When Fitbit acquired Pebble, the first fancy crowdfunded smartwatch, in December 2016, the company noted that while existing watches would work for the time being, “functionality or quality of service may be reduced in the future.”You may get some bug fixes, but there will be no software or feature updates for the groundbreaking e-ink wearables.
Nearly six years later, a new Pebble app for Android has been released by the Rebble Alliance, the group that has kept Pebble alive for its users ever since Fitbit shut down Pebble’s servers in mid-2018. Pebble version 4.4.3 makes the app 64-bit so that it can run on 64-bit Pixel 7 and similar Android phones in the future. It also restores the caller ID feature that was hampered in recent versions of Android.
In particular, the application is “signed using official Pebble keys”while maintaining integration with Google Fit. Google acquired Fitbit for $2.1 billion, making him the manager of Pebble’s remaining intellectual property and software. Katherine Berry, key programmer and leader of Rebble, works on Wear OS at Google and was one of the first to tweet about the new update “four years after 4.4.2”. This was the last Play Store update for the Pebble app, replacing many of the app’s features with independent servers. This is where Rebble started, providing web services to Pebble watches, including (for paid subscribers) voice dictation.
Berry’s post on r/pebble suggests “thank you Google for the latest update!”This is certainly not a typical result of products that have been purchased by Google, even if they were used. We’ve reached out to Google and Berry for comment and details and will update this post if we get a response.
Pebble and its second act, led by Rebble, is a wonderful story of community effort and longevity. Any watch made since 2013 can be used as long as the battery and other hardware have not failed. Rebble Discord and a draft blog post have evidence that a hackathon will take place in November. “Last updated”somehow seems like an overly cautious definition.