|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Aurornis|3 months ago|reply
Since you’re the target audience, I’ll ask you: How do you envision you’ll work through all of the captured notes? Do it all at the end of the day? Go back and look for something after you remember making the note?
I’m wondering if this product will have the same problem that many discover after they buy a Moleskin journal and think it will solve specific problems in their life: Recording the thought or idea is the easy part, but it only defers the action. Additional diligence is required to review the notes and act on them.
For a very specific type of person who is both forgetful but also diligent enough to process the notes thoroughly and in a timely manner I could see this being helpful. For the people saying this will help with easily distracted people I’m not so sure. It could easily become a tool which gives a false sense of handling a task when really it just blackholes the thought into an ever growing collection of 3-second notes that are never revisited. Like the person who clicks the “mark as unread” button on every email with the intention of responding later, but then has 100 messages in their inbox by the end of the week.
The advertised use case of recording 20 short thoughts per day means over 100 notes to process every week. For a highly diligent person who clears their inbox (and now audio notes) every day that’s nothing. For all of the commenters thinking this is going to solve their distractability problems, I have my doubts.
[+] [-] ajolly|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Aurornis|3 months ago|reply
> Roughly 12 to 15 hours of recording. On average, I use it 10-20 times per day to record 3-6 second thoughts. That’s up to 2 years of usage.
I feel like I’m usually good about being able to imagine a market for different devices even when I’m not the target audience, but I’m having a hard time with this one.
Having 20 different 3-second thoughts transcribed to notes that I have to process every day sounds more like added complications than problem solving. If I stretch, I can think of a few things that flashed into my mind and then I forgot again for a couple days because I wasn’t in a location to immediately pull out my phone and put it on my todo list (which takes about 10 seconds because I put a shortcut in my lock screen). However, those locations weren’t something where I could be “whispering” to a ring, either.
So I don’t know. I hope repebble succeeds with everyone they’re doing, but this product feels like they went too far into the novelty end of the spectrum and neglected some of the actual usability that made the original Pebble popular.
EDIT: On second thought, maybe the lack of recharging is an acknowledgement that they don’t actually expect people to use this product a lot or for very long. Maybe the target audience is people who want to have something new and unique that they can also use as a conversation starter. Once the novelty wears off maybe it doesn’t get worn much. If it does become popular with a niche audience they can release a V2 with charging.
[+] [-] lopis|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] svl7|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] skeledrew|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] adammarples|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] CGMthrowaway|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] bl4kers|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] ajolly|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] kwanbix|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 months ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|3 months ago|reply
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[+] [-] graypegg|3 months ago|reply
I know they mentioned that they thought of making this just a watch app, but didn't like the two-handed button press or raise to wake gesture. Why not just optimize for removing the gesture entirely? The microphone has to be better on a full size watch on your wrist vs the tiny ring further away on your finger.
This hits the same nerve in me as those single-use vapes with screens, except you can't harvest the battery out of this one.
[+] [-] dotdi|3 months ago|reply
Imagine I fall asleep with it on my finger and accidentally press the button with my head. It's recording me snore for 3 hours, and 25% battery life gone.
[+] [-] apparent|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] miduil|3 months ago|reply
I think it's an interesting approach, in terms of hack-ability a non-rechargable device is pretty much bad - also just imagining that any sort of software or hardware glitch could easily just permanently render the device useless is not super decent either.
[+] [-] maeln|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] skeledrew|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] crimsoneer|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] lopis|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] toisanji|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] amatecha|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] ibdf|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Bolwin|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] frankest|3 months ago|reply
If we want to give this to grandparents to save their stories, we can want to have the stories too. If we want it for ourselves, we have to trust it.
[+] [-] erohead|3 months ago|reply
Happy to answer any questions you have!
[+] [-] giamma|3 months ago|reply
Given the many smartwatches on the market which can do so much more, are lightweight and some of them with acceptable battery life (Garmin, Suunto, Amazfit), a smartring is of very little interest to me. But I often struggle to understand why certain products fascinate people, so I may be totally wrong and I wish the makers best of luck.
[+] [-] modeless|3 months ago|reply
Edit: "It’s converted to text on-device, then processed by an on-device large language model (LLM) which selects an action to take (create note, add to reminders, etc)." This is perfect!
[+] [-] joombaga|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] erohead|3 months ago|reply
There is no risk of swelling with Index 01
[+] [-] Daneel_|3 months ago|reply
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wont
Also: I agree with your concern
[+] [-] layer8|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] jrm4|3 months ago|reply
On Android, it's called "Blitzmail," I'm pretty sure there's an Apple equivalent.
Beautifully simple app; on one touch it pops open a text box (which you can type, dictate to, also do "shares/attachments")
And emails to one and only one pre-specified address, usually "yourself."
From there, pick your poison. I personally have a dedicated address/account for these, and I have some bash scripts that pick them up and move them around, but I imagine for many "checking that email address periodically" would be sufficient.
[+] [-] modeless|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] ulbu|3 months ago|reply
I'm sure other musicians would love it as well, but are disqualified completely from the userbase. That's a shame as I think for us it would be really, really useful.
(The first iteration of a musical idea usually emerges somewhat spontaneously from an emotional state, and repetition always loses some important part of it. This ring could be an always-on photocamera for these spontaneous, naturally arising states.)
[+] [-] realo|3 months ago|reply
The solution is simple: market this as a trigger for the pebble voice. Only thatz. Nothing else. Make the electronics as simple and cheap as possible. Sell it as an option to the watch. Less than 30$ would be ideal.
Voila.
[+] [-] noelrock|3 months ago|reply
Bought and am loving my Pebble 2 Duo etc - still yet to charge it once in fact!
This device doesn't quite hit the mark for me, but I love the commitment to thinking about what's novel and useful, and putting a prototype out into the world. To use an Irish phrase, "more luck to them" - and hope we see many more projects from them!