Smartwatch maker Pebble, who have remained quite popular even with the launch of competing smartwatch platforms, has today announced a variety of updates for their watch, as well as announcing some pricing changes.
The big news is of course that Pebble will now track your activity and sleep patterns in the background, with the company announcing new updated apps from Misfit, Jawbone and Swim.com which all take advantage of the new features.
Pebble has also introduced a new Quick Launch, a way to access your favourite Pebble Apps with a long press of either the physical up or down buttons on your watch. You can determine which apps are associated with these actions from the settings menu.
The full list of features includes :
NEW: Quick Launch. Set shortcuts from a watchface to your favorite Pebble apps with a long press of the Up or Down buttons. Enable Quick Launch and set app shortcuts in the Pebble Settings menu.
Battery icon is now persistent within Pebble menus.
Select button once again dismisses notifications when paired with an Android device or iOS device on iOS 7 or lower. iOS 8 users get notificaion dismissal for both Pebble and the paired device when pressing Select.
Bug fixes and improvements.
Of course you want better pricing for your Pebble, and Pebble is giving it to you offering the standard Pebble for US$99 (just over AUD$113) or the Pebble Steel for US$199 (just over AUD$227) – a saving of $50 on each unit. This pricing is a great buy with Pebble offering free shipping to Australia through their website. The pricing hasn’t filtered down to local purveyor of Pebble – Dick Smith as yet, who are still asking $179 for the Black and Red versons of the smartwatch, but we hope they will drop the price accordingly.
It’s a nice update from Pebble, in a world where Android Wear is seemingly on the up, a cross platform option still has a place. That is of course until Apple drops their ‘Watch’ and we’ll see then what happens.
Do you still use your Pebble, or have you jumped on the Android Wear bandwagon?
