Pebble Debuts New 'Pebble Health' Fitness Tracking Feature

[MacRumors]

Pebble today announced new software updates for its line of Pebble smart watches, bringing the timeline feature to Pebble Classic and Steel and introducing a new Pebble Health feature for the Pebble Time lineup.

According to Pebble, Pebble Health was created through a collaboration with researchers at Stanford University. Pebble Health is able to track daily activity and automatically detect sleep phases, displaying stats and insights right on the wrist. Pebble Health brings the Pebble Time in line with the Apple Watch and other activity trackers with a first-party solution that eliminates the need for third-party fitness tracking apps on the device.

Since you are your best motivator, Pebble Health focuses on personal success. Instead of striving for an arbitrary step count, your daily progress is measured against your own personal average. At night, Pebble Health tracks how long and well you sleep, helping you make better sleep decisions. Weekly graphs of both step and sleep stats make it easy to see trends over time.

Pebble Health is compatible with Apple HealthKit and in the future, Pebble plans to launch a Pebble Health API that will allow developers to build apps and watchfaces around the new feature.

Pebble Time, Time Steel, and Time Round owners will get access to Pebble Health after updating the Pebble smartphone app and the watch to the latest version of the software. Pebble Health is not available on earlier Pebble watches.

Article Link: Pebble Debuts New 'Pebble Health' Fitness Tracking Feature

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

Delivered late and still not up to what others offer.

 

[dwaltwhit]

I think the one thing the apple watch is lacking is sleep tracking via first party app.

 

[2457282]

Does anyone know the financial status of Pebble? I was reading that they were on the ropes. I love my Apple Watch, but was interested to know if Pebble is getting ready to close or sell?

 

[MH01]

Good news for pebble owners. I prefer my Apple Watch , but use my Microsoft band for fitness tracking .

 

[skinned66]

Does anyone know the financial status of Pebble? I was reading that they were on the ropes. I love my Apple Watch, but was interested to know if Pebble is getting ready to close or sell?

Depends who you ask. Since you already read here's a recent counter of sorts.

http://mobilesyrup.com/2015/12/07/p...e-future-a-conversation-with-eric-migicovsky/

 

[APlotdevice]

I don't really care about this health feature. I'm just glad to be finally getting timeline on my classic!

BTW, I was initially confused because the app I had didn't have the update. Turns out you have to download the Pebble Time app to upgrade.

 

[ffnc1020]

Delivered late and still not up to what others offer.

Since when did apple watch start to have week long sleep tracking?

 

[satchmo]

Despite being first to market, Pebble doesn't seem to have it all together. Every watch looks cheap and from different companies. On screen elements look amateurish and no system wide font or visual language. It may be a good product, but you still need some sense of style and aesthetics.

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

Since when did apple watch start to have week long sleep tracking?

Sleep Cycle and other apps have been around for years and do just as good of a job at tracking this.

Heck, Sleep Cycle can even do so with multiple people in bed and pets. Pebble can't do that.

 

[pdaholic]

Anybody here actually use a pebble with this new timeline feature? I've got an original pebble, as well as an Apple Watch. Not sure if it's worth my time to break out the pebble and play around with it again. Can't say I've been entirely happy with my Apple Watch for various reasons.

 

[ffnc1020]

Sleep Cycle and other apps have been around for years and do just as good of a job at tracking this.

Heck, Sleep Cycle can even do so with multiple people in bed and pets. Pebble can't do that.

Since when did sleep cycle have apple watch support?

 

[WarHeadz]

I feel kinda bad. Pebble is trying so hard and they make some quality stuff. But the Apple Watch will destroy them in the long run.

 

[turtlebud]

Anybody here actually use a pebble with this new timeline feature? I've got an original pebble, as well as an Apple Watch. Not sure if it's worth my time to break out the pebble and play around with it again. Can't say I've been entirely happy with my Apple Watch for various reasons.

I have a pebble time and have been using the timeline. Coming from the original pebble, it took a little getting used to, but it actually makes sense and is useful. Out of the box, it is basically a calendar timeline, but you can pick any app to integrate into timeline, weather, sunrise/sunset, espn scores, foursquare/swarm check ins, etc.

Don't know if it's a killer feature, but it's pretty useful to me.

 

[turtlebud]

I feel kinda bad. Pebble is trying so hard and they make some quality stuff. But the Apple Watch will destroy them in the long run.

I don't know if I agree with that. I think there is a market for pebble and I hope they continue to innovate and come out with new software/hardware. So far I've been very happy with my pebbles. I got an original pebble about a year ago and got a pebble time this year. The one issue I've had with pebbles is I've had a couple break down on me (screen starting banding or even just goes out). However, Pebble customer service has been top notch and has taken care of me in each case (either fix via troubleshooting or send me a replacement pebble). I'd say they are as good as Apple customer service.

I wanted so much to like the apple watch, but it still falls short in some critical areas for me. Coincidentally, the pebble shines in those same areas:

1. swimming - very useful for swimmers that don't already have a swim watch. There's a pretty good app (swim.com) which runs on the pebble and tracks swim metrics which syncs to your swim.com account. A side note - I tried the basis peak for awhile and one interesting thing I noticed was that swimming really messed with the touch screen. I had a stopwatch running and while I was swimming it must have registered water as taps cause after a few laps, it had lapped 8x and exited the stop watch.
2. battery - regularly get 3-4 days of battery per charge and it recharges within a few hours.
3. sleep tracking - related to #2, because of the good battery life, I can wear it to sleep and it tracks my sleep (I use the misfit app, but the pebble health app just came out so I'm going to give that a shot)

There are other things that I find it handy for - these are things that the apple watch probably does as well.

1. notifications - calls, emails, texts, app notifications, etc. I like that I can decline calls from the pebble.
2. music - I can control any music app via the pebble. handy when I'm listening via earphones and washing dishes and can't get my phone to skip a song or change the volume.
3. watchfaces - I currently use a watchface where I get the date, sunset/sunrise, battery life, and weather along with the time.
4. alarms - easy to set reminders to move car or do something in 1 hr or x time.
5. voice notes - when I'm in the shower and remember something I can make a voice note
6. swarm - i have one of the shortcuts set to swarm. easy/quick check ins without getting my phone out.

There are number of other things that the apple watch does (heart rate, photos, local music, etc.) but I honest don't feel like I'm missing out because I don't think I'd use them very much.

 

[jonnysods]

Poor guys, I heard they aren't doing well fiscally.

 

[8281]

I feel kinda bad. Pebble is trying so hard and they make some quality stuff. But the Apple Watch will destroy them in the long run.

I don't think that's true at all. I was under the impression the Apple Watch isn't selling very well and they are $100 more expensive than the top of the line Pebble. I have a bunch of Apple stuff, but I'll be getting the Pebble Time instead of Apple's product. It's cheaper, has most of the same features, and the battery lasts a full week.

For most people, sinking $350 into a niche product that's difficult to justify is simply out of the question. A $100 or $150 Pebble? That's a different conversation.

 

[8281]

Sleep Cycle and other apps have been around for years and do just as good of a job at tracking this.

Heck, Sleep Cycle can even do so with multiple people in bed and pets. Pebble can't do that.

I think they are referring to the Pebble's superior battery life (well with the exception of the Pebble Round).

 

[skinned66]

Anybody here actually use a pebble with this new timeline feature? I've got an original pebble, as well as an Apple Watch. Not sure if it's worth my time to break out the pebble and play around with it again. Can't say I've been entirely happy with my Apple Watch for various reasons.

Go for it. I really like it; it's almost like a got a new watch. You can always downgrade if you want to go back.

 

[fitshaced]

And now it looks even more like a child's watch.

 

[djgamble]

Does anyone know the financial status of Pebble? I was reading that they were on the ropes. I love my Apple Watch, but was interested to know if Pebble is getting ready to close or sell?

Where'd you read that? They've had 2 extremely successful kickstarter campaigns, so dunno where all the money would have gone.

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

I think they are referring to the Pebble's superior battery life (well with the exception of the Pebble Round).

It does 1/50th as much as the Apple Watch so I'd hope it has a better battery.

Apples to oranges.

That's like pointing out that the Geo Metro gets 50mpg while the Ferrari gets just 8mpg.

 

[2457282]

Where'd you read that? They've had 2 extremely successful kickstarter campaigns, so dunno where all the money would have gone.

I got it from a tech crunch article -- HERE

 

[8281]

It does 1/50th as much as the Apple Watch so I'd hope it has a better battery.

Apples to oranges.

That's like pointing out that the Geo Metro gets 50mpg while the Ferrari gets just 8mpg.

Apples to oranges? They are the same product category - wearable tech watches. It's like pointing out a cheaper android phone that gets better battery life than an iPhone.

Your analogy makes no sense either. Who would cross shop a Ferrari and GEO? People would almost certainly cross shop the Pebble with the Apple Watch.

 

[jblagden]

All without charging $400 for a watch. The Apple Watch is really cool and it has a lot of neat bells and whistles, but starting at $350, it's just too expensive for practicality. And yet, the Pebble Time can be purchased for $150 less, or if you're more concerned about price than color and style (and having a microphone), you can get the regular Pebble for $250 less than the Apple Watch. If I’m going to spend $400 for a watch, it should be able to last 20 years and the manufacturer shouldn’t release a better one every year or so. Once you put a CPU in something, you’re giving it a limited lifespan of 5-10 years. There’s no such thing as a CPU which can run continuously for 20 years.