New Pebble update allows smartwatch to keep ticking

Did you hear that? That was the sound of Pebble wearers breathing a collective sigh of relief.

Last December, we reported that Pebble had been acquired by Fitbit. Concurrently with the announcement, Pebble stopped all hardware production. Customer support halted as well, leaving many to speculate that Pebble’s servers would soon shut down. Pebble smartwatches are heavily dependent on the company’s cloud services for most of their core functionality; a server shutdown would essentially render all existing watches dead in the water.

That’s why the latest Pebble app update is so important for users. The app will now allow Pebble smartwatches to work without a connection to the Pebble servers. The app also allows Pebble apps to be sideloaded. While there are still questions about some cloud-dependent features like dictation and weather updates, most of the watches core functions will remain intact, particularly the notification system. This update coupled with continuing community development may keep Pebbles on people's wrist a while longer.

A full list of features in the update can be found on Pebble’s developer blog here.

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