LAS VEGAS -- Pebble is back at CES, and this time it has a brand new, redesigned metal smartwatch and tons of new apps.
Pebble debuted at CES 2013 and started shipping to its Kickstarter backers soon after. In the last year, the smartwatch has sold more than 300,000 units and is available at Amazon, Best Buy and AT&T.
For CES 2014, Pebble is showing off its new Pebble 2.0 software, the Pebble app store and Pebble Steel, its premium smartwatch.
Pebble Steel
I had some time to play with Pebble Steel and talk about its design and evolution with Pebble founder and CEO Eric Migicovsky, who said the company took what it learned from making the original Pebble and applied it to the Pebble Steel.
"This is a watch for people who love the idea of having notifications on their wrist, but need something that doesn't look like a sports watch," Migicovsky said.
The Pebble Steel, as the the name implies, is made of stainless steel. It's available in two colors: brushed stainless and black matte. Like the original Pebble, the Pebble Steel is waterproof and has a battery life of 5 to 7 days. The e-paper display is the same, too -- only now it's covered with Corning Gorilla Glass.
The guts of the Pebble Steel remain the same as the original watch -- except it has twice the available memory. Migicovsky said it was important to keep the platform the same so that developers only have to worry about creating for one watch. "We can fragment next year," he joked.
All Pebble apps and watch faces will run on Pebble Steel. Analog faces in particular look really great, similar to an actual analog watch at first glance.
The Pebble Steel will ship with both metal bands and a leather strap. As a woman, I found that the leather strap looked great on my wrist. The face might still be too big for a cocktail dress, but the strap and design of the housing looked slick and chic.
It also has an RGB LED on the bottom corner that can be used for charging status now, but in the future the team will open its API so developers can use the LED to signal alerts or notifications.
The Pebble Steel is available to order today at getpebble.com for $249. It will begin shipping on Jan. 28.
Pebble App Store and New Pebble Apps
In addition to Pebble Steel, Pebble also showed off more features from its upcoming Pebble 2.0 update, including the new Pebble app store. The app store and 2.0 updates will be available to Pebble users at the end of January. It will also offer users who have existing watch face and other apps a way to seamlessly upgrade to the latest experience.
Migicovsky tells me that Pebble already has 3,000 developers building apps for Pebble 2.0. The ecosystem is really exploding.
Moreover, I got to see demos of some new Pebble apps from Yelp, Foursquare, Mercedes and Pandora. These apps all showcase the real power of Pebble -- and smartwatches in general.
The Yelp app, for instance, lets people find restaurants or bars nearby using the phone's GPS to pump to the watch. You can also quickly view ratings and reviews. For Foursquare, the app lets users check in directly from the watch with just one touch. The Pandora app adds an expanded Pandora experience to Pebble. Users can skip tracks, love or hate a track and change stations -- all from the watch.
The Mercedes app, which will ship later this year, connects to the Mercedes smartphone apps, and will let users get notifications of what's happening in-car on their wrist. ESPN also built a Pebble app that will let users pull in sports scores on the fly. It's great for those times you want to check the score without pulling out your phone (or you know, if you're in a place where that wouldn't be socially acceptable).
Migicovsky says these new apps are just the beginning, and we believe him. It's amazing to look at how different the Pebble experience has changed in 12 months. Wearables are a big trend at CES 2014, and Pebble is proving that the company isn't sitting still.
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