As Pebble celebrates 2 1/2 years of being in the wearable market, way before any of the other smartwatches were in existence, they’ve made a few announcements to celebrate. This includes a new update, adding several health and fitness apps, making the smartwatch available in more retail outlets and of course, new pricing.
The newest firmware update to Pebble now brings non-stop activity tracking and sleep monitoring working on the background even as you display your favorite watchface. This also lets several health and fitness apps work even beter with your smartwatch. The Misfit app has been updated so it will also do round-the-clock activity tracking while Jawbone will be launching an activity tracking watchface called UP, created specifically for Pebble and will soon be syncing with their UP app. Swim.com will let you measure your swimming activities with Pebble, since it has a 5 ATM water-resistance. So now you can track your distance, speed, pace, strokes and time for when you’re exercising in the pool.
Pebble will also now be available in more retail outlets, like in the US, it will be at Sam’s Club, Fry’s Electronics and soon, also on Sprint stores. In the UK, Pebble will be available at Dixons Retail, O2 and Amazon.com.uk by October. In Benelux, they will be in MediaMarkt, Coolblue.nl, Wehkamp.nl, Bol.com), and in Scandinavia, among new stores are MediaMarkt, Teknikmagasinet, coolstuff.se/no/dk, Verkkokauppa.com, etc.
But probably the best news is that, in the spirit of their vision “to make technology more accessible,” Pebble smartwatches will now be available at $99 and Pebble Steel will be at $199. You need to update your firmware in order to enjoy the new features of your wearable. Just open the Pebble smartphone app, go to the Support menu and choose Update Your Pebble if it doesn’t automatically start.
SOURCE: Pebble
