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Wednesday, April 14, 2021
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Pebble Updates Health Software, Finally Adds Send Text Feature to iOS

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'Pebble Time Round'

Pebble has just updated its firmware and health and fitness tracking apps with dazzling new features.

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

Pebble Steel unveiled at CES, premium design at a premium price

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pebble-steel Pebble did say they had something big to announce at CES and they made true of their word, with the next generation Pebble Steel revealed to all the visitors at the Consumer Electronics Show.

The Pebble Steel is as the name might have hinted at, a fully metal smartwatch. The original Pebble was made of low-grade plastic and had a removable rubber strap, this time the Pebble Steel comes with a range of straps and a stainless steel watch face.

Pebble Steel changes are all cosmetic, Pebble has not redesigned their interface or added their apps store just yet and the screen is still E-Ink and not LCD. The advantages of E-Ink are on the battery life, but it has no color and lags behind in responsiveness compared to an LCD.

The Pebble Steel is going up against the Galaxy Gear on design, but since the original Pebble is still beating the Galaxy Gear on sales and user enjoyment, we can safely say the Pebble Steel has won the battle, it is even cheaper than the Galaxy Gear, at $249.

Pebble has gained a lot of recognition with the Kickstarter, setting the smartwatch company up with 60,000 early buyers. Since then, the smartwatch has sold over 300,000 units worldwide, better than analyst predictions on the Galaxy Gear and Sony Smartwatch 2.

The big feature coming in 2014 is the Pebble app store, allowing third party developers to create applications specifically for the smartwatch. The apps will be able to work on both the Pebble platform and iOS/Android, but will not be able to make revenue on the smartwatch side.

We can see a lot of fitness, location and navigation apps wanting to get on the Pebble bandwagon, especially after the news of 300,000 device sales. It is a little early to say, but the Pebble Steel feels like a 1.5 upgrade, we are hoping to see Pebble come with a redesigned cheaper plastic version, alongside the Pebble Steel.

Pebble announcing “something special” at CES next week

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pebble-smartwatch

Pebble has been in the business for over a year now and have went from Kickstarter hopeful to startup success, with a smartwatch still beating the Galaxy Gear and Sony Smartwatch 2 in terms of active users and sales worldwide.

One of the big queries when it comes to Pebble is what does the future hold, since they are not a budding app startup we doubt Google or Facebook are looking to bid $1 billion to acquire the technology – realistically they need another killer hit to stay in business.

This is where the “something special” announcement may come into play, instead of Pebble being a one hit wonder, they add another iteration of the smartwatch and kick off their second generation, with a new design, interface and more functionality for app developers and users.

The second generation Pebble smartwatch would be a good way to open up their apps store as well, which is going to become available to third parties very soon. Pebble will use the iOS and Google Play apps store to gather unique smartwatch applications, increasing the overall usefulness of Pebble.

Of course, this is all speculation, Pebble may not be releasing new hardware, but now seems to be the time. Pebble has spent a year working on the smartwatch software and we are about ready to see the next generation smartwatch, to tackle the Galaxy Gear and the invading iWatch and Nexus Smartwatch.

What we wonder is if Pebble will be able to really go up against the big guns when the smartwatch market starts to kick-off. It reminds us a little of Palm, the company who worked on mobile phones when Apple and Google were just getting into the business and how easily they lost control of their company and ended up selling to HP, hopefully this doesn’t happen again.

Pebble will open third party smartwatch apps store in 2014

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pebble-smartwatch Pebble is still one of the best smartwatches available, even with mobile titans Samsung and Sony trying to step in and kill the Kickstarter backed project, in favor of their own Android smartwatch.

The one thing Pebble has been lacking is third party applications, since the beginning Pebble has been making their own apps to satisfy users, but the crave for more has begun and the team has answered by announcing an apps store coming in early 2014.

Pebble will release the apps store on the version 2.0 on their SDK and it will be available for all previous owners. The version 2.0 will come with other new features for Pebble users, including first party apps and smartwatch software enhancements.

The Pebble app-store will be added onto the iOS and Android apps store and the only change will be Pebble apps cannot be priced. This means any developer cannot actually make income from apps on Pebble, although they are free to upload the app to Android and iOS to make profit.

Smartwatches are still being explored and deliberated, many questioning whether they are worth the money and others looking for the reason to actually check them out at all. Unlike OS platforms, users want to see a killer app made for smartwatch and a killer design that is fitting.

The Pebble smartwatch is one of the nicest smartwatches out there but not for the design, essentially it is a small piece of plastic with an E-Ink display and a detachable rubber strap, nothing to be too excited about.

The reason for Pebble’s success is the first party apps and the price – Pebble costs half of what the Galaxy Gear and other smartwatches do and offers the same type of applications with much better user interfaces for smaller displays.

Pebble smartwatch finally available on Amazon

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pebble-smartwatchPebble’s smartwatch is still the best on offer, even after Sony and Samsung tried out their own ideas on how a smartwatch should work and look. The cheap E-Ink smartwatch has turned a lot of heads and is an easy way to keep up-to-date on all notifications.

For a while Pebble has only been available on their website and from retailers like Best Buy, now it becomes available to Amazon. There will be no deals to start off, apart from on Black Friday when Pebble will be available for $130, a $20 price-drop.

This is a big move bound to bring the Pebble smartwatch to more and more users. Even though Best Buy can bring in volumes of sales, Amazon is the e-commerce behemoth and can offer the smartwatch out to the whole of the US online.

For those that do not know, Pebble smartwatch is a wrist-watch capable of displaying the time, notifications and various applications developed by Pebble for the user. The display is E-Ink, unlike the Samsung Galaxy Gear and Sony Smartwatch 2, meaning more battery life but no color.

Pebble smartwatch can offer location and fitness apps and their CEO has been open to third party apps. Foursquare, Yelp, GoPro and iControl Networks are all going to be available on the smartwatch later this year, alongside some other first party apps developed by Pebble.

We still do not know how many Pebble smartwatch’s have been shipped so far, the Kickstarter drew in around 50,000 users at the start and Pebble has added anywhere in the region of 100,000 to 500,000 users since the Kickstarter.

Numbers aside, the Pebble smartwatch looks to be a big feature since it has been added to Amazon, but it is already almost a year old. We do not know when the Pebble 2 will be available and if it is even being developed, but it may tackle some of the minor issues.