Pebble has announced a set of updates for both its smartwatch’s firmware and health tracking apps earlier this month. And they are finally here with lots of health- and fitness-related goodies and a long-awaited feature for iOS users: the ability to initiate text conversations from the Pebble smartwatch.

The 3.12 version of the watch’ firmware is especially appealing to fitness buffs and health-concerned Millennials. Pebble is now equipped with Mobile Health Snapshot, a valuable information source with tons of fitness and sleep tracking data. The data is organized by days, weeks and months. Additionally, the app can auto-detect long strolls and jogging activates, generating tracking data and storing it on the mobile app.

Data on sleep activity and step summaries can be accessed through weekly digests, which also contain additional info on daily activities, long walks, and naps. You now also have access to coaching info on how to improve the parameters.

Pebble has even a smart alarm that can wake users up shortly after they reached the light sleep phase. The feature keeps track of sleep cycle and can decide to go off earlier than the user had decided if the time to wake is better.

But the update will benefit iOS users the most since the smartwatch now allows them to start a text message discussion from the device through the Send Text feature. Prior to the update, the feature was available only for Android devices.  It was first released last February.

So, iPhone users can now start texting from their Pebble instead of waiting for a message to reply to. Nevertheless, the new feature needs the Text Reply feature to function, the company wrote in the update notes.

Plus the feature is only available to Verizon and AT&T customers since the Text Reply feature only works with these two mobile carriers. Experts explained that Pebble had to partner with mobile operators directly to bypass the iOS’ inability of using Send Text feature.

The latest update, however, is more focused on health and fitness tracking because Pebble faces tighter competition in the area. Expanding the health tracking section is a great way to lure in more customers. So, providing potential users with more informative, user-friendly graphs and charts may just do the thing. And on top of that you can add the intelligent alarm feature and weekly summaries of long runs and walks for a sure recipe for success.
Image Source: Pebble.com