Longtime readers of this blog are already familiar with the astounding story of the Pebble smartwatch. Here’s a quick primer, however, for newcomers. Last year, Pebble set up a humble Kickstarter to try to raise some funds to finish the development of their watch. What happened next was anything other than humble. The smartwatch smashed all previous fundraising records on the site and went on to raise an amazing 10 million dollars. This is over 100 times what they were asking for.
The Pebble watch is a smartwatch with a highly readable e-paper screen that works in tandem with your smartphone. This much has always been true. Now, however, the company has given the watch’s OS a firmware update, which improves the interface and adds games. On the interface front, the entire UI is cleaned up and much easier to navigate around and use. A messy UI has been essentially the only complaint by Pebble users and now it is a thing of the past. It groups all watchfaces together and moves primary navigation controls to the buttons on the right side of the device. Nice.
Also, the new firmware adds the ability to play that old school PC favorite Snake right on your watch. Now you can stand on the street corner and get lost in a video game while you should be paying attention to oncoming traffic! Seriously, though, don’t do that. Pedestrians need to be extra cautious in this day and age. You can get the updated firmware now by checking the affiliated Pebble app on your smartphone.
