Pebble has been offering relatively affordable smartwatches for several years now — in fact, its original wearable, which debuted with huge success on the crowd-funding platform Kickstarter, is credited with making modern smartwatches popular.
While the company currently offers several different models with a variety of designs and features, all of them tend to fall short of the competition when it comes to a few key areas.
For one, all Pebble smartwatches feature e-paper displays. Some of the products — like the Pebble Time, Pebble Time Round and Pebble Time Steel — feature color e-paper displays, but none of them have touchscreens, which you'll find on the Apple Watch, Samsung Gear products and pretty much all other Android Wear devices.
The upside is that these watches offer much longer battery life, since they don't have an LCD or OLED screen sucking up energy.
One other area where Pebbles have been relatively lackluster is its fitness tracking capabilities. While the Pebble app store has long offered apps like RunKeeper for monitoring your workouts, and the latest watches do offer basic daily step and sleep tracking thanks to Pebble Health. But, thanks to a recent update, this functionality is expanding, moving this data beyond your watch face.The News
As Pebble announced in a blog post on its site, it's updated Pebble Health to display activity data over time — not just for a given day — and it's added automatic tracking for runs and long walks, including instant watch notifications with a summary of your activity after completing a walk or run (along with more in-depth data on the smartphone app.
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Plus, users will now get "insights and encouragements" to help provide motivation.
More activity-tracking data is definitely a good thing — especially if you're looking to choose a smartwatch that can also function as a fitness tracker — but what's especially important about this update is that Pebble's integrating this information with its mobile apps for Android and iPhone.Previously, you could only view your health data on your Pebble watch screen, and given the small size it's no wonder you weren't able to pore tons of stats. However, with Pebble Health integrated with the company's mobile apps, you'll be able to pull up your activity info on your smartphone and get a more comprehensive picture of how much you move. You'll be able to view your latest activity levels and compare them with your average, plus you can see stats like calories burned, step distance and active time.
That's not even all the news: In addition to updating its fitness tracking to display much more info in its smartphone apps, Pebble's adding a new Smart Alarms feature to its official Alarms app. This functionality appears to mimic fitness trackers that specialize in sleep monitoring and optimization by waking you up when you're in your "lightest sleep." This means that the monitor could go off as early as 30 minutes prior to your set wakeup time, based on where you are in your sleep cycle.
The last aspect of the update will only concern iPhone users, as Pebble owners with an Android phone have had access to these features for some time. The iOS Send Text app will now allow you to start a text conversation from your wrist, and you can choose from a pre-written (canned) response or use a voice note to interact with contacts. You'll also be able to reply to incoming calls with either a canned response or voice note. It's not exactly as advanced as taking a call on your smartwatch, but it's important functionality for those who want to use their wearable without constantly needing to take out their phone.
As for how to get these updates, you'll need to update the smartphone app (via the appropriate app store on your phone) as well as your Pebble smartwatch firmware. As you'll see once you complete this updates, the app interface has changed as well, moving to a four-tab layout divided between Health, Watchfaces, Apps and Notification.
Why This Update Is Important
First of all, it's important to note that the new Pebble Health features only apply to Pebble Time devices, so if you own an older Pebble watch, you won't be able to enjoy the fitness data. However, Pebble Health itself is only available for Pebble Time watches, so if you have an older watch from the company this is either irrelevant or an extra push to get you to upgrade. (The cheapest device with Pebble Health is the Pebble Time, which starts at $150.
So, assuming you do own a Pebble Time Series watch or are considering buying one, why does this update represent a big improvement? Well, it paints a much fuller picture of your activity and movement, going beyond simple summaries displayed on your wrist to show you data over a span of days, letting you compare your most recent activity to past workouts and more. This is essential if you want a smartwatch that can handle activity tracking as well as on-wrist notifications and other non-workout-related tasks. When Pebble Health only revealed a limited glimpse of your activity info on your watch screen, it was hard to convince yourself that these smartwatches could compete with an activity tracker from the likes of Fitbit or Jawbone. However, now that you can access much more data from your smartphone app, a Pebble Time smartwatch can likely handle your activity tracking needs — unless you're a professional athlete (like a swimmer) or have specific fitness-monitoring requirements.
The bottom line is that this update makes Pebble devices much more competitive with both other smartwatches and basic fitness trackers. It's especially great news for those who already own a compatible device, but if you're on the market for an affordable wearable, the Pebble Time Series is looking more appealing than ever before.
