InfiniTime 1.9 "Limeberry" - What's New?
3 months after Fuzzy Kiwi, InfiniTime 1.9 is there, with some new features and improvements, let's have a look!
As usual, I'll be focusing on the most interesting features/improvements.
New watchface: Terminal
A very geeky watchface, but I like it - it displays a lot of information about the PineTime:
- time,
- date,
- battery %,
- number of steps,
- current heart-rate,
- connection (whether the watch is connected to a companion app).
All this information comes with a cost: you must have good eyes to see e.g. what time it is :)
Enable/Disable BLE (aka Flight Mode)
A long standing request: being able to disable Bluetooth completely.
This is now possible via the Settings, in the "Bluetooth" section (3rd page).
InfiniSim, LVGL simulator
Developped by NeroBurner, it allows simulating InfiniTime on your PC, thus avoiding having to send a test firmware you've been working on to the watch - and saving you time.
It is really well done, and even comes with a lot of shortcuts to trigger various events in InfiniTime!
All details and installation guide are available on the InfiniSim GitHub page.
Improvements
Notification timeout
Some welcome improvements with notifications:
- Notification preview now disables sleep, so the preview can be longer than 5 seconds without the display timing out first
- Notification timeout is now set to 7 seconds
- Call notification now also uses the preview timeout, so it will stop ringing after 7 seconds - this will also "fix" the problem where the watch kept vibrating after the call had been answered
- The timeout can now be cancelled by tapping on the screen
- Pressing the call buttons exit the notification screen, like they used to
Heart-rate measurements
As reported in my previous articles, the heart-rate sensor was not really reliable, and also going all over the place (e.g., reporting 70 bpm, then 10 seconds after it would jump to 150, then back to 90).
With 1.9, it works a lot better, see the below pictures where I mesured my heart-rate both with my PineTime, and my Suunto running watch:
The changes have been done a while back in this PR, but there were a lot of tests to be sure this would fix the issue - which it does :)
Alarm app
Probably one of the apps I'm using the most, so I'm happy to see the following improvements made it to 1.9:
- when the alarm vibrates, you can now use the physical button to stop it,
- while the alarm vibrates, you can't close it accidentally anymore by swipping,
- the alarm now stops after 60 seconds.
Wrap Up
You can see that InfiniTime is really maturing: this 1.9 took some time but there was no real emergency, so this version really brings a lot of welcome improvements, like BLE on/off, a reliable HRM, and an even better alarm app.
You can download it from the GH release page.
Tags: PineTime